What Makes Lizzy Dizzy?

Back in the days of silent films, Harry Langdon had a respectable career. While not quite on par with the likes of Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy, Keaton and Lloyd, Langdon's films were fun, enjoyable and very well directed by Frank Capra. Inexplicably, Langdon left his studio in search of more control and more money....and ended up making a ton of incredibly forgettable films for Hal Roach, Educational, and Columbia Pictures. Of these, the Columbia ones are the worst, as the films tended to put Harry in situations that the Three Stooges would have found familiar....but this was completely wrong for Harry. He was not a Stooge nor could he or should he have been. "What Makes Lizzy Dizzy?" is one of these low-brow Columbia shorts. In quite a few of these pictures, Harry is co-billed with another actor--such as El Brendel. Here, he co-stars with comedienne Elsie Ames.

The plot and humor in "What Makes Lizzy Dizzy?" is about as far removed from Langdon's best humor of the 1920s as you can get. His silents were wonderful because he played such a sweet and likable character. Here, in this Columbia film, it's not the least about the character but more about situations and very physical humor. In this case, he goes bowling with some ladies and all sorts of ridiculous and over-the-top physical humor is used...humor which makes the characters seem more like caricatures. Most of the physical humor is annoying...once or twice it works...a bit and the bit with Langdon having BOTH hands stuck in bowling balls and flailing about is simply godawful. Mostly, the film simply isn't that funny and is a film the Three Stooges and their knockabout humor would have worked much better with than Langdon. Easy to skip this one.

It's hard to watch a great comedian like Langdon get pushed into the background, while lesser comics dominate the proceedings. Columbia must have been attempting to elevate the status of Elsie Ames and Monty Collins, to the film's detriment.

Though Harry Langdon is teamed with Elsie Ames in this short, this one seems to be an unsold pilot for a new series of two-reelers featuring Ames and Dorothy Appleby. The two had already appeared together in shorts previously, but their own style of physical comedy does do the short justice. Elsie and Dorothy are employees of a laundry service who are enrolling into a company bowling tournament against another business and are warned by their fussy boss (Lorin Raker) not to lose. A subplot involves their detective boyfriends (Langdon and Monte Collins) trying to locate a mad bomber in the city. Sadly, the two aren't given much to do as this short is mostly a showcase for the girls.

Elsie Ames was, for some reason, though to be an upcoming comedy star at Columbia Pictures' shorts department. As a result she was paired first with headliner Buster Keaton and then with Harry Langdon. Whether this was to the the end of creating a marketable comedy team or simply to give s boost to Ames' career by letting her share billing with an established name in comedy, the results in this short are not very constructive. Nobody comes out a winner, really: Ames is consistently, loud, broad, and not very funny in her comedy. Langdon is given less screen time, uncharacteristic gags, and a sped-up pace, all of which work squarely against his style of comedy.

"What Makes Lizzy Dizzy?" has an unfocused and random premise that has something to do with Elsie working in a laundry, a bowling competition, and a safe robbery. Characteristic of director Jules White, it's really an excuse for a series of very one-note, very violent (many instances of head trauma, for instance, that would probably result in concussion in real life, and one scene where people's skin gets exposed to dangerously strong acid), and inexpertly timed by Ames physical slapstick.

If this was an attempt to team Ames and Langdon, it was an odd one: they hardly work together on screen. Although Harry gets comparatively little screen time and during it is asked to pull off some pedestrian and uncharacteristic gags, he is still the only thing, really, that makes this short worth watching, performing little bits (like confusing the bowling ball stuck to his hand for somebody's head) with flair. Many of Langdon's Columbia shorts are underrated and quite funny if slighter than his other films. This one, however, really does him a disservice my putting him on equal footing with the comedy-impaired Elsie Ames and withholding any gags that can't be summed up as "Ouch!"