This was the first Saturday matinee of the four-part summer series. The short was Love and Surgery (1914) starring Billie Ritchie, followed by Syd Chaplin in The Missing Link (1928). N.B.: IMDB has the date as 1927.
Seeing such an early film side by side with a later film was an eye opener. Love and Surgery was practically all slapstick—I’m not even sure a stab was made at a discernible plot. And everybody got whacked (not in the “killed” sense), including the women. I found that to be a little off-putting. Also, it occurred more than once. There was some humor in the film but it was hard to come by—mostly just the physical slapstick/violence.
The Missing Link finds an English nobleman and scientist (who is also a misogynist), Lord Melville Dryden, trying to get his luggage on board a steamer to Africa, where Colonel Braden believes that the Missing Link has been spotted. Via letter, Colonel Braden has also stated that his daughter, Beatrice (Ruth Hiatt), will be more than happy to be Lord Dryden’s guide and companion. She already has stars in her eyes and is hoping to charm, and even marry, Lord Dryden. The luggage barely makes it on board after our hero, Arthur Wells (Syd Chaplin), hoping to make a little bit of money by assisting the rich Lord Dryden, goes through a lengthy series of mishaps, including being frightened by an organ-grinder’s monkey. After much difficulty, even involving losing his pants, Wells ends up as a stowaway in Lord Dryden’s dressing chamber. Lord Dryden comes up with a plan for Wells to pretend to be Lord Dryden, so that Wells won’t be thrown off the steamer, therefore allowing the real Dryden to not become entangled with Ms. Braden. With me so far?
When the steamer gets to Africa, all goes as planned until Wells realizes that he’s deathly afraid of going out in the wilds to try to find and capture the Missing Link. Beatrice gives him a leopard’s paw as a good luck charm, which unfortunately never makes into his pants pocket. Inevitably, he makes the foray, gets chased by all manner of wild beasts, especially a pride of lions, realizes that he doesn’t have his lucky charm, sees it on the floor of the jungle, and reaches for it only to find that it’s attached to a live leopard! The Missing Link, a close-to-seven-foot-man-like simian, is finally spotted and is chased back to Colonel Braden’s home, where he begins to wreak havoc with everyone, especially Beatrice.
Wells, still pretending to be Dryden, finds out that there was yet another stowaway from the steamer—the organ-grinder’s monkey. Even as he tries to keep away from the monkey and also tries to tame and capture the Missing Link, he ends up using the monkey to assist him. He perches the monkey on top of his head and wears a long coat over his entire body so that he is an even larger version of the Missing Link.
The Missing Link is cowed by fear, allowing Wells to use the monkey to subdue the Missing Link, and thus save Beatrice from harm. Beatrice is overwhelmingly grateful and pours her heart out to him, still thinking that he’s Dryden. He leaves for a moment to get something to help calm her and is tormented, knowing that he needs to tell her the truth. While he’s gone, Beatrice gets another fright and jumps off of the bed where she had been trying to calm down, and promptly hides behind the curtains. Without Wells knowing what has happened, the monkey has jumped into the bed and pulled the sheets up and over him.
Wells returns and pours out his heart to Beatrice (well, really the monkey) and tells her that even though he isn’t the rich and famous Lord Dryden, he loves her with all his heart and desperately wants to marry her. When he asks for her hand, the monkey pops out. Much mirth ensues when Beatrice reveals herself from behind the curtains and lets Wells know that she heard everything he said and—yes! she loves him for who he really is and will happily marry him.
The performances were uniformly good and there were ample sight gags, chases, pratfalls and the like. All accompanied, as always, by the more-than-capable Ben Model at the Steinway grand piano. Now if they only allowed us to eat popcorn in the Bruno Walter Auditorium, it would have been the perfect matinee.
ConcertMeister
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