It's three of the George Ade Fables on one reel. In the first, Harry Dunkinson insists on telling jokes, so his wife, Gerda Holmes, decides to divorce him. In the second, Leo White spends so much time with Sue Burton that his employer thinks he should make it his sole job. In the third, Charlotte Mineau tries to teach Wallace Beery how to dance in a town where the speed limit is eight miles an hour.
The stories are fine, if brief, and it's interesting to see Wallace Beery when he was young enough to be skinny. However, for contemporary audiences, the point of these shorts was the lively language that George Ade used. He might refer to Dunkinson as being as funny as the back wheel of an ambulance, or Miss Burton being Leo White's baby doll. At the time, they were new and original and the audience got them. Now the first one seems labored and the second trite. It's no wonder that when I first encountered Mr. Ade, even though he had been dead for only twenty-five years, his language seemed as dead as Napoleon!
The stories are fine, if brief, and it's interesting to see Wallace Beery when he was young enough to be skinny. However, for contemporary audiences, the point of these shorts was the lively language that George Ade used. He might refer to Dunkinson as being as funny as the back wheel of an ambulance, or Miss Burton being Leo White's baby doll. At the time, they were new and original and the audience got them. Now the first one seems labored and the second trite. It's no wonder that when I first encountered Mr. Ade, even though he had been dead for only twenty-five years, his language seemed as dead as Napoleon!
