Summary
On the marble lip of a Gilded-Age mansion, a luckless cartoonist-turned-lover—equal parts Buster Keaton and Jacob wrestler—slides down a flight of stone teeth that bite his dignity clean off. Each servant is an iron gate; every candelabrum a loaded gun. The father, Manybucks, a plutocrat carved from anthracite, guards his daughter with checkbooks instead of claws, yet the true hydra is The Lizard, a velvet-gloved schemer who glides through ballrooms like a rumor. Exploding cigars, T.N.T. biscuits, and a capuchin with anarchist leanings detonate the drawing-room cosmos until balustrades become trampolines, chandeliers guillotines, and the garden fountain a baptismal font for airborne villains. From motorcycle to rope-ladder to open sky, the suitor rewrites Icarus as slapstick, skewers the villain with a whirring propeller, and lands with both heiress and a new century in his arms.
Synopsis
Larry suspects that Millionaire Manybucks has some well defined reason for not wanting him to marry his daughter, inasmuch as the staff of the household has met him with uninterrupted violence. After skidding on his nose down the stone steps Larry realizes that no one, save the girl, craves his company. However, he is determined and braves the house again only to suffer ignominious defeat. A brilliant reception is to be held for the daughter. The Lizard, a polished adventurer, with whom most of the household help are in league, aims to attend and win the girl. At the affair, which is a magnificent spectacle, the girl and her father scorn him. Indignant, he orders his aids to destroy the father, A cigar loaded with T.N.T. is given the father, who does not smoke it, tut tosses it out the window where Larry finds it and has it taken away from him by a policeman. The officers smokes it and it completely disrobes the officer. This failing, the biscuits are laden with explosives and with these and the heiress' playful monkey much havoc is wrought. The villains dash through the house to steal the heiress. The momentum hurls them through the upper windows into a fountain in the garden. The police hold a net for the heroine. Before Larry can follow her the net is removed and he is forced to land on his nose. The major-domo follows him in flight and Larry sees his heiress kidnapped by airplane by the Lizard, He leaps aboard a motorcycle, catches a rope ladder dangling from the aircraft and disables the machine a thousand feet above the ground. The heiress and himself drop to earth in parachutes. The air plane makes a nose dive and is wrecked with the villain, Larry takes the propeller and drives his rival into the ground. He wins the heiress with this last bold stroke.
