Waking Up the Town

Jack Pickford works for Alec B. Francis at the latter's auto shop. He is an engineer, trying to interest town banker Herbert Prior in his scheme to harness the power of a local waterfall to run mills. After Pickford blows up the birth party of Prior's grand daughter, he despairs, although Francis's grand daughter, Norma Shearer wants to help him. Fortunately for Jack, Francis takes him up to his private observatory and explains that the earth is going to crash into the moon in eighteen months and three days. Here's the $18,000 in cash Francis has accumulated over a lifetime. Use it, my boy.

Every movie being its own little universe, perhaps the movie did end 190 days or so later with the Earth crashing into the moon; I looked at a cutdown version, which reduced the original 63 minutes to less than 42. What survives are the bare bones of the plot, and a couple of cute and amusing sequences, like the opening with Miss Shearer meeting Pickford. Jack Pickford was a real talent as an actor. Alas, he was more interested in the trappings and privileges of being a member of Hollywood royalty than in working. A couple of times he could have gone to jail for long stretches, had sister Mary -- whose company produced this picture -- not gone gone to bat for him. He made his last feature in 1928, and died in 1933 at age 37.