The Simp

Lloyd Hamilton gets thrown out of his parents' home, spends the night on a park bench dealing with the crazies who inhabit the area, then winds up at a slum mission for a finale. It's actually three split-reel comedies stuck together, and it's not as accomplished as Ham would become in a couple of years..... but he has the flat cap and prissy manner down pat.

It's not often I revise my opinions of movies after viewing them years later. My reactions are honest, and I don't usually second-guess my opinions. This, however, is one of those times. My earlier reactions were based on a poorly edited cut-down version of the movie. Now, David Glass and David Wyatt, two British silent film fans, have reconstructed the movie, taking three different versions , and adding in bits and bobs to make a fuller version. With that hard work, you can see the very funny gags in context.

With over 200 credits, Lloyd Hamilton was a prolific comic actor. This one comes after his "Ham and Bud" shorts of the teens, and before his series of shorts at Educational beginning in the mid-20s. The premise is simple: everything goes wrong for Ham, everything he touches breaks, yet he manages to keep that wonderful smile and skip in his walk. The film begins with him driving home in the middle of the night, smashing through a barn, and blowing up his car...and it ends with him crossing the street to embrace his lady love, and falling into a manhole! Everything in between is just as bad. There are a number of clever sequences, my favorite being one where a manic fish grabs a small dog and pulls it across a pond--Ham saves the dog, but the fish keeps on sliding across dry land, wreaking havoc! My copy is taken from a Pathescope reissue and hence does not have original credits, but it's interesting to see here on the IMDb credits that Charley Chase directed. I also watched Hamilton's next short, MOONSHINE,after watching THE SIMP, but it's nowhere near as good , with a bunch of moonshiners warring against revenue agents, and more attention given to the details of the outlandish hillbilly moonshiners than to Ham's comic sequences. However, THE SIMP is worth checking out if you ever get the chance. For me, any Lloyd Hamilton film is worth seeing (well, HIS DARKER SELF might be worth watching once ONLY for novelty value...). The Simp's running time is 12'41".

I'd heard a lot of praise for Lloyd "Ham" Hamilton as a "comedian's comedian" of his era and a big inspiration for Charley Chase, of whom I'm a big fan. This one-reel comedy is the first of his films that I've actually seen, and I found it extremely funny. The action proceeds from a series of very well-constructed and often ingenious gags around the simple premise that, through no fault of his own, Ham's day gets worse and worse. These gags are all hits and build off each other wonderfully, and some of them have just a certain inspiration to them. There is also some fun use of surreal magic humor that still doesn't feel too cartoony, with a malfunctioning car being blown up into a tree, and Ham falling down one hole in the ground to pop up from another.

One gag, I felt, had some wasted potential -- Ham is sitting in a mission and a thief reaches through the window behind him to steal from the collection bowl. It looks as if this is his own arm taking the money. However, only one person sees him and he is later thrown out after that person doesn't stop the hymn and the thief enters to accuse him. Maybe this was an intentional deflation of expectations, but it feels like a missed opportunity. Still, with so many situations in a single reel they can't all be developed.

I especially like the sequences where Hamilton is asked to dry off a lady's dog which keeps sneaking back into the pond unbeknownst to him, and in which some boys fool him into getting them a ten-dollar reward by inducing him to deface a wall in front of a policeman. These are timed and played out for maximum effect. Despite most of the film not arising from character, we still get a strong sense of Hamilton's character, which speaks to his skill as a performer. His obvious innocent finicky fussiness seems to elevate the humor (and supposed situation of his being a party animal who is coming home late) by contrast. In addition, this film seems to slow down for Hamilton a bit the way Harry Langdon's comedies would slow down for him a few years later. For just about every laugh there is a second laugh from Hamilton's reaction. This all makes a top-drawer comedy short, and one from a comedian I'll be exploring further.