GALLOPING FISH, a six reel comedy, was released on March 10, 1924, the first comedy for First National by producer Thomas Ince after completing his series of the Douglas MacLean vehicles. Like the elephant in SOUL OF THE BEAST, GALLOPING FISH had its own novelty, in this case a trained seal.
Sydney Chaplin starred as a man whose new bride sends him away, and he seeks solace in a vaudeville theater. There he meets a performer and her fiancée, played by Louise Fazenda and Ford Sterling, who are trying to hide the trained seal she uses in her act. They end up at the home of his rich uncle, when a flood carries away the seal. By the end, Chaplin's character is reunited with the seal and reconciled with his wife. (Charlie Chaplin was also a friend of Ince, who loaned him his yacht for a honeymoon cruise upon his marriage to Mildred Harris).
The flood was "the big Ince scene," filmed on the Colorado River, with a circus full of animals. Will Lambert wrote the scenario from the short story, "Friend Wife," by Frank Ramsay Adams, assisted by four "gag men." Del Andrews directed for a cost of $281,785, with $89,225 overhead, as noted in my Ince biography. In 1929, rights to GALLOPING FISH were sold for $1000 to S.A. Rosenfeld, and in 1930 Selected Pictures reissued the movie with new "talkie" sequences.
Sydney Chaplin starred as a man whose new bride sends him away, and he seeks solace in a vaudeville theater. There he meets a performer and her fiancée, played by Louise Fazenda and Ford Sterling, who are trying to hide the trained seal she uses in her act. They end up at the home of his rich uncle, when a flood carries away the seal. By the end, Chaplin's character is reunited with the seal and reconciled with his wife. (Charlie Chaplin was also a friend of Ince, who loaned him his yacht for a honeymoon cruise upon his marriage to Mildred Harris).
The flood was "the big Ince scene," filmed on the Colorado River, with a circus full of animals. Will Lambert wrote the scenario from the short story, "Friend Wife," by Frank Ramsay Adams, assisted by four "gag men." Del Andrews directed for a cost of $281,785, with $89,225 overhead, as noted in my Ince biography. In 1929, rights to GALLOPING FISH were sold for $1000 to S.A. Rosenfeld, and in 1930 Selected Pictures reissued the movie with new "talkie" sequences.
