No Father to Guide Him

Another fine Charley Chase comedy from just before he really hit his stride in 1926. Charley has been separated from his wife by his battle-axe of a mother, but the real bone of contention is his son, with whom he wants to spend time. The two manage to sneak off to the beach, where Charley loses his trunks in the main gag sequence. The three acts are a bit less structured than in Chase's best works, but there are lots of things to interest the movie-goers, including the typical Leo McCarey showing-things-by-onlooker's reactions gag: when Charley is stripped naked -- behind a shack -- onlookers rush off is terror, as they would in PUTTING PANTS ON PHILLIP.

I spot various subtle emasculation symbols that support the major thesis and story arc. When we first see Charley, he is wearing a World War I tin helmet -- it turned out he is not a soldier, but a milkman, and the purpose of the tin helmet becomes apparent when a woman takes him for a burglar and tries to clobber him with a rolling pin. But the helmet is protection -- and later, when he pours milk out of it, it starts to become apparent that McCarey is operating, once again, on a symbolic as well as a practical level.

Charley is deprived of his wife and son..... Charley loses his pants.... Charley is forced to dress in a woman's robe to get out of the water until the shot where the robe is stripped off him and he is --discreetly, from the moviegoer's viewpoint -- revealed as a naked man.... and he starts to take back control of his son and wife.

McCarey experimented with these sexual symbols in a few of the Chase two-reelers, and there are hints of foot fetishism elsewhere. Whether anyone really noticed at the time or it is all in my own sick mind... well, take a look for yourself.

"No Father to Guide Him" is another of Charley Chase's consistently excellent short subjects, from early his career as a star of two-reelers, and it's quite hilarious, taking Charley's comedy of embarrassment forte to some absurd and very funny extremes. It casts him as a father -- a more domestic role in theory than the go-getter types he was playing at this juncture in his career. The opening is actually rather poignant as Charley the milkman is seen desperately sneaking into his ex-wife's house so he can see his little son.

It soon develops into surreal farce, though, with this rather touching underpinning, as a series of gags revolve around Charley nabbing his son. Then, in the real highlight of the short, there is a central bravura sequence in which Charley ends up at sea without his clothes, then paraded around the street wearing a woman's kimono. In some odd-looking shots that are maybe indicative of Los Angeles at the time, the beach seems to run right up to a city street. In a cameo role from Duke Kahanamoku as a lifeguard, there is a risqué gay joke about the danger of the two leaving the water together with Chase naked. Child actor Mickey Bennett gets a whole lot to do, and he handles the comedy very well indeed.

This short as funny as you might expect from the two-reel farce artist of the absurd that was Charley Chase, but it deals with a somewhat more grim and potentially-sentimental subject than he usually essays in it story about an estrangement leading to what is technically a kidnapping. That humanistic backing works very well in compliment and contrast to the wacky comedy elements, actually -- and this is as effective as the later Chase shorts that took place in a self-consciously effervescent, musical world.

No Father to Guide Him (1925)

*** (out of 4)

Going by the title you'd think this Charley Chase film was a serious drama but it's actually a comedy about the funny topic of kidnapping. In the film, Charley and his wife split up because his mother-in-law hates him. She also keeps him from seeing the son he loves so one day Charley and the boy run off for a day at the beach. This is a pretty bizarre little gem that manages to take kidnapping and child abuse and make a comedy out of them. I wasn't really sure where this movie was headed early on but within a few minutes the laughs started flowing and didn't stop. The majority of this two-reeler deals with Chase jumping into the ocean only to lose his bathing suit and he must try and get back to safety without everyone seeing him naked. This entire sequence contains one major laugh after another as each time you think he's going to reach safety something else goes wrong. The second half of the film deals with revenge on the mother-in-law and the detective she has hired. The outcome to both parties are extremely funny. Chase is at the top of his game here showing that he was a genius at playing this type of guy who can't have anything good happen to him. Katherine Grant plays the ex-wife but doesn't have too much to do. Duke Kahanamoku plays a lifeguard here as most people will remember him for the various medals he won in the Olympics with his swimming. The scene between he and Chase works extremely well.