Special Delivery (1927)

Eddie Cantor followed the success of his screen debut, Kid Boots, with Special Delivery the following year. Delivery certainly has its moments but, sad to say, is nothing Special.

Cantor is Eddie Beagles, the Mail Carrier. His “ancestors had been in the Postal Secret Service since the day the Scarlet Letter was mailed” and are currently on the trail of the notorious confidence man “Blackie” Morgan. We soon learn that Blackie is aka Harold Jones (William Powell), “an oil promoter so crooked he was born on probation.”

Eddie and Jones eat at the same diner, where they both flirt with Madge, the cute waitress (Harold Lloyd’s long-time leading lady Jobyna Ralston). Jones hires her away from the coffee cups to be his private secretary, and convinces her to accompany him on a business trip to South America. In reality, the cops are closing in on Blackie and he decides to take in on the lam with a swell-looking gal.

The film was directed by a post-scandal Roscoe Arbuckle and is a throw-back to the days when a series of barely connected sight gags could stretch an essentially plotless two-reeler into a short feature. Eddie’s job as a postman takes him to a lot of locations and allows him to interact with a variety of character types. He has to climb several flights of stairs for no good reason. There is some shtick with helium filled balloons and a life-sized doll at a dance. When Eddie tells a woman there are two cents due on a letter, he has to hold her baby while she tries to break a $20 bill. The “baby” is played by Tiny Doll (born Elly Annie Schneider), one of four dwarf siblings. Her brother and sister, Harry and Daisy, had major roles in Freaks and the entire quartet are in The Wizard of Oz.

I admire Cantor for hiring “Fatty” Arbuckle to direct at a time when most everyone in Hollywood knew the former comedy star was innocent of the rape/manslaughter charges he’d been tried three times over but no one wanted to give him work for fear of offending The Great Unwashed. Arbuckle reacted ironically to his situation by creating the alias “William Goodrich” for directorial assignments, and sometime changing the form of the name to the punning “Will B. Good.”

The picture was produced by Jesse L. Lasky, B. P. Schulberg, and Adolph Zukor, and written by Eddie Cantor, John F. Goodrich, George Marion Jr. and Larry Semon, another once-successful comic fallen on hard times. The cinematographer was Harry Hallenberger and the film was released by Paramount. 

You’d have to be a Cantor expert to find them, but the star’s daughters Marilyn, Marjorie, and Natalie are used as extras.