Her Fame and Shame

When I think of Keystone Studios, I think of slapstick. In the 1910s, this studio run by Mack Sennett specialized in the sort of rough and tumble low-brow humor that the public loved. The films tended to have lots of physical laughs--with folks getting bonked on the head, kicked in the butt and other such diversions as opposed to plot. In this sense, "Her Fame and Shame" is a somewhat typical Sennett film-- filled with pratfalls and bonking but slightly more plot than usual...slightly.

Louise Fazenda stars as a girl whose father runs a crappy restaurant. Into this dump arrives a traveling company of entertainers who are deadbeats. Instead of paying for their god- awful meal, the leader of this group tries to skip out. When Louise confronts him, she foolishly pays HIM to take a 50% share in the troop. Her father is NOT thrilled and goes to the show to collect his money.

Overall, this is a modestly entertaining little film. None of the humor is particularly good nor bad--making it more of a time-passer than anything else.

Louise Fazenda's father sends her to get the money to pay for their hash house's mortgage. Charlie Murray sells her a half interest in his touring vaudeville show with the cash.

It's an okay late Keystone two-reeler. It uses a lot of the cheap-and-disgusting-luncheon-counter gags in the first half, and the second half in made up mostly by the lousy-show gags. By this point, competitors in the comedy shorts business had caught up with Mack Sennett, usually by poaching his talent; Sennet's attitude was that he could always find and develop new talent, but it was he who had the brand name, and that was worth a good deal. Mack Sennett was the King of Comedy, so he combined with D.W. Griffith and William S. Hart to form Triangle. Keystone was a valuable brand, but within a year, better offers came along to Hart and Griffith, so Sennett abandoned Keystone and went on to set up a new studio under his own name.