Tramp, Tramp, Tramp

One of Harry Langdon's most enjoyable outings, this one gets into the plot straight away. The laughs start coming thick and fast as soon as he makes his dull-witted entrance, and they continue most heartily right up to the cyclone climax which, with all its mechanical contrivances, I thought the least funny in the movie. I feel Harry is at his best when he has minimal props to sustain him and is forced to rely heavily on his stop-and-start walk, his facial twitches and his hesitant to-and-froing to keep laughter at its height.

Langdon's style of comedic reacting needs excellent stooges and in this film he has two of the best in his entire career: Tom Murray who is beautifully set up for conflict right from the opening shot and is then brilliantly revealed not only as a ruthless landlord but as a stop-at-nothing competitor; and pushy Brooks Benedict who artfully manages one of Harry's funniest routines in the movie.

And then, of course, there's Joan Crawford. Admittedly, although she is the catalyst for Harry's cross-country sprint, she is not exactly treated as a star equal. In her key scene with Harry, her face is hidden by her cloche hat. But nonetheless, she's in there swinging.

Superbly enhanced by some of the most beautiful tints ever presented on the screen, this movie is a visual delight from first to last.

"Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" was the first feature film Harry Langdon made for his own newly formed production company to be distributed by First National Pictures, and the first of his features to be released.As such it faced the problem of adapting his slow, underplayed style of comedy to a greater length for the greater length and more lavish production of a feature, and it meets this challenge well to create a very funny film.

The plot is strange -- essentially Harry finds himself walking in a cross-country marathon to save his father's shoe business -- but it manages to pull of the trick of remaining quite unified while encapsulating a number of discrete stages for Harry to do spread out and do comedy. The first ten minutes or so of the film are taken just to lay out the scenario, and that saves the necessity of their being interruptions during further scenes. In fact, all the opening revelations about the small businessman being squeezed dry by the big company are played more like grim drama than comedy, and this works -- I think Harry Langdon is funnier when he innocent, childlike, and somehow supernatural character is contrasted with the unpleasantness of reality.

Harry's fallen in love with a young Joan Crawford, the girl on the shoe conglomerate's billboards. This is funny in itself just as a concept, funny because of the humorous sight of sophisticated, glamorous Joan and befuddled, infantile Harry falling for each other, and funny because of gags that are drawn out of it (the torn-off images of her all around Harry's hotel room, and then hiding under his sheets). It also works to drive Harry along in walking the race. The girl's character isn't really built though, and little time is actually spent on their interactions (except for a great gag shot where a house is blown away in a cyclone to reveal them kissing passionately). At such this element of the film works well, but "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" doesn't have quite the emotional punch that other Langdon comedies sometimes have.

Of course, the real comedy in a good Harry Langdon comedy comes mainly between what happens, from Harry's subtle but mesmerizing and hilarious little reactions and ineffectual, childish attempts at action. This film allows for a good assortment of comedy set pieces where there is room for that, and probably one of Harry's best pieces of pantomime comes in the extended shot where he is flummoxed by encountering two Betty Burtn's at once: one on a billboard and one the real person. It would be a throwaway gag to most comedians, but Harry draws a long series of laughs from his reactions to it. There's a great scene around Harry's inadvertent antagonism of his new roommate the walking champion of the world (in which, in the don't-try-this-at-home department, he is given a whole handful of sleeping pills), and a sequence of Harry in a chain-gang after his arrest for stealing berries that could have been rearranged slightly into its own two-reel comedy. It also contains perhaps my favorite little moment where Harry, breaking up tiny rocks with his tiny hammer, is given a gun -- and uses the butt of it to break up slightly bigger rocks.

While the characteristic signature of Langdon is in these moments, bigger production gags are in evidence here as well, and are both funny and impressive. Especially the scene in which Harry, after hanging off a cliff (and, characteristically, is very funny just by being oblivious to it) falls down it but easily survives by accidentally sliding on a detached fence, and the one in which the barber shop he has entered is constantly being physically twisted around by a volcano are extremely funny, inventive, and visually impressive.

The end, in which Harry is revealed to have had a baby named Harry that is exactly like him in an over-sized cradle, is very weird, but somehow very appropriate. Harry is an eternal baby in a grown-up world, who will be somehow the same no matter what his supposed real age.

The Strong Man is generally considered THE Langdon film, but I

think that's because it's dramatically stronger and more unified-- which in some ways only makes it less suitable for the quizzical little comedian at the center of the story, who's really too small to carry such a big film. Tramp, Tramp, Tramp is more shapeless and to my mind is the quintessential Langdon comedy, especially since its high point lets him do his own distinctive variations on famous moments from two other silent comedians. A competitor in a cross-country marathon walk, Langdon winds up in the middle of nowhere, dangling from a fence over a cliff; where Harold Lloyd dangled over a busy city, the reaction of the crowd being used to whip up a comic frenzy, Langdon's childlike struggles occur in the most desolate, abandoned nowhere, a place where his body wouldn't even be found for 50 years. Later, sliding down the cliff, Langdon finds himself in the middle of an avalanche, much like Keaton in Seven Chances-- but where Keaton dodges boulders heroically, Langdon simply shuts his eyes and wishes his predicament away. From the wildly oversized mugging of the Keystone era we are now at the absolute extreme of comedy minimalism; Langdon is to slapstick what Malevich's White on White is to painting.

This is a pleasant comedy with a good assortment of gags and stunts. It also gives Harry Langdon a showcase for his brand of comedy, which is distinctive, although a cut below the comedy greats of his era like Keaton and Chaplin. Langdon's approach is slower and more child-like, sometimes overly so, but often it works well (which is no doubt thanks in large part to some good writing).

"Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" has a light, deliberately silly plot that sets up many good moments. Harry is trying to win a cross-country walking contest to win a prize that would save his father's business, while also trying to impress the girl he loves. (It is quite interesting to see a young Joan Crawford in this role - she does not look very much like she would in her later starring roles.) There are several very entertaining scenes, and even if you are not fond of Langdon's personal style, there are some creative gags, and most of the sequences work well. There's also a rather breath-taking stunt on the side of a cliff that even Keaton or Harold Lloyd would have been proud of.

While it may be of interest mainly to those who already like comedies of the era, most silent film fans should find this worthwhile and entertaining, if a notch beneath the great comedy classics of the era.

Desperately in need to pay the rent, a naive young fellow begins the long TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP of a walking race across the United States for the prize money.

Harry Langdon brings his own brand of minimalist comedy to this charming little silent film. Eschewing most manifestations of slapstick, Harry instead portrayed his famous character as an innocent child-man, a kind of adult baby, who reacts with insouciant naiveté to the perils the wicked world flings at him. Here he must compete with his devious landlord for the prize money, while the race itself confronts him with prison gangs, wild weather & honest-to-goodness cliffhangers. All the while Harry never loses the daffy optimism which continues to propel him along.

A talented supporting cast adds to the film's success: Alec B. Francis as Harry's crippled, impoverished shoemaker father; Tom Murray as the belligerent landlord, who also just happens to be the world's champion race walker; and Edward Davis as the shoe tycoon who sponsors the race. As his lovely daughter, Joan Crawford doesn't have much to do except encourage Langdon in his endeavors, but her few romantic scenes with him manage to be both poignant & ludicrous simultaneously.

Harry's production company burnished the film up nicely, with the cyclone sequence particularly effective. One of the story writers was a young Frank Capra, who would be a big contributor to Harry's short-lived stardom.