Don't Forget

It's really impossible to give a numerical score to this film, as it sure seems like it's missing a lot. After all, the film is only two minutes and fifty-five seconds long! I assume the folks who assembled the "Becoming Charley Chase" DVD set decided it was better to include an incomplete film than nothing in the case of "Don't Forget". So, I decided to watch the film again and listened to the alternate audio track--in which the person making commentary on the film indicated it is a recently discovered final third of the film. The first two-thirds are still missing--and hopefully will one day emerge.

The film begins with Charley in bed--yet he is supposed to be getting married! Oddly, after waking, he gets back up and quickly scrambles to get to the wedding. Eventually, he does manage to get there--but he can't help but think he's forgotten something. When he finally arrives, it dawns on him....

By the way, like many of Charley's films, this one was directed by his brother, James Parrott. The different last name is due to Charley changing names for the big screen, though he directed a lot of films himself using his real last name, Parrott.

What we have of this film are not exactly "fragments" as the other reviewers suggest. It is a cut down 3-minute Pathex version, an abbreviated version, that is to say, made for the Path♪-Bbay (or Pathex) 9.5mm home-projector. There is a similar Pathex version (Just a Real Good Car) of one episode of another Jimmy Jump comedy Just a Minute, which happily we also have in full. In this case the version seems to be a resumé of the entire film. Many films only survive in Pathex versions. Pathex versions were often abbreviated (to get them on to fewer small reels) but not necessarily as short as this. To judge however from this version, in this particular case, there was not really much more to the original film.....

The original Pathé-Baby reels were only 10 metres (so one minute) long and Pathé initially re-issued at lot of its early one-minute films in this format but eventually it became normal to buy a continuous roll of film in a "charger" but, even so, you needed quite a sizeable shoppin-bag for a full length feature on Pathex (and they did and do exist).

Don't Forget (1924)

(Fragment only)

This Hal Roach short with Charley Chase playing Jimmy Jump is sadly incomplete as all that survives is a little under three minutes. What footage does survive features Jimmy's bride waiting on him to show up, hoping that he hasn't forgotten his own wedding. We also have some footage of Jimmy waking up and then showing up at the wedding. I'm really not sure what else was originally suppose to have been included in the film but these fragments are available on All Day's Becoming Charley Chase set and I'm glad they included what's available until the complete film is found. What we do have here isn't the funniest film from the actor but at least we have something to see.