Number, Please?

December 26th, 2006 by Scott Marks

Number, Please? (1920)

Directed by: Fred C. Newmeyer, Hal Roach

Written by: H.M. Walker

Genres: Comedy, Short

Cast: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Roy Brooks

Aspect Ratio: 1.33 : 1

Cowboys gaze out at the vast prairie, fisherman stare longingly into the briny deep and bored playboys squander their fortunes all in the name of ‘the girl.’ An austere (and fittingly absurd) prelude to a film set almost entirely at the Venice Beach Amusement Park.

Iris out on a forlorn Harold, alone on a roller-coaster, lost in concentration. Riding in the last car not only provides the most thrills, but a tremendous assortment of windblown headgear. Lovesick Harold could not care about either.

This is all the character backstory needed so let’s meet The Girl (Mr. Lloyd’s sausage-curled wife, Mildred Davis) and The Rival (the porcine Roy Brooks) and General Pershing (The Girl’s Dog). Back in the day, if the story called for an amusement park, studios did not build a backlot replica and could not even begin to dream of CGI -scouts found an existent one. Part of the fascination with these early thrill comedies is their authentic location work. When Buster played with trains, he played with trains!

Harold spots the couple and it isn’t long before he’s tossing baseballs on the midway to catch her eye. Forcing her attention on the Rival turns Harold into a pitching machine gone haywire and he winds up hammering numerous Kewpie dolls in the adjoining booth.

Eisenstein arranged shots like building blocks in order to construct meaning. Similarly, the Silent Masters of Slapstick stacked their gags in a logical, laugh-building manner. The General escapes and in mid-pursuit, Harold’s head comes between a “Test of Strength” mallet and its target, both justifying and adding logic to his subsequent hallucinations at the “Crazy Mirrors.”

If made today, some of the gags involving General Pershing would leave Lloyd wearing a fresh coat of PETA paint. A long shot of Harold chasing the exceedingly well-trained pooch around the midway is one thing; leashing it to a moving merry-go-round, another. The carousel commences, and the initial drag made me squirm. With the camera bolted and assuming the ride’s POV, it actually looks as if the pup was having fun. One thing’s for certain, the audience sure is. Place the camera one inch in either direction and the gag would not have worked. As is, these shots of Pershing and Lloyd running in circles are exquisitely timed and framed. (Pershing eventually hops aboard and waits to catch up with the scrambling Harold.)

Her Uncle Dudley arrives in his Zeppelin and Harold attaches dirigible Brooks to the carousel. The first lad to get Mildred’s mamma’s consent will be allowed to escort her on a blimp ride. Brooks hops his filvver, while Harold decides to duck into a hotel and phone ahead. Three booths and a crowded lobby mean limitless gag potential. By my count, the scene contains twenty-one gag variations peppered throughout the course of eight minutes.

The third act involves mistaken identity, the theft of Mildred’s purse and its subsequent placement in Harold’s pocket. Never realizing that the purse belongs to his sweetheart, Harold does his best to ditch it. An honest lad instantly returns the discarded pocketbook. Toss it over a fence, and a sandlot slugger is bound to bat it back. Don’t bother literally shoving the open purse in a two-bit pickpocket’s face, because the cop that snares him will only return it. Even stray mutts have nothing better to do all day than play fetch-the-handbag with Harold. The single most jaw-dropping bit in the piece finds Harold discreetly tossing the evidence over his shoulder. The bag slides down the awning behind him and lands squarely atop his straw boater. How many takes in order to achieve perfection?

The plot concludes with a goat eating her purse and Mildred running off with Piggy. Harold isn’t even allowed the dignity of returning where he came from. Instead of the last seat on a thrill ride, Harold looks forlornly out of a kiddy train’s caboose. An unquestionably downbeat ending to what is otherwise one of Lloyd’s funniest shorts.

These early slapstick two-reelers should be required text for all wannabe comic filmmakers. The artistic resourcefulness on display would either inspire them or, better still, force them to re-think a career in waste management. Lloyd and his contemporaries examined situations and devised gags that would organically flow from them. Contemporary filmmakers would wait about a minute after an establishing shot of the park before sending dozens of squad cars careening through every kiosk (and fruit cart) in sight.

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