Heinie and the Magic Man

Recently "Heinie and the Magic Man" was posted to YouTube and I appreciate that. However, I am not thrilled with the new sound effects something chose to add to this silent film. I just found the effects overdone and distracting...so I watched most of this one with the sound turned off.

Although pretty much forgotten today, Jimmy Aubrey was a big name in comedy during the slapstick era. He apparently was the understudy for Chaplin at one point and his style of comedy does bear a strong similarity to Chaplin and his Little Tramp character. Aubry's 'Heinie' was an obnoxious foreigner who had huge feet and bumbled into various problems...with lots of kicking, punching and other forms of slapstick were the norm in his comedies and this era.

Like most comedies of the era, it's obvious that this one did not have much in the way of plot. Heinie finds a ticket to a magic show and goes to see it. During the wait and the show itself, Heinie is pretty annoying and his behaviors seem random and pretty obnoxious and he ends up ruining the show and gets chased around a bit.

I only enjoyed one gag in this one (involving a 2000 pound weight). The rest was just mindless violence and action. For the era, this was the norm...but when seen today, the shortcomings of this type of humor are pretty obvious. The quality and depth of comedies would improve dramatically in the 1920s...but for its time this is comedy.

Here's an early Jimmy Aubrey starring short. In it, he finds a ticket to a magic show, goes, and disrupts the proceedings.

Aubrey wears a Ford Sterling beard, and the character is a German or 'stage Dutch' one, which is why he is called 'Heinie' -- not to be confused with Heinie Conklin, I suppose. Much of the identified cast was associated at this time with Harry Watson Jr's Musty Suffer comedies, so that's another person not to confuse him with.

What we are left with is one of those messy comedies of the period in which an unlikable character makes a mess. As with so much of Aubrey's work, I am left with the vague conclusion that he might very well be a capable comic, but his material fails to show this.

Oh, I agree with my fellow commenter about the annoying quality of the music this has been posted to YouTube with.