Carry Harry

Nice fast-paced slapstick and situation comedy. Once you get used to seeing Elsie James hold up her end of the action, it's a riot. Harry Langdon was gag writer for the vintage Laurel and Hardy feature, Block Heads. This short from Langdon reminds one of the closing minutes of THAT 1938 classic. Bedlam, unintended compromising situations, people running around a closed space. You know they had fun making this one. My study of Langdon has crossed a threshold. His shorts are better than the Three Stooges.

After starting off very well during the silent era, the quality of Harry Langdon's comedies decreased over the years. His films with Roach and Educational Pictures were significantly poorer than his silents, though his final years were much worse...making a string of mostly unfunny shorts for Columbia. This is one of his Columbia shorts....so my expectations for this one were very low.

Compared to the other Langdon films he made for Columbia, this one is better than average. This is NOT a glowing endorsement, because while it has a few laughs, much of the humor is nothing like Langdon's earlier and gentler humor. Instead, it relies on a lot of low-brow slapstick--exploding appliances, a jealous boyfriend shooting at Harry and the like. Langdon had never been a slapsticky sort of guy and yet here he is...out of his element and in a film that is, at best, mildly funny and no more.

By the way, Harry's wife in this one is played by Barbara Pepper--the woman who later went on to play the first Mrs. Zipfel on "Green Acres".

There seem to be two sets of film makers at work on this short: one is Harry Langdon and Harry Edwards, one of his lead collaborators from his Mack Sennett days. The two of them manage a few real Harry Langdon moments, when the pixilated Harry -- actually, here he seems permanently soused -- is befuddled by the modern world, in the form of a telephone hooked up to the electricity line and the toaster to the telephone jack. If you are a fan of Harry Langdon's style of comedy -- and I am -- then you will enjoy this movie for those moments.

And therefore you will hate it for its loud, cheap, painful Jules White setting of random violence and Elsie Ames -- a talented contortionist who worked well with Buster Keaton in a couple of his Columbia shorts, because she could take a fall very well, but here she's just annoying.

So should you see this? If you're a Harry Langdon fanatic, yes, for those few brief moments. But otherwise, no.