Chester Conklin Movies

Originally, Louise Brooks was only supposed to have a supporting role in this comedy-drama starring Adolphe Menjou. Partway through filming, however, Menjou's co-star Greta Nissen dropped out and Brooks' role was rewritten and expanded. It was only her third film. Menjou is Max Haber, a barber in a small town who works at the shop belonging to his father (a surprisingly unslapstick-y Chester Conklin). His sweetheart is Kitty Laverne, an ambitious manicurist (Brooks). She goes to New York in hopes that Max will follow. He does, and he manages to land a job at a big New York barber shop. Mrs. Jackson-Greer (Josephine Drake) convinces Max to pose as a French Count, and he is pursued by April King, a title-seeking young woman (Elsie Lawson). Eventually Max's fakery is unmasked and he happily returns to his small town, followed by Kitty. Unfortunately, no copies of this film seem to exist -- the last known print was lost in a fire at the Cinematheque Francais. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Real-life husband and wife James Kirkwood and Lila Lee play Mr. and Mrs. in Another Man's Wife. Neglected by her husband, Lee pretends to desert him in order to win him back. This she does, but not before she and Kirkwood have gotten themselves entangled with various and sundry antagonists, including a gang of rumrunners. The film really comes to life during its rescue-at-sea finale. Wallace Beery, a few years away from full stardom, plays the glowering, grimacing villain. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this '40s film Kay Kyser parades an entertainment group all over the globe providing laughs for the boys in battle. This film realistically portrays the role of the USO during the WW II time period. ~ All Movie Guide

Behind the Front is a raucous silent vehicle for Paramount's Mutt-and-Jeff comedy team of Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton. The film begins during the early months of World War I; myopic detective Beery chases pickpocket Hatton into an "enlistment" party held by pretty socialite Mary Brian. The boys are so moonstruck by her that both agree to sign up for the Army on the spot. The rest of the film is comprised of familiar but hilarious war-comedy sight gags; the overall mood is encapsulated by the wisecracking subtitles of Ralph Spence (sample: "Listening Post...Where Men are Men but wish they weren't"). Behind the Front is punctuated by a terrific closing gag, wherein Beery and Hatton team up after the Armistice to beat to a pulp the young man (Richard Arlen) in charge of the company that produces their indigestible "K Rations"--a young man who happens to be the fiance of leading lady Mary Brian. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A nightclub dancer is torn between two men -- a tough detective and an unscrupulous gangster -- in this rather lurid silent melodrama starring one of the icons of the era, "shimmy" dancer Gilda Gray. Miss Gray's kid brother Andy (Jack Egan) has fallen in with gangster Sam Roberts (Charles Byer) and the latter is shot and killed after an altercation in her dressing-room. Although an obvious case of self-defense, Andy is accused of murder by the dead gangster's moll (Mona Palma) and is forced to stow away on a liner bound for South America. Detective Tom Westcott (Tom Moore), meanwhile, tricks the moll into telling the truth and the kid is cleared of all charges. Despite her popularity on the stage and in the first screen version of Aloma of the South Seas (1926), Gilda Gray's fame was fleeting and her screen career was over by the advent of sound. Cabaret, which of course bore no relation to the later musical, was directed by one of the pioneers of the industry, Robert G. Vignola, whose career had begun with the old Kalem company back in 1908. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Charlie Chaplin's 12th film for the Keystone company was also his directorial debut, receiving co-directing credit with co-star, Mabel Normand. Chaplin plays a waiter in a seedy cabaret who is always in trouble with his boss, Edgar Kennedy, and at odds with another waiter, Chester Conklin. While walking his dachshund in a park during his lunch break, he rescues rich-girl Mabel from the clutches of a thief who has chased away her boyfriend, Harry McCoy. Charlie introduces himself as O.T. Axle, Ambassador from Greece, (the first of Chaplin's "impersonation" roles) and is brought home to meet her parents and receive their thanks, much to the chagrin of Mabel's boyfriend. He receives an invitation to return later for a garden party. The suspicious boyfriend follows Charlie back to work and discovers the truth. Back at work Charlie deals with a bullying customer, Mack Swain, by serving him a drink and knocking him out with a large mallet when Swain tilts his head back to drink. Later, at the garden party, Charlie misbehaves, getting drunk, flirting with Mabel and singing loudly along with the band. The boyfriend, watching from a distance is now determined to expose him. When Charlie takes his leave to return to work, Harry suggests that the party go slumming to the very cabaret at which Charlie works. When the upper-class guests arrive, they are treated like royalty by the workers and other patrons. When Charlie discovers them at his table he hides the apron he's wearing and sits down next to Mabel, pretending that he's another guest. When the boss scolds him for sitting down on the job, Charlie is exposed as a lowly waiter, much to the shock of Mabel and her father. A melee then ensues between Charlie and his pistol-wielding Boss, whom Charlie knocks out while Mabel hides under a table. Charlie protests his love for Mabel, but she responds with a final knockout blow. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide

