Yankee Doodle in Berlin (1919)

The picture stars Bothwell Browne, who was Danish and a female impersonator. (Note that you don’t have to be Scandinavian to be a female impersonator in the movies, but it helps. Just look at Garbo.) 

Anyway, Browne is Capt. Bob White of the American Army who accepts the job of infiltrating the German high command during WWI in the guise of a sexy woman. He will then vamp the Kaiser (Ford Sterling, leader of the Keystone Kops) and his son, the Crown Prince (Mal St. Clair), and seduce from them all their military secrets. Think of him as Mata Harry.

The comedy comes from shameless slapstick and the conceit that the Kaiser is nothing but a henpecked husband who is constantly under the thumb of his frau (Eva Thatcher). Add that to the propagandistic notion that Germany was being ruled by a pack of numb nuts and idiots (played by silent comedy stalwarts Ben Turpin, Chester Conklin, Bert Roach and others) and you have a fast-paced 58 minutes of funhouse slapstick that makes Mel Brooks look like Alan Rickman. 

The picture was directed by F. Richard Jones (The Extra Girl 1923, The Gaucho 1927) and is pure Mack Sennett, loaded with pratfalls, mistaken identities, domineering women, seltzer bottles, sexual innuendo, collapsing beds and more goofy facial hair than a barber shop full of adolescent werewolves. Settle back to laugh, kick off your shoes, lower your brow, and pop the cap off a beer. Keystone, of course. 

Producer and writer Mack Sennett said in an interview that this film was the final word on WW1. It was released just four months after the war had ended. My German grandfather once told me that he emigrated from his homeland because, during WW I, he didn’t want to fight for the Kaiser, who was, in his words, “full of crap.” He saw no use in the war. “When German men can’t stand listening to their wives anymore,” he said, “they pick up a gun and start walking toward France.” You couldn’t disprove either assertion by watching Yankee Doodle in Berlin.

The Bat (1926)

Can you keep a secret?

That’s the question that opens The Bat, the 1926 film version of a play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, one of the best of the early 20^th century American commercial playwrights. Hopwood’s work includes The Gold Diggers (origin of the long-running series of Warner Bros. musicals), Getting Gertie’s Garter, and two other plays co-written with Rinehart, credited with being the originator of the “Had-I-But-Known” school of mystery writing.

In the film, elderly spinster Miss Cornelia Van Gorder (Emily Fitzroy) has rented the mansion (or “dark old house” to stick with the cliché) of deceased banker Courleigh Fleming. As Cornelia’s maid Lizzie Allen refers to the place, “the happy home of the Heebie-Jeebies.” A Japanese houseman, Billy the Butler (Sojin Kamiyama) came with the rent, and he is soon joined for one reason or another by group of mysterious strangers.

Then we are all informed that the frightening jewel thief/murderer The Bat is in the vicinity because before he died Courleigh Fleming stole a fortune from his own bank and hid it in a secret room somewhere in the mansion.

The entire old dark house cast of characters is here: spinster detective, comic maid, creepy butler, ne’er-do-well son of the deceased, doctor, lawyer, serious cop, comic cop, injured stranger who shows up for no reason, a nerdy boyfriend, scaredy-cat servant, tough talkin’ cops. And, of course, The Bat.

Just as the film includes the usual suspects as characters, so director Roland West takes advantage of as many creepy devices as he can: reveals behind slowly opening doors, shadows, masked faces in dark doorways, back lighting to create sinister silhouettes, trap doors, sliding panels, candles, suddenly dimming lights. The set design was by William Cameron Menzies and looks great.

Even by 1926, the tone of movies like this was more comic than menacing. In 1925, West had directed another of these pictures; that one, The Monster, had the added benefit of an amusing performance from Lon Chaney.

Director West would become involved and live with actress Thelma Todd. They would co-own “Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Café," in which, rumor had it, the west coast mob was interested. Todd didn’t want gambling on the premises, and she wound up dead in her garage, a victim of carbon monoxide poisoning. She and West had been overheard arguing the night of her death and although he was considered a suspect, he was never charged. Seventeen years later, in a deathbed confession, he told his pal, actor Chester Morris, that he had indeed murdered Todd. Can you keep a secret?

The Bat is pretty rough going during the middle hour, only picking up speed in the last reel when the villain is revealed. If you’re addicted to the old dark house genre, you have to see it, but if you’re just curious about it, check out The Cat and the Canary, Paul Leni’s 1927 creeper.

The Bat was produced by Joseph M. Schenck and Roland West, the titles were written by West, Julien Josephson, and George Marion, Jr., and the cinematography was by Arthur Edeson. The rest of cast included George Beranger, Charles Hersinger, Arthur Houseman, Robert McKim, Jack Pickford, Jewel Carmen, Tullio Carminati, Eddie Gribbon, and Lee Shumway.

Max and the Lady Doctor (Max et la doctoresse, 1909)

You can be a young silent film enthusiast and never have heard of Max Linder, but you will eventually discover him and odds are you’ll be a fan forever.

As this film opens we are told that “Max has fallen in love with a lady doctor,” (Lucy d'Orbel, who appeared in a dozen Linder comedies between this one, her first, and Max Asthmatique in 1915) and we see him pacing nervously in front of her office. Should he tell her? Can he tell her? He rehearses what he wants to say, then decides to slip a note under her door. “Madame, rescue a desperate lover and agree to a Rendez-vous as soon as possible. Max” As he considers whether or not this will do the trick, she enters the frame, striding across the lobby and entering her office. Frustrated with his own lack of resolve, Max rips the note to shreds and decides instead to feign illness and see her that way.

