On His Wedding Day

After his wedding ceremony is interrupted, Krause (Ford Sterling) runs amok in a park while his bride waits forlornly with the minister.

Others have said the plot of this short film is "contrived". That is probably fair to say. My biggest issue, which may be the source of the contrivance, is that the movie is just too short. To prepare for a wedding, get sidetracked and resolve the plot in ten minutes (or less) seems like a rush. These are stories that could be fleshed out.

I suppose there was only so much you could do at the time if you were pumping out short films, which really were not meant to be complete stories. But it is a shame that these opportunities were apparently lost.

This is a very weird and contrived comedy short. A rather ugly guy (Ford Sterling in a lot of makeup) is on his way to marry a goofy looking lady. However, as he walks to the wedding, some knuckleheads think it's funny to sprinkle red pepper on his bouquet. When the wedding begins, the bride to be and the preacher are caught up in sneezing fits....and it only gets weirder from here. Soon, a jealous boyfriend thinks Sterling is making time with his girl and pays some roughnecks to beat him up! Eventually, however, Sterling escapes and the wedding continues.

The plot here is weird and contrived--and you'd never see or think of anything like this happening in real life. And, on top of that, it really isn't very funny.

On His Wedding Day (1913)

*** (out of 4)

A groom (Ford Sterling) is on his way to the church to meet his bride when a prankster pours some red pepper into the flowers. The groom arrives at the church and everything begins sneezing so he must go out and try to find a new preacher. While on his journey, he ends up making several people mad and they spend the rest of the picture chasing him. This is another Mack Sennett film that's well worth watching and especially if you're a fan of his fast paced style. The film starts off on a pretty funny joke dealing with the red pepper but the rest of the film skips the laughs and instead just turns into a fast chase picture. It's never fully made clear why so many people are wanting to kill the groom but I'm sure Sennett didn't think that mattered as long as he could keep the action up to pace. Sterling once again delivers a fine performance in the lead role and some of his facial gestures were quite funny. Dot Farley appears as the bride and get a couple good sequences.