User Reviews

I saw this short comedy at the 1998 Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone; they screened a print from the Library of Congress with the original intertitles missing.

What a cheeky little comedy ... and impressively well-made, too! We first see Mr and Mrs Jones at home as he prepares to leave for the office. Griffith establishes Mrs Jones as the jealous type; she spots a hair on her husband's lapel, too long to belong to Mr Jones ... and he allays her suspicions by pointing out that it's HERS.

At the office, Mr Jones is visited by a saleswoman. She is played by Flora Finch, a tiny bird-like actress (Finch by name, and finch by nature) who was usually cast in shrewish roles, most notably opposite John Bunny. I've always found Finch to be personable and attractive on the screen, but while watching this movie I understood that (as usual) the male characters find her unpleasant.

Jones sends Miss Finch on her way without buying anything from her ... but when she returns for her umbrella, she overhears him ridiculing her. With surprising ease, Miss Finch slips out of her corset-stays, and substitutes these for the lady's gloves in a gift-wrapping that Jones had purchased for his wife. She also slips an incriminating note into his pocket, implying she and Jones are lovers. SPOILERS COMING. The trick works ... but there's a happy ending.

This being a 1909 movie, I was not surprised that even such a thin woman as Flora Finch would be wearing corsets. I was, however, surprised that she was ready, willing and able to take them off in a semi-public place with such alacrity. (A stouter woman, taking off her outer garments to remove her corsets, might be unable to get back into her outer clothes without them!) In 1909, few women would be willing to be seen in public WITHOUT wearing corsets, even though these were undergarments, so I was surprised that Flora would give them up in the service of a prank. The actress cast as Mrs Jones (Florence Lawrence) is several sizes larger than Flora Finch ... so, when she finds the corset-stays, she knows instantly that her husband cannot have bought them to fit her.

I well and truly enjoyed 'Jones and the Lady Book Agent', not least for Flora Finch's cunning smile and a glimpse of (what may be genuinely) her own personal corsets. My rating for this one: 10 out of 10.

A Biograph comedy in which Jones, that man of many complications and tribulations, gets into a trap set by a lady book agent and almost falls a victim to her machinations. He refuses to buy her book, and afterward, when he is telling one of his friends about her. she returns for an umbrella she forgot and hears it. To get revenge she takes a box containing gloves which Jones had bought for his wife and placed in his overcoat pocket and substitutes her corsets for the gloves. Then she puts a letter in his pocket telling him that he forgot to return her corsets the last time he called and to please send them back. She sends a letter to his wife informing her that all is not right and to search his pockets. She finds the letter concerning the corsets and that leads to a storm. But Jones pacifies her and gives her the box. She opens it and finds a pair of corsets. Well, the fury of the tempest that breaks forth then can be imagined. It cannot be described. In the midst of it a note arrives from the book agent explaining that she played the trick for revenge and to please send back the corsets, because they are all she has. Unquestionably this film was considered funnier than anything that has been shown in a long time in two theaters where it was seen. But there is connected with it a certain broad suggestiveness that does not appeal to the person who cares for fun but does not want it coarse, and for that reason it cannot be commended. The Biograph people have developed far too many really funny pictures without a taint of suggestiveness to make it necessary for them to create false impressions by sending out a picture which has a taint. - The Moving Picture World, May 15, 1909