When she’s finally ready for the examination, his jitters continue. He removes his topcoat and describes his symptoms. She holds his hand to take his pulse and he begins to melt. He puckers up, apparently describing something wrong with his face, but every time she reaches to his chin, he laughs and pulls away. He points to his tummy and makes a zipper motion. She pulls his coat across his shoulders to gain better access to his stomach. She touches his ribs and he breaks out into uncontrollable laughter and steps back. This continues, her touch causing him to react like a silly, giggling school girl.

Despite it all, Max woos her, wins her, and weds her. But on their wedding night, she is called away to emergencies three times—but on the third occasion, the frustrated groom chases the message bearer out of the room before he can say a word.

One year later. Now the waiting room is filled with young men, all eager to take their coats and vests off for an examination. Enter Max carrying a baby. Paul Merton has pointed out that babies in early comedies are frequently used a props, and this one is no different. When Max peeks into the examination room and sees his wife leaning against a man’s back so as to hear his breathing from the rear, he gives the baby to one of the supposedly ill patients and breaks up the medical session. He chases all his wife’s hypochondriac admirers out of the office, barely remembering to retrieve the infant.

Linder is a superb pantomimist, using his face, hands and body to express his emotions without playing too broadly. While much early comedy relied on banana peels and kicks on the butt, Linder presents us with a one act play suggested by real life. The characters are recognizable people and not grotesques or zanies, and the action flows from one scene to the next. It’s a nice, full package in one reel.

 But the most surprising element of the film is the adult nature of the situation. When Max is being examined it is clear that his giggling reaction to being touched around his ribs soon gives way to a frustrated urge to touch hers, and not just to play doctor. His sexual tension only increases as he doesn’t even get to kiss her on their wedding night. He does at last—after all, there is a baby—but he’s damned if he’s going to allow other men to get their ribs tickled, too.

Linder wrote and directed his films, and so good was he, Chaplin called him "the professor." The character of Max is the perfect boulevardier—well-dressed, jaunty, in love, like a young Maurice Chevalier. As a character, he's hard to resist. Don’t bother to try.

The Battle of the Sexes (1928)

The picture opens in a barbershop with a slight surprise—Marie (Phyllis Haver) is having her hair cut by a male barber (an unbilled Rolfe Sedan) who is so light in the loafers his head keeps bumping the ceiling. Uni-sex hair cuttery in 1928? We also get a good look at Haver’s legs (and I do mean good). Has director D.W. Griffith morphed into C.B. DeMille?

Marie overhears some other customers saying that the chubby guy over there is Judson the real estate tycoon (Jean Hersholt), who has just closed a $250,000 deal. Marie’s expression indicates her sort-of agreement with Jane Austen that a married man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a flapper.  

But extra-marital canoodling is the last thing on Papa’s mind as he rushes home with gifts for Mama’s birthday. And home is a comfortably upper middle class apartment shared by Papa, Mama (Belle Bennett), adult daughter Ruth (Sally O’Neil), and a grown son (William Bakewell). The birthday celebration is quiet and nicely staged for the camera and not the back row of the balcony.

But guess who moves into the conveniently vacant apartment down the hall? Marie shows her new digs to her pet gigolo Babe Windsor (Don Alvarado), and although she thinks of him as “perfumed ice,” he is really Her Man. You have to love Gerrit J. Lloyd’s title card description that Babe is “the wrong answer to a maiden’s prayer.”

Babe leaves and Marie begins to rehearse the way she wants to “accidently” meet Papa. Griffith cleverly uses double exposure to show us her thoughts, but everything goes kablooey when a mouse runs up her leg and Papa comes to the rescue. There is no subtlety in Haver’s reaction. So obvious is it that Marie is trying to hook a Sugar Daddy, you have to wonder how such a ninny as Judson could have made so much money. His doofusness is underscored during a scene in which he attempts to get into physical shape by working out and ends up looking like he stepped out of one of those “How To” Goofy cartoons. 

Taking the Judson family’s problem seriously would be a lot easier for the audience if Griffith and story writer Daniel Carson Goodman had introduced material indicating that Papa was undergoing a mid-life crisis before meeting Marie. Her flirtation would then have been the straw that broke the back of his middle class respectability instead of the entire hay stack. Not only do we wonder how he’s gotten along successfully in the world of high finance, we wonder how his family has ever seen him as anything but a boob.

Okay, now Papa is “working late” every night so he can step out with Marie. The penny drops when Ruth and her brother take Mama out to a night club and run into Judson and his girlfriend. Papa moves out so he can spend all his free time with Marie. Ruth goes to Marie’s apartment with a gun and the two of them get into a fight. Ruth decides to show Papa what a fool he is (finally) by throwing herself at Babe. I know, but it sort of makes sense in context. Or not.

The picture’s main reason for being is . . . what? Haver’s legs? A warning to middle aged men to not covet the grass on the other side of the fence? A reminder to families that old Dad may be an idiot but he’s better than no Dad at all? That any guy named Babe, with greased down hair and a pencil mustache, will make your typical lounge lizard look like a first year student in a Presbyterian seminary? At a distance of almost 90 years, it’s hard to tell.

The cinematography was by Griffith standout Billy Bitzer working with Karl Struss. James Smith was the editor, and the settings were created by William Cameron Menzies. It’s very slick and professional.

So what’s the problem? The film is a remake, the original having also been directed by Griffith and released in 1914. It was Griffith’s second feature. Starring Donald Crisp, Lillian Gish (as the daughter) and Fay Tincher, the first version was strait melodrama. Not much of it still exists so a meaningful comparison is impossible.

Perhaps grafting on the comedy weakens the theme. Hersholt was a fine comic actor, but in his scene with the exercise equipment he has the look of a performer who was told, “Okay, be funny” and then given no further help.

The Battle of the Sexes is not a terrible movie. It’s just a movie.