User Reviews

Hank Mann plays a voyeuristic house painter spying on an artist who paints and sculpts shapely girls, and when he accidentally crashes through the window the artist gives him his cap and smock and tells him to take over while he takes a break to go photograph inspiring girls on the nearby beach! You know, just like it would happen in real life...

Some great sight gags in this one, especially Hank using James T. Kelley's trademark beard as hair for a female clay sculpture and Hank knocking out the cops via porch swing antics! Unfortunately this film is unavailable on video at the time of writing, but hopefully silent Film accompanist Ben Model (he is the owner of the sole surviving print) will include it in a future volume of his Accidentally Preserved DVD series; he and silent film historian Steve Massa live-streamed it on YouTube with Ben's live piano accompaniment on 3/15/2020, most likely the first time it has been shown to an (virtual) audience since its original theatrical release in 1920.

Hank Mann is a house painter. He winds up in charge of Vernon Dent's art studio, while Dent goes in pursuit of beautiful Madge Kirby, down at the beach. There's a great gag in which James T. Kelly buys pictures of pretty girls, and the usual hijinks involving pretty girls on the beach - not only did Sennett have his bathing beauties, but every slapstick studio and Sam Goldwyn had them too - and comedy cops who wind up in chase of anyone who happens to be standing around.

It's a rough-hewn comedy. At this stage, the Keystone model was very popular. However, the introduction of serious plot points into his comedies by Chaplin, and more natural-looking comics, led by by Harold Lloyd, who had come up with his familiar 'Glasses' character a couple of years earlier were beginning to transform short movie comedy. For the moment, though, comics like man, with his soup-bowl haircut and big mustache, were still the norm in shorts.