Go As You Please

A patchwork carnival of tramp steamers, trolleys, and tenement rooftops, Hal Roach’s one-reel miracle stitches together the kinetic jitters of 1919 Los Angeles. George Rowe’s scarecrow hobo—shoes flapping like thirsty mouths—vaults from boxcar to ballroom after a pilfered invitation lands him inside a high-society soirée. There, Marie Mosquini’s debutante, all porcelain smirk and bee-stung gloves, mistakes the soot-smeared stowaway for Balkan royalty. Cue a domino-fall of pratfalls: lobster tails launched like artillery, a jealous Sammy Brooks in a too-tight dress coat, and ‘Snub’ Pollard’s monocle popping in sync with a champagne cork that rockets through a stained-glass skylight. The butler—played by a deadpan Hughie Mack—pursues our hero with the inexorability of Fate itself, while Gaylord Lloyd’s society columnist scribbles lies that bloom into public hysteria. Ernest Morrison’s elevator-boy child prodigy keeps tripping the switch that sends the mansion’s hydraulic floors seesawing; bedrooms slant into slides, chandeliers swing like hangman’s nooses. By the time the charade unravels, Rowe has surfed a runaway grand piano down a hillside street, crashing into a patrol wagon that delivers him, dazed but exultant, back to the rail-yard. The final iris-in closes on his grin: a crescent moon chipped out of poverty, glinting with the promise that the next town might yet fall for the same sweet con.