Topic: Powder and Smoke (1924) - Charley Chase

[HomokHarcos]

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368164/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

I forgot to mention this before, but the leading lady for these early Charley Chase movies was Blanche Mehaffey. She was born in 1908 so she would have only been around 16 years old here, yeesh.

The story involves a robbery by a bandit and Charley Chase getting mixed up in it. The first few films were sitcom plots, but this one is more of a genre parody. Charley Chase, working as a salesman gets into a mess after the bandits say they will kill whomever has the money. My favorite part is when Charley Chase tries to plant the wallet onto somebody else and he tries to plant it back on Charley Chase. Neither one wants go be caught so they end up leaving in it a vase. Later on the bandit makes a deal where they will let him go if he agrees to give them the money back, but instead he tries to escape with the cash. This leads to Chase shooting at the man. I guess this being the Wild West even traveling salesman are skilled marksman.

It seems like Charley Chase and the Roach lot are still experimenting and looking for ideas that fit the series and character best. The Western spoofs were pretty common back then, and a film like this is more about parodying the genre than characterization.

[Paul Pain]

Charley doesn't look like Charley as much without the moustache.

This plot all flowed together nice with well-spaced laughs in it.  There are a lot of subtle anachronisms hidden throughout the short, and I must say I enjoyed it!  In spite of it being a spoof of the genre, Charley is definitely in character here.

[GreenCanaries]

I forgot to mention this before, but the leading lady for these early Charley Chase movies was Blanche Mehaffey. She was born in 1908 so she would have only been around 16 years old here, yeesh.

Although 1908 is commonly given as Blanche's year of birth (thanks to her death certificate, and thus her entry in the California Death Index, giving it as such), a delayed birth record (dated 1961) confirms Blanche was actually born five years earlier, in 1903. She came to Roach from the Ziegfeld Follies, performing in the 1922 edition -- as did Will Rogers, who came to Roach for a year at around the same time.

Regardless, if you think 16 is young, wait until Martha Sleeper shows up pretty soon...

[metaldams]

Really a one gag film where the wallet and money gets hidden because the bandits are going to kill the person who possesses it.  Again great settings, like in the last Lloyd short we discussed and these one reelers really do work well when focused on one thing like this.  Back to Lloyd, the short itself is pretty Lloyd like with its razor sharp focus on milking one particular situation for all its worth.

I’ll do a spoiler since you’ve all seen this, but the ending is brilliant.  The bandit thinks he kills Charley, just misses with the bullet and Charley plays dead.  The sheriff is coming, so the bandit plants the gun on Charley, making it look a suicide.  Then a whole bit for a minute of the bandit tricking everyone in order to get away with the money.  After all that build up, Charley is laying there doing nothing the whole time.  Then out of nowhere, as the bandit is about to get away with the cash, Charley rises up and kills the bandit with the gun the bandit himself planted on Charley.  Brilliant.

GreenCanaries, I too was going to mention the age of Martha Sleeper.  I very recently found out she was so young in these Chase shorts.

[Umbrella Sam]

For a one-reeler, this was actually a really well-structured story. I love how Chase is introduced to these people, so to see everyone just suddenly jump on him is really funny. They initially use him as a target but he thinks they’re just really nice people. Then, he works his way into it even more and works in that great wallet gag. And I too really enjoyed the ending. Very clever on Chase’s part and a good twist on the villain’s attempt at clearing himself. Overall, this is my favorite of these Chase one-reelers so far.