An Accidental Champion (Educational, 1920) (?)

An Accidental Champion (?) (Educational?, 1920?)
Starring Jimmie Adams

I have no memory at all of buying this film. I must have — it arrived a few days ago, it’s in my eBay history — but I honestly do not recall even looking at the listing. My only guess is that I must have been sleepwalking. And I say all that because I don’t know why I would buy it. It’s a 9.5mm film called An Accidental Champion, which of course is just a Pathescope re-title. What it’s actually supposed to be is the 1922 Hall Room Boys short High and Dry, and unless it was going for cheap, that really wouldn’t interest me.

Maybe my unconscious mind saw that something was up before I did when the picture first flashed on the screen and I didn’t see the Hall Room Boys. This is a Jimmie Adams film, although I’m not sure which. There are some clues I intend to follow up on, but for now I’ll be content with calling it An Accidental Champion, circa 1920.

Jimmie (Jimmie Adams) is down on his luck. A companion in his troubles is a stray hound (Buddy the Dog), who helps Jimmie steal food from street vendors. Buddy runs off with ten yards of sausage from a hot dog man who, unfortunately, also happens to be a dog catcher. A chase ensues which leads to the beach, where a pole-vaulting competition is being held. Jimmie, in his flight, accidentally wins.

Champion Jimmie catches the attention of Lilian, the Mayor’s daughter, and he soon finds himself a welcome guest at the mayoral mansion. Joey Springer is not terribly pleased with these developments, what with him being in love with Lilian himself. The maid, Melba Marblehead, is also jealous — she has her eye on Jimmie.

In the garden one afternoon, Jimmie and Joey sit at either side of Lilian. Under the table, they both take what they assume is her hand. Joey slides an engagement ring onto a finger, but it isn’t one of the girl’s. Jimmy takes his new ring and gives it to Lilian, who is greatly pleased.

Just before the wedding, Melba sees her chance. She locks Lilian in the closet and puts on the gown herself, pulling the veil down so that no one is the wiser. Joey, meanwhile, has reached a new level of desperation. He bursts into the wedding ceremony with two guns drawn and demands that the preacher marry him to the bride.

Just after Joey has carried away his new wife, Lilian breaks out and the real wedding proceeds.

The first half of the film, with Jimmie and the dog, is much stronger than the second. Neither act is about to win a prize for originality, but I enjoyed the dog antics and Jimmie’s acrobatics during the chase. The love-quadraleteral of the second half is comparatively dull, and while the boardwalk and beach scenes were plainly filmed at some real location, the mayoral mansion is a set that falls very short of being convincing. An Accidental Champion is a film that starts with promise but ends with a fizzle.

My rating: Meh.

I’m working on two films now: Somebody Lied (1917) and Lady Godiva (1911). I don’t know which will be released first, but it’s looking like Lied at the moment. After that will be an HD remaster of an old title, then I think I’m going to go ahead and transfer Pioneer Trails (1923) and maybe score it as well, just for me personally. Pioneer Trails is one of several “lost” films that I have a print of but can’t do anything with as it’s still under copyright. Assuming U.S. copyrights aren’t extended again — which is a big assumption — I can’t publicly release it until September 14^th, 2018.

Holy Smoke (Educational, 1921)

Holy Smoke (Educational, 1921)
Directed by Jack White
Starring Jimmie Adams

The first half of the film has an interesting set piece: It’s an elevator in hotel lobby with a manual counterweight — that is, a bellboy on the ground floor gauges how heavy the guest is and another bellboy upstairs piles on the enough weights to lift the guest without rocketing him through the ceiling. It serves for several decent gags, but after we see the thin guy, the fat guy, and the guy who of course gets crushed by the counterweight, it does start to get a bit repetitive.

The second half is improved by introducing an actual plot. The hotelier’s daughter (Elinor Lynn) has run up a big bill at the dressmaker’s and her father has to hand over his fire insurance policy to pay for it. Quite angry at this turn, he pulls out a caveman club and threatens to strike her. The bellboy (Jimmie Adams) steps forward: “If you must hit someone, hit me!” Father takes him up on that offer.

Fired, he takes a job at the blacksmith shop adjacent to the hotel. He does not get along well with the blacksmith, and after a fight, finds himself crashing through the wall of the hotel and into a guest room just as its occupant has left. The late occupant was the dressmaker, who, hoping to claim the insurance money, has left a bomb in the room. Jimmie throws the bomb out the window, but it lands in a chimney pot and roles down the pipe into the woodstove.

Bang!

The fire fighters, naturally, are much too incompetent to get even a bucketful of water onto the blaze. The hotel is reduced to ashes. The hotelier is lamenting his ruin when Jimmie appears holding the insurance policy, which he found in the room just before the blast. All is forgiven and Jimmie wins the girl.

I must say, the film never slackened the pace of its jokes, even if I thought the elevator gags started to get stale. Like Lige Conley’s Educational two-reelers, the first half of Holy Smoke (1921) has precious little to do with the second and could have been cut entirely without much narrative damage. But just as cutting the pointless department store scenes from Fast and Furious (1924) would have meant losing the impressive stop-motion sequence, dropping the first reel here would mean no elevator — and it was an interesting enough physical comedy prop.

Slapstick isn’t really my style, but I’ll grant this was a pretty good, zany short comedy.

My rating: I like it.