Rips and Rushes

Fat dancing instructor Hughey Mack loves Alice Mann, but her father wants her to marry "His Lordship" Jimmy Aubrey, while she prefers a third man who doesn't look like a refugee from a freak show in this Vitagraph comedy directed by a new-to-movies Larry Semon.

This one looks like it was derived from Keystone's "Ambrose and Walrus" matchups, in which Mack Swain and Chester Conklin would whale on each other. If Aubrey looks like a Chaplin imitator, he came by it honestly, being another veteran of the Fred Karno pantomime troupe. The gags are almost all hard knock slapstick and as a warning that the polite drawing room comedy that Vitagraph had clung to heretofore was a thing of the past, both the lead comedians have their trousers ripped to shreds.

It's not a great comedy, but it's beautifully photographed and the National Film Preservation Board has posted a remarkably clean copy to their internet site.