Cinevent Past Notes: CRUISE OF THE JASPER B (1926)

So you want to discuss silent drama, science fiction, horror, noir, mystery and other NON-COMEDY films? Look no further, this is the place.
Richard M Roberts
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Cinevent Past Notes: CRUISE OF THE JASPER B (1926)

Postby Richard M Roberts » Mon Nov 25, 2013 9:18 am

Again, haven't done this in awhile, here's the notes for one of the really fun Demille Pictures Corp Films from the late 20's:



Screwball Comedy is really a genre’ generated in the 1930’s and 40’s, but like all so-called, after-the-fact film classifications, it finds many antecedents in the previous decade. Along with the works of Charley Chase, prime silent screwball comedy can be found in this very odd little feature from Cecil B. Demille’s own studio, based on a story by the delightful humorist Don Marquis, whose archy and mehitabel stories need another rediscovery. The stars are two performers not known for their comic ability, although they are aided by two fine and neglected comedians and a very able and underrated comedy director.

Rod LaRoque plays Jerry Cleggett, the descendant of a fine seafaring family, who must marry on the deck of the Jasper B, his family’s jaunty, but now dock-moored schooner, in order to inherit his family’s fortune and save himself from bankruptcy. Mildred Harris (the first Mrs. Charlie Chaplin) is Agatha Fairhaven, trying to save her own family fortune when she and Jerry meet, and, in typical screwball fashion, fall madly in love. It’s then a rush to get to the boat, with the help of Cleggett’s butler (British comic jack Ackroyd), and the hindrance of Agatha’s weasel attorney (the always-wonderful Snitz Edwards), who is trying to steal her inheritance by destroying the will that leaves it to her that is now tattooed on her bare back.

That’s all the set-up you get, but the proceedings get wackier and wackier, even by silent comedy standards, and it’s all the charge of Director James W. Horne, who also directed some of Laurel and Hardy’s best films, and made some of the silliest Columbia serials of the 1940’s. Here he deftly manages some unimaginable directions for the plot to go, while making sense of it all. William K. Everson likened this picture’s climax to that of the Marx Brother’s DUCK SOUP (1933), and indeed, there are some similarities.

And everyone involved is having a high old time. LaRoque was sort of a second-string Douglas Fairbanks in the swash, buckle, and light comedy department, and he spoofs that image quite successfully while wearing little more than a towel (that’ll get the ladies attention).Mildred Harris had been a child-star when she married Chaplin (big surprise) and she attempted a comeback in the mid-twenties, when she was only in her mid-twenties herself, with the help of her old friend Cecil B. Demille, who continued to give her supporting work and bit parts throughout her life even when her career failed to re-ignite. All involved give CRUISE OF THE JASPER B the light touch it requires, and like a good souffle’, it never sinks due to lack of airiness.



RICHARD M ROBERTS

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