Smile Please

Smile Please was one of the first comedies made by comic Harry Langdon for the Mack Sennett Studio, and it's clear from the very outset that the writers had no idea what to do with him. Typically frantic Sennett gags involving a runaway horse and a flying car flash by so fast the viewer is disoriented, and Harry is just another blurred figure on the screen. When we first meet our hero he's a sheriff, involved in a confusing triangle situation with Alberta Vaughn as his girlfriend and Jack Cooper as his dastardly rival. The chase that kicks off this film feels more like it should be the finale, and after it's over we're suddenly at Harry's portrait studio, where he's photographing the girl and the rival as if nothing happened. It seems that Harry is both a sheriff AND a photographer! (One of those weird hybrid jobs you sometimes find in old comedies.) Before you know it, the villainous Cooper goes mad and sets fire to the studio, and Harry rescues Alberta. In the next sequence, they're getting married . . . and Cooper is a guest at the wedding! Even for a Sennett comedy, this is chaotic. The wedding ceremony is disrupted when a woman afraid of burglars calls for help, and Harry rushes to the rescue, but this sub-plot goes nowhere and feels like a fragment from yet another half-finished film.

In the second reel of Smile Please the business about Harry's career as a sheriff is abruptly dropped, in favor of an extended routine at his portrait studio (now mysteriously restored after the earlier fire), where our hero must photograph his wife's decidedly unsightly family and their uncooperative toddler. The girl and the rival vanish at this point, and we seem to be in a different movie. This second half is quite lively and has some fairly enjoyable moments, if you can forget about that incoherent first reel.

During the scenes at the studio Harry is presented as a conventional comic who scarcely resembles the blank-faced innocent he would become. He is nattily dressed in a striped jacket as he gamely executes gags that might as well have been assigned to Andy Clyde, Billy Bevan, or any other Sennett comic of the day. Some of the material found here was later reworked in a 1933 Our Gang comedy called Wild Poses, which featured Franklin Pangborn in Langdon's role. Meanwhile, Harry would develop his child-man persona and come up with more suitable material in his later two-reel comedies and features. Smile Please is a shaky start to his starring career at Sennett, a patchwork that looks like two or even three unrelated short comedies spliced together to make a very disjointed whole.

Smile, Please (1924)

** (out of 4)

Harry Langdon is the sheriff and photographer of his small town and must try and battle an arsonist as well as try and take a picture of his new wife's family. This short starts off rather slow but picks up towards the end when a bratty kid enters the picture. There's several gags involving a skunk, which are pretty funny as is a scene where bees get into the pants of Langdon. There's also some rather obvious sexual humor including one scene where a lightbulb is thrown in the lap of the father where the end is sticking out like a you know what.

This was Harry Langdon's third film, his second released, his first for Mack Sennett, and his earliest to survive. It's evident here that the Sennett filmmakers did not have a sense yet of what would become the style that suited Langdon's talents the best. In fact, while charming, the film is virtually plot less, with what plot there is essentially arbitrary and senseless.

The first half is a few scenes revolving around the strange premise of Harry as a "Sheriff and Photographer" who catches a man and a woman, then for some reason photographs them, and competes for the woman against the man who tries to thwart him (through tactics such as trying to burn down a house he is in), eventually ends up getting married to her. It's fast-paced as befits a Sennett film, but the series of clever gags it contains is actually quite creative and doesn't rely too much on pure slapstick.

Langdon is cast as the kind of brash, active, and slightly vindictive role that Stan Laurel often played early in his career, but he manages through his performance to turn the role into something better fitting his style without undermining the style of the film (such as it is). Look at his facial reactions and pantomimes when he has the hanger still in his tuxedo jacket. Look at his little takes at the girl in his arms when he realizes he has been caught by her husband in a potentially incriminating situation. Look at other little reactions to gag situations throughout the film. Catch that great final gag, which I won't spoil for you.

The second half of the film might as well have been made separately or first -- Harry is in a new or resurrected studio photographing the a family supposedly related to his new wife and being tormented by a mischievous child.

There are some dangerous-looking scenes shot in what looks like an actual burning building and with an actual hive of disturbed bees.

The film is basically a patchwork of fun, almost unrelated gags and situations that almost not cohesive enough to have been made up on the spot, with Harry Langdon injecting little hints of himself into the proceedings. It won't win any awards for coherence (or anything, really), but it's saved by being a fun watch nonetheless. It's random and silly, but it's not supposed to be anything else, and while Harry is not used to best advantage, it's much better with him shading the material with a suggestion of his comic style than it would have been with anyone else.