Summary
In a patchwork universe stitched from gingham and soot, a three-year-old heiress of loneliness wakes beneath lace canopies while, three miles away, a freight-car insomniac jolts awake to the 8A’s iron lung. Between them yawns a valley of class schism: silk ribbons on one slope, cinders on the other. Her only courtier is Pal, a terrier with the soul of a valet; his is a spider-monkey pickpocket named Joe who pickpockets apples from the mouths of locomotives. One dawn, a goat—half satyr, half garbage disposal—ambushes a runaway perambulator, sending a rag doll skidding downhill like a parachutist without a parachute. The boy from the wrong side of the couplers intercepts fate, clutching the toy with soot-black hands that smell of coal-oil and mercy. In the fallout, a pair of bloomers becomes a burlesque curtain, a washer wrings redemption, and a stolen rent envelope becomes the holy host at a hobo revival where silk meets soot in a hymn stitched by monkeys and dogs.
Synopsis
This comedy short is about two broken families on different sides of the track. A little girl played by three-year old Doreen Turner has a caretaker played by Pal the Dog, and a secondary caregiver, her grandmother. Pal wakes her up, taking her from her bed to the downstairs kitchen in hopes of starting her day with a full breakfast. Meanwhile, Mr. Race (Jack Cooper) is living in a freight train car depending on the 8A train to wake him up along with his nephew (Lawrence Licalzi) and their pet monkey (played by Joe the Monkey). A comic scene has Race taking a shower using the steam engine water trough at the water stop. The makeshift wall obscuring his shower is blown over revealing him fully clothed man with an umbrella as he waits for the proper water temperature. Meanwhile, Jimmy has gone to forage for food and try to get some work for needed money. Fate brings the upper and lower class together when the girl's baby buggy with her rag doll and morning bottle of milk are intercepted by a hungry baby goat. The goat steals the bottle of milk and in the process the carriage with doll rolls down a steep hill. Enter Jimmy who saves the day by stopping the carriage and returning the doll. Jimmy is repaid by the grandmother allowing him to assist with the laundry. Yet more reveal humor transpires as Jimmy is given fresh clothes and he tries them on behind sheets hanging from the clothesline. As the dog and monkey play around the clothesline, the sheets move revealing Jimmy in underwear and other garments to the delight of the young girl. But things take a turn when Joe steals the rag doll and Pal, trying to retrieve it, ends up tearing the leg off of the doll. To punish the pair, Jimmy assigns Pal and Joe to laundry detail. Pal operates the hand-cranked washer with Joe on line duty. The grandmother has the rent money for the landlord but Jimmy's Uncle swipes it to take to his homeless friends. Joe and Pal must retrieve the money and convince him that honestly is the best policy - also the original working title of the short. This brings the whole cast together in a Sunday evening revival in which the tramps meet the better-off characters and they have a happy ending with boy and girl, uncle and grandma, and monkey and dog all paired together in harmony.
Review Excerpt
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The first time I saw A Rag Doll Romance I was drunk on nitrate fumes in a Bologna archive, convinced the reel would combust before my eyes. Instead, it detonated inside my skull: a 23-minute ricochet of petticoats and tenderloin smoke, stitched together with the anarchic compassion of a child who still believes toys bleed when plucked apart. Nobody talks about this 1925 oddity; cinephiles genuflect to The Scarecrow or Save Me, Sadie, yet here is a film that folds Chaplin’s class guilt into a p..."
