Bashful Jim

Ralph Graves loves Alice Day, but he is too shy to do anything about it. However, after he sees a movie in which a modern-day sheik overwhelms a screen beauty, he decides that's the way to go about his courting. The results are not what he expected.

Ralph Graves spent three or four years working for Mack Sennett as a juvenile lead, a normal-looking young man who could be coached in some of the gags and bits that Sennett's more bizarre-looking comics would regularly do -- but who would strike the audience as not the sort of young man that the beautiful women who appeared in his films would go for.With Harold Lloyd such a success, Sennett clearly saw an opportunity to expand into more realistic, character-driven comedy.

The results were mixed. Sennett's staff was set up to do gag-driven comedy and Graves, while capable, was bland. Sennett would have his success in situation comedy with the Smith Family series, but that was withbetter comics and after Graves had left.