Acting
In the 1960s, Reverend Jim Jones began as an idealist helping minorities and working against racism. After a move to San Francisco and increased power and attention, Jones became focused on his belief in nuclear holocaust, declared himself a prophet, and founded the Peoples Temple. With a loyal following of over 1,000, who donated their entire life savings to him and to join his commune, he moves them to Guyana. When possible crimes come to the attention of the authorities, and once notified that some individuals are being held against their will, an investigation begins. Rather than face the charges, Jones commits suicide, and roughly 900 of his followers do the same.
On a train trip out west to become a mail-order bride, Susan Bradley meets a cheery crew of young women traveling out to open a "Harvey House" restaurant at a remote whistle-stop.
Charlie plays an actor who bungles several scenes and is kicked out. He returns convincingly dressed as a lady and charms the director, but Charlie never makes it into the film.
This Keystone from the end of 1914, involving the usual suspects running around some plumbing issues will not hold many surprises for those familiar with Keystone in this period, or, indeed, with the works of the Three Stooges, who often played inept plumbers. It is, nonetheless, very nicely performed, especially by Charles Murray who mugs it up freely and ineptly, as well as the pretty girl who plays the house's maid.
Charlie and a rival vie for the favor of their landlady.
Pierre and Jacques are working as waiters at a restaurant where the cooks go on strike. When the two are forced to work as bakers, the striking cooks put dynamite in the dough, with explosive results.
Charlie is in charge of stage props and has trouble with actors' luggage and conflicts over who gets the star's dressing room. Once all that is resolved the next issue is getting everyone on stage with the correct backdrop.
A happy young couple become engaged, and soon afterwards they are married. But after their marriage, the husband begins to stay out carousing with his friends, leaving his wife at home with her mother. Then, when the three of them go to the opera together, the husband spots one of his friends in another box. Soon the domestic difficulties reach their peak.
Set mostly in the Stone Age, a prehistoric king, with a harem of wives, rules a beach. Charlie arrives and falls for the king's favorite wife. In the end, it turns out to have been a dream; Charlie was asleep in the park.
A painter turned tramp (Chaplin), devastated by losing the woman he was courting as a wealthy man, finds himself drunk and getting drunker by the minute with some sailors at a bar until he's literally falling down. He keeps futilely trying to draw the woman's picture on the floor with a piece of chalk until he finally passes out cold (or perhaps dies, as in the poem) at the end of the film.
Fatty and Mabel go to the San Diego Exposition.
His Luckless Love, starring Edgar Kennedy, has some funny moments as confusion surrounds the maid’s new beau.
Silent Keystone Comedy dealing with a girl's college dorm.
His Lying Heart is a silent comedy short.
Film directed and starring Harry McCoy
A porter works hard in an understaffed hotel.
Mabel and her beau go to an auto race and are joined by Charlie and his friend. As Charlie's friend is attempting to enter the raceway through a hole, the friend gets stuck and a policeman shows up.
On his way to a restaurant, Ambrose, a happily married man, obliges to mail a letter for a woman in the apartment lobby. Unbeknownst to him, the letter is about a rendezvous with her own lover at their "trysting place". Elsewhere, after some domestic frustration, Charlie runs an errand to buy a baby bottle before stopping at the same restaurant. After a confrontation there, they both inadvertently leave with each other's coats. Later, their wives independently discover what appears to be incriminating evidence of extramarital affairs from the pockets of the swapped garments. It all comes to a head when all four of them find themselves at the "trysting place" in the park.
A Keystone comedy of rival suitors fighting over a girl.
Keystone silent comedy.