In his eighth film for Keystone Charlie Chaplin, in frock coat and bushy mustache, is cast in the role of a melodramatic lover who attempts suicide over his lost love. The film is a farce, a parody of the overacted melodramas of the day. Mr. Dovey (Chaplin) is first seen on his knees proposing in the drawing room of his lady (Minta Durfee). The couple are overheard and mocked by the lady's maid, whose laughter causes Minta to eject her from the house. To get back at her boss, she arranges a hoax with the gardener. She feigns injury and her cries bring the departing Dovey to her aid. When Minta sees her maid flirting with Dovey, she rejects him in a jealous rage. Back at home the despondent Dovey drinks what he thinks is poison; only his highly amused butler knows it was just water. Waiting for the poison to take effect, Dovey has horrifying visions of his eternal damnation. Meanwhile, Minta has learned of her maid's deception and has sent the gardener to Dovey with a letter of apology. "It's too late. I've been poisoned," says Dovey and the gardener goes back to retrieve Minta to be at her dying man's side. Dovey now summons doctors to save him, drinking all the milk he can with evident distaste. When the physicians arrive, the butler lets them in on the joke and they play along too, jokingly examining him. Minta, having raced to her man's home, learns of the hoax and tells Dovey he's going to live. First relieved, then enraged, he attacks all the pranksters and finally embraces his lady, removing from his fingers a ball of hair he had pulled from his head and blowing it away. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide

Charlie Chaplin's 29th comedy for Keystone was one of his most popular, grossing $130,000 in its initial year of release. It was shot before, but released after Those Love Pangs, and was originally conceived as an early sequence of the latter, showing Charlie and Chester Conklin at work in a combination cafe/bakery. The sequence was so good Mack Sennett suggested that Chaplin expand it. Waiter Charlie has his mind on a waitress as he clears one patron's plate onto the food of another. He mans the bakery counter and is taken with a female customer, especially her hip movements which he imitates. He gets into fights with fellow-waiter Chester and disrupts work in the bakery below. The bakers strike for higher wages and Charlie and Chester are impressed into service as bakers at which both are inept. The striking bakers plot revenge as one of them buys a loaf of bread and inserts a stick of dynamite into it. They send a little girl to return it as undercooked, and the owner's wife brings it downstairs to have it baked further. She observes Charlie's method of bagel making - whipping a roll of dough around his wrist forming a ring and rolling it off over his hand. Meanwhile the owner (Fritz Schade) has been noticing that the waitresses have dough on their derrieres, indicating they've been socializing with Charlie in the bakery. When his wife returns from downstairs, the owner likewise sees dough on her behind, put there by Charlie, and he flies into a rage. He goes down to the bakery and berates Charlie, slaps him around and chases him upstairs to the restaurant and down again. In self defense Charlie flings dough and flour bags at Fritz and Chester. Just then the oven explodes, covering Chester and Fritz with debris and burying Charlie under a huge lump of dough from which he emerges, eyes first, as the film ends. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide

The Three Stooges star as inept photographers in this comic short. When they screw up their latest assignment -- getting a clandestine photo of a movie star and his new bride -- their boss (Vernon Dent) has had about enough of them. He sends them to Bulgaria for their next job -- mainly because taking pictures there is against the law and all the other photographers he sent there wound up being shot. It looks like that's going to be the fate of the Stooges, too -- it only takes them a few moments to get caught. But as the firing squad is setting up, Curly requests one last smoke -- and the cigar he pulls out is a couple of feet long. The wait puts everyone to sleep, and enables the threesome to escape. They spend the rest of the film trying to elude their captors. Curly gets the best gags -- while hiding in a radio, he plays music and pretends to be an announcer, and then in a cafe he orders a bowl of oyster soup, containing one very fresh oyster. His surreal battle with the wayward mollusk was repeated in several Stooges shorts, and the gag can be traced back to Mack Sennett days. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Fancy Pants is a musicalized remake of the oft-filmed Harry Leon Wilson story Ruggles of Red Gap, tailored to the talents of "Mr. Robert Hope (formerly Bob)". The basic plotline of the original, that of an English butler entering the service of a rowdy nouveau-riche family from the American West, is retained. The major difference is that main character (Bob Hope) plays a third-rate American actor who only pretends to be a British gentleman's gentleman. Social-climbing American heiress Lucille Ball hires Hope to impress her high-society English acquaintances, then takes him back to her ranch in New Mexico. Though there are many close shaves, Hope manages to convince the wild and woolly westerners that he's a genuine British Lord--even pulling the wool over the eyes of visiting celebrity Teddy Roosevelt (John Alexander). Never as droll as the 1935 Leo McCarey-directed Ruggles of Red Gap, Fancy Pants nonetheless works quite well on its own broad, slapsticky level. If the ending seems abrupt, it may be because the original finale, in which a fleeing Bob Hope and Lucille Ball were to be rescued by surprise guest star Roy Rogers, was abandoned just before the scene was shot. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This comedy chronicles the rise of a country rube who becomes a baseball legend for the New York Yankees. Not only does he help the team win the World Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates, he also beats a group of gangsters all by himself. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide