Although the IMDb lists the male lead of this Christie short as Bobby Vernon, the information on the National Film Preservation web page where you can view this calls him "Smiling" Billy Mason and the film's titles the same, with "Smiling" in quotation marks.
In this period the Christies were swimming against the slapstick style of film comedy -- even Vitagraph had put Larry Semon in charge of their comedy unit. This story, about how "Smiling" Billy Mason makes a date, even though he is married to Ethyl Lynne, is directed efficiently by William Beaudine near the beginning of his directing career of more than fifty years -- he had worked briefly for Biograph, then on the "Ham and Bud" series at Kalem. However, the woman he asks out on a date is an old school friend of his wife...
The wild coincidence might have worked better in a slapstick setting. As matters are, the audience is left with a mild comedy of embarrassment. It is performed at a decent pace. If you want to see this sort of workaday comedy from the era, this may satisfy you. As for me, I'll keep hoping for more Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew comedies to turn up.
In this period the Christies were swimming against the slapstick style of film comedy -- even Vitagraph had put Larry Semon in charge of their comedy unit. This story, about how "Smiling" Billy Mason makes a date, even though he is married to Ethyl Lynne, is directed efficiently by William Beaudine near the beginning of his directing career of more than fifty years -- he had worked briefly for Biograph, then on the "Ham and Bud" series at Kalem. However, the woman he asks out on a date is an old school friend of his wife...
The wild coincidence might have worked better in a slapstick setting. As matters are, the audience is left with a mild comedy of embarrassment. It is performed at a decent pace. If you want to see this sort of workaday comedy from the era, this may satisfy you. As for me, I'll keep hoping for more Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew comedies to turn up.
