Monday May 7, 7:00pm The Paramount Theater, Seattle
"Let me tell you how to handle your mother-in-law! I know all about them and I have the scars to prove it."
Disappearing between two of Harold Lloyd's most popular and ambitious features, Safety Last (1923) and Girl Shy (1924), Hot Water (1924) is not so much a feature length comedy, as it is a series of sketches on middle-class married life strung together. "Harold rides a streetcar," is followed by, "a drive in the family car," and "Harold gets drunk and kills his mother-in-law (he thinks)." Regardless of its humor, and it is tremendously funny, this film demonstrates the value found in the short format films that met their demise a few years earlier when features became obligatory. Harold is first seen as the perennial best man, running with a bridegroom who is late. "Believe me, I'll never give up my freedom for a pair of soft-boiled eyes!" He runs smack into lovely Jobyna Ralston, and just like Henry Higgins, succumbs to the inevitable. In the streetcar sequence, he attempts to juggle items from a lengthy grocery list his "Wifey" has requested, along with a live turkey he won in a raffle, while riding the crowded streetcar. He is thrown off by the conductor, makes a leash for the turkey with his necktie, and walks home. Harold arrives to discover his obnoxious in-laws have descended, to shatter his domestic bliss and make his life a living hell. The next segment, a ride in the family car, is the heart of the Hot Water. It includes the best visual gags in the film. Harold attempts to drive as his unbearable mother-in-law nags his every move and virtually destroys the new car, while somehow blaming Harold. Seeing the wreck, a sympathetic neighbor offers him a drink, and Harold gets stewed in the final act of Hot Water. He accidentally kills his mother-in-law, or so he thinks, and misinterprets everything he sees and hears once he is convinced, in a final act, that plays like an anti-climactic add-on to the earlier catastrophe.
Hot Water had a one-week engagement at Seattle's Capitol Theater in November 1925, with an admission price of fifteen cents, "Any time, any day." Located near the northeast corner of 3rd Avenue at Pike Street, the Capitol opened its doors in 1924 in a remodeled "two story & loft" built in 1910. The theater was renamed "Telenews" in the nineteen-forties when it switched to an all-newsreel format, and was later converted to retail space. The Capitol and Colonial (also long since converted for other use on the 4th Avenue side of the block) Theater buildings fell to the wrecker's ball when Century Square was built in 1985.
"Let me tell you how to handle your mother-in-law! I know all about them and I have the scars to prove it."
Disappearing between two of Harold Lloyd's most popular and ambitious features, Safety Last (1923) and Girl Shy (1924), Hot Water (1924) is not so much a feature length comedy, as it is a series of sketches on middle-class married life strung together. "Harold rides a streetcar," is followed by, "a drive in the family car," and "Harold gets drunk and kills his mother-in-law (he thinks)." Regardless of its humor, and it is tremendously funny, this film demonstrates the value found in the short format films that met their demise a few years earlier when features became obligatory. Harold is first seen as the perennial best man, running with a bridegroom who is late. "Believe me, I'll never give up my freedom for a pair of soft-boiled eyes!" He runs smack into lovely Jobyna Ralston, and just like Henry Higgins, succumbs to the inevitable. In the streetcar sequence, he attempts to juggle items from a lengthy grocery list his "Wifey" has requested, along with a live turkey he won in a raffle, while riding the crowded streetcar. He is thrown off by the conductor, makes a leash for the turkey with his necktie, and walks home. Harold arrives to discover his obnoxious in-laws have descended, to shatter his domestic bliss and make his life a living hell. The next segment, a ride in the family car, is the heart of the Hot Water. It includes the best visual gags in the film. Harold attempts to drive as his unbearable mother-in-law nags his every move and virtually destroys the new car, while somehow blaming Harold. Seeing the wreck, a sympathetic neighbor offers him a drink, and Harold gets stewed in the final act of Hot Water. He accidentally kills his mother-in-law, or so he thinks, and misinterprets everything he sees and hears once he is convinced, in a final act, that plays like an anti-climactic add-on to the earlier catastrophe.
Hot Water had a one-week engagement at Seattle's Capitol Theater in November 1925, with an admission price of fifteen cents, "Any time, any day." Located near the northeast corner of 3rd Avenue at Pike Street, the Capitol opened its doors in 1924 in a remodeled "two story & loft" built in 1910. The theater was renamed "Telenews" in the nineteen-forties when it switched to an all-newsreel format, and was later converted to retail space. The Capitol and Colonial (also long since converted for other use on the 4th Avenue side of the block) Theater buildings fell to the wrecker's ball when Century Square was built in 1985.