The Nut (1921)

Even when a Douglas Fairbanks film isn’t all running, jumping and climbing, it’s mostly running, jumping and climbing. I don’t think Fairbanks could any more help being athletic than Lon Chaney could help being menacing. It’s something in the genes—or in Chaney’s case, in the makeup kit.

This lightweight frolic, sandwiched in between the career defining Mark of Zorro and The Three Musketeers, sees Doug as Charlie Jackson, an eccentric inventor in love with Estrell Wynn (Marguerite De La Motte), the gal who lives one floor above him. She’s eccentric in her own way, with a theory that if slum kids could spend an hour every day in a wealthy home environment, the culture would naturally rub off on them. This idea is taken seriously by all, but especially by the man who loves her and promises that he will enlist the upper branches of society to open their doors to the unfortunate kiddies.

“Our theme,” the titles tell us, “is love” and every screwball thing Charlie does is for “HER.”

Villainy rears its head in the form of gambler Philip Feeney (William Lowery) who lusts after Estrell. He’s described to us as “a hard-boiled gink and crooked as the Gulf Stream.” His problem is Claudine Dupree (Barbara La Marr), the jealous woman who completes the cinema quartet with the man, the maid, and the gambler.

The picture is made up of an episodic series of hare-brained schemes by Charlie to introduce Estrell’s educational plan to the People Who Matter. As coincidence will have it, he meets Pernelius Vanderbrook, Jr. (Morris Hughes), son of one of the richest men in town. You can see where this is headed.

The film runs a mere 65 minutes and manages to amuse for most of that time. You have to overlook some gigantic absurdities, but it’s impossible to think that everyone involved in the making didn’t know how silly it all is. It’s a minor film and the last of the modern comedies that constitute Fairbanks’ first six years in the business.

The Nut was directed by Theodore Reed and produced by Douglas Fairbanks. It was written Kenneth Davenport, William Parker, Lotta Woods, and Fairbanks, and the camerawork was provided by William C. McGann, Harris Thorpe, and Charles Warrington.

Mary Pickford is supposed to be in one of the crowd scenes, and despite earlier reporting the guy who looks like Charlie Chaplin in his Tramp costume isn’t the real deal.