One of the Smiths

"One of the Smiths" is a Charley Chase film that was directed by his real life brother, James Parrot (Chase's real last name was Parrot).

A mail order musical instrument company has noticed a problem. They've had quite a few orders from the Ozarks (around the Arkansas hill country) as folks haven't been paying for the instruments. So, after getting another order from the region, they decide to send Charley (Charley Chase) to investigate....as well as bring the tuba that was just ordered.

The first portion of this short film is rather tiresome. Charley insists on carrying the tuba with him everywhere on the train...including to his berth. It goes on for a long time and isn't particularly funny. Once he arrives in the Ozarks, the usual hillbilly jokes are made and James Finlayson plays a most atypical sort of role! And what he's doing with the instruments...well, you'll need to see that for yourself. Charley pretends to be cousin of one of the locals in order to figure out where all the musical instruments are. Eventually, he ends up singing a most unusual number. Chase had a very pleasing singing voice and I liked this interlude. I usually HATE singing in older comedies....his singing is one of the few exceptions (as well as Chico and Harpo's music in the Marx Brothers movies).

If you are from the Ozarks, I am pretty sure you won't appreciate the film so much, as it's filled with some of the usual stereotypes from the era's films about the region. However, compared to MANY films of the era, the locals are portrayed better and less offensively.

Overall, a decent comedy once things got moving. However, be forewarned that the film is not a rollicking comedy...but still is worth your time. And, Chase did both sing nicely AND performed some amazing dance moves on only one leg! You have to see it to see what I mean.

For his last three-reel comedy, Charley Chase takes his urban character back to hillbilly country. The mail-order company he works for notices that the tubas and other brass instruments they have been shipping have not been paid for, so they send Charley on the train with the latest consignment, with orders to get paid in full, and to get paid for the earlier orders, or repossess them.

The hillbilly comedy only takes up the second half of the film; the first half has Charley doing the classic two-men-in-an-upper-berth routine solo, with a tuba, and it's a lovely variation on the routine. In fact, this one has many classic routines, including an elaborate mechanical apparatus of the sort that Our Gang used to build in the silent days; a well-executed train-and-horse stunt, two musical numbers (in one of which, Charley sings as a quartet!) and seemingly every bit comedian that appeared in Roach comedies from the 1920s and 1930s, allowing Charley and his director, kid brother Jimmy Parrott, to run a lot of the gags the two had devised and executed as comics and directors over the previous dozen years.