Settled at the Seaside

You can tell this Mack Sennett comedy is an early one because even though it is set at the beach, there are no appearances by the Sennett Bathing Beauties -- just lots of shots of one bathing beauty, Mae Busch, diving and playing tricks in her suit. She's the sweetheart of a young Charley Chase (a light comedy romantic lead in Sennett films at this time) who won't marry him because he won't let her tie his tie. It seems largely improvised, with a sense of pleasure in the atmosphere, and at only a half reel this very short short is really more cute and fun than funny, with some nice moments especially as Mae is fooling around with the married man at the hot dog stand and in the water, and with Chase demonstrating his screen charisma despite still demonstrating a tendency to overplay much more than later.

Settled at the Seaside (1915)

*** (out of 4)

Funny Keystone short has a pair of couples ended up at the same beach. One couple (Charley Chase, Mae Busch) are newlyweds having their first fight while the other is an unhappy married couple. Soon the unhappy husband has eyes on the new bride, which isn't going to sit well with his wife or Chase. This short runs just over six-minutes but even with that small of a run time we get all sorts of funny jokes and plenty of nice laughs. I always enjoy these shorts were couples have a fight and soon they're with someone else because it allows the actors to find themselves in all sorts of different and funny situations. Chase pretty much stays in the background here but he still gets a few very funny moments including one where he tries asking a mule which way his wife went. Fritz Schade once again plays the other man and I'm really starting to enjoy him as a comedian. He easily steals the film with his "jerk husband" performance and he gets the most laughs out of anyone. The scene with him pushing the wife around in a cart before accidentally letting her go is priceless as is the sequence with him on the diving board trying to impress the younger woman. The various skits he does on the board are very funny and worth watching the film for. Busch manages to be quite charming as well and she gets to do some of her own "Sennett Bathing Beauties" scenes where she poses in her suit.

While it may not be the funniest Keystone comedy ever made, Settled at the Seaside is pleasant, lightly amusing, and typical of the "Fun Factory" at its peak. It's also brief, running little more than six minutes. This was a so-called split-reeler, which shared a reel with another short film of equal length, either a second comedy or perhaps a documentary of some sort.

Our setting is a seaside amusement park, and our leading players are Charley Chase and Mae Busch, who went on (separately) in later years to establish themselves as comedy stars at the Hal Roach Studio. They're cute and very chummy indeed in this film's opening courtship sequence. Charley offers Mae a ring. She kisses it, kisses him, and then fusses with his necktie. This results in a childish squabble, she storms off, and from there on the lovers are at odds. Mae flirts with a pudgy married man (Fritz Schade) who is saddled with a nagging wife (Gladys Brockwell). The wife is the unwilling subject of the film's most memorable sight gag, when the wicker roller-chair in which she's seated hurtles out of control, hooks onto a merry-go-round, gives her a few good spins, and then sends wife & chair flying headlong out onto the pier.

Mae, meanwhile, flirts madly with the lady's husband, but makes it a point to shoot a few smirks at the camera, just so viewers will know that this is all a great lark as far as she's concerned. While Charley angrily strides about the amusement park, in search of his girlfriend, Mae and Fritz strip down to their swimsuits and take turns diving from the pier into the ocean. Fritz earns the film's biggest laugh with an amusingly botched dive that turns into an awkward butt-flop. These scenes feel like cheerfully improvised home movies; in fact, the whole film feels like that.

That's about all there is to Settled at the Seaside, but fans of the leading players will get a kick out of it. It's nice to see Charley & Mae looking so young and sprightly, and having such a great time.