Le Cracker Jack

When Douglas Fairbanks announced a sequel to his "The Mark of Zorro" (1920), entitled "Don Q, Son of Zorro" (1925), resourceful comedian Johnny Hines resolved to get in first with his spoof, "The Crackerjack". Mind you, it takes some time before we finally get into the Zoroesque Mexican material, but once arrived, Johnny sets out to really out-Fairbanks Doug in the way of athletic prowess, and succeeds delightfully. Some of his comic stunts have to be seen to be believed! Only in the pole-vaulting, is he doubled.

By the standards of independent film-making, "The Crackerjack" is admirably produced. Filmed on real locations with lots of extras milling about, there is no sign of stinting on effects. The direction by the star's brother, Charles Hines, is never less than competent, while the photography, attributed to three cameramen, seems faultlessly fluent. John Krafft's amusing title cards are a scream!

The supporting players likewise hit the mark almost every time. Although Sigrid Holmquist (in her last movie before retiring) is not exactly your typical Hollywood heroine, she offers a refreshing change from the usual siren, while J. Barney Sherry contributes some good laughs as the hero's pickle-provident uncle.

Johnny Hines was dealt with briefly in Walter Kerr's important reference work 'The Silent Clowns'. His inclusion in that book is justified, but a brief mention is all he deserves. Hines was a third-string comedian in the great days of silent comedy. He tended to play brash go-getters in the Harold Lloyd mould ... but Lloyd was distinguished by his hornrimmed eyeglasses, whereas Johnny Hines's only distinguishing trait was a slightly Oriental cast to his face. Hines's films were brisk and funny, but he never did anything that wasn't done better by Harold Lloyd, Wallace Reid, Raymond Griffith or several other comedians of this period.

'The Crackerjack' was scripted as a starring vehicle for Johnny Hines, and it was directed by his brother ... an untalented hack who would never have become a director if not for the family relationship. The plot of this movie is largely about pickles, and I can't help wondering if the surname of the star and director served as inspiration: Hines (Heinz) pickles, geddit?

'The Crackerjack' begins with Hines as a short-order cook named Tommy, supplying a few griddle-related gags which eat up some screen time before he shifts jobs and becomes a pickle salesman. (These are American pickles: the cucumber sort.) While Tommy cooks up some ridiculous ploys to sell pickles, his uncle goes off to South America and starts a revolution. (Seems logical so far.) The uncle (an army colonel) sends Tommy an order to ship 5,000 pickles to South America ... with a cartridge inserted in each pickle. Tommy has no difficulty filling this order. But he's unwilling to smuggle armaments into a sovereign nation, so he takes the precaution of filling every cartridge with cheese instead of gunpowder.

SPOILING A FEW JOKES NOW. While the projectionist stops to change reels, somehow Tommy ends up in South America amidst the thick of the revolution. Inevitably, he ends up in front of a firing squad. Ready, ... aim, ... fire! The firing squad loaded their rifles with the wrong cartridges, and Johnny is covered with cheese. Before you can say 'Cheddar Guevara', another irrelevant gag sequence begins.

Tommy gets involved with Rose, the daughter of one of the revolutionary leaders. Rose, played by a Swedish actress, looks surprisingly Swedish for the daughter of a South American revolutionary. Maybe she's related to Bernardo O'Higgins. Her father is General Bannon, a bearded warlord. All the soldiers come looking for Tommy, so he steals the general's uniform and sword. He slices open a horsehair armchair, and glues some of the stuffing to his face (with pickled cheese, I think) to make a fake beard, then disguises himself as the general. Hines is amusing in the elaborate uniform and shako he wears for part of this movie.

It's not spoiling anything to tell you that Tommy gets the girl, because it's that sort of movie. The Johnny Hines films are fast-moving comedies with formulaic plots and plenty of gags that come out of nowhere and fail to advance the plot. Buster Keaton once commented about another silent-film comedian (Larry Semon) that audiences laughed all through his movies but couldn't remember afterwards what his films were about. A similar criticism could be said about Johnny Hines. Semon and Hines both deserve to be remembered ... but they're certainly far below the pantheon of Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Langdon and Raymond Griffith. I'll rate 'The Crackerjack' 4 points out of 10.