Gertie's Joy Ride

Every one is reading Elinor Glyn while gliding peacefully through the water in the park. As a result, Hank Mann gets into a fight with another tramp over Gertrude Selby. Then, when her boy friend, Reggie Morris shows up, Mann gets into a fight with him. It all ends up in a chase sequence.

It's another rare survivor from Henry Lehrman's LKO-Knockout comedy. Lehrman clamimed he had been the driving force behind Mack Sennett's Keystone Studio. Earlier, he get a job with D. W. Griffith by claiming to have directed for Pathe in France. His work at LKO was even wilder than the Keystones at the time, and were popular with the public. The problem, from the viewpoint of the backer, Universal Pictures, was that Lehrman liked expensive gags and retakes. So eventually Universal cut him out of the equation.

"Gertie's Joy Ride" is a comedy short from The L-KO Kompany"...a long-defunct American film studio. IMDB says it runs 10 minutes and the version I saw was 14. Some of this difference might be due to the speed at which the film was played (silents varied from about 14-22 frames per second), but also many early film run times are wrong on IMDB.

In many ways, this film plays like one of the Keystone comedies of the same era. It's filled with slapstick, a villain, a very obnoxious guy and a girl in trouble...and later pursued by folks much like the Keystone Kops. I wouldn't quite say the obnoxious guy is a Chaplin rip-off, as he does act a bit like him but has a very different look. By the description, I thought this guy would be like Billy West...a Chaplin impersonator who liked EXACTLY like Chaplin.

As far as the plot goes, like most slapstick films there isn't much. Two mashers chase a girl through the park trying to win her love...only to find she already has a boyfriend and was screwing with them. In retaliation, the obnoxious guy kidnaps the girl and the police give chase.

This is about on par with a Keystone film....which was great in the 1910s but which today is pretty dull stuff. Not a bad film...but one which is a product of its time.