Innocent Husbands

"Innocent Husbands" is a very funny short comedy, and a good example of Charley Chase's idiosyncratic point of view as it translated to a style of comedy. It's full of physical humor, but that physicality is always strongly grounded by situation -- a situation which is funny in itself - - and is never broad. Charley Chase is to be admired for the compactness yet completeness of his farces.

Here we are familiar already with the figures of the suspicious wife and the titular innocent husband; they need be introduced only in shorthand. This allows the rest of the film to become a steady and measured escalation of the concept -- Charley is put in situations that will look increasingly compromising and will be increasingly difficult to explain away when his wife gets back, while his actual situation as far as philandering is concerned becomes less and less enticing. The absurdity grows while the action revolves dancelike, giving a kind of incongruous artfulness to the silliness of what is going on.

Katherine Grant is one of the better female supporting players who was appearing in Hal Roach films at this time, and she gives a good performance here: given the role of Charley's stern and suspicious wife she plays it with enough seriousness to allow the humor of the events surrounding her to show through and make the scenes believable. Frequent Laurel and Hardy supporting player James Finlayson gets a funny turn without his usual false moustachio.

The plot strain that has Charley's night become increasingly unpleasant -- as he is dragged to a party he doesn't want to attend then is saddled against his will with an extremely unpleasant date -- generates a lot of good situations and casts new light with an original twist on the familiar backbone situation of the wrongly-suspected husband.