User Reviews

This is an early 1912 Mabel Normand film. However it is not a Keystone short, but from her Biograph Company period.

There is not much of a story here and the naturalistic acting makes it a bit hard to follow. A few more cue cards would have been nice. It is possible some cue cards were lost.

Mabel Normand is the wife of a rather rotund businessman, Dell Henderson. She doesn't get along with her mother Kate Bruce. She steals some money from her hubby to go shopping. Mack Sennett appears briefly as a shop salesman who sells her some furs.

For some reason, she than pawns the furs and gives the pawn ticket to her husband. I think she was trying to play a trick on him and get him to buy the furs for her. Instead, he buys the furs back, but only gives her a skimpy little one. He gives the good furs to his mother. Mabel gets angry when she finds that her trick hasn't worked and mommy has ended up with the furs.

Mabel is adorable here as usual, but the plot of this 7 minute film is extremely thin. Mack Sennett gets credit for directing it, however it has none of his innovative trademarks. The camera just sits there observing the action in a series of medium shots. This is closer to situation comedy than slapstick.

It is only mildly amusing. There is very little that is funny and very little that is exciting here.

Mabel likes buying nice things, so much so that mother-in-law Kate Bruce upbraids her. Seeing some furs she likes, she steals money from husband Dell Henderson, buys the furs, pawns them and gives the ticket to Dell, telling him she found it.

Because of the general excellence of Biograph films under the direction of D.W. Griffith, there was always demand for more. Because Griffith generally preferred to do drama, a unit to produce comedy was set up, with Frank Powell and Mack Sennett sharing the direction.

You can often see the roots of later Keystone comedies in Mack Sennett's Biograph comedies. In this one, however, the naturalistic acting swamps more than the vague situational humor of this one.

Amusing Biograph comedy in which Mabel Normand's scheme to acquire expensive furs without her husband's knowledge backfires on her. She clashes with Kate Bruce as her mother-in-law, with hapless husband Dell Henderson caught in the crossfire. A young William Beaudine, who would go on to become one of Hollywood's most prolific directors, has a small part.