This film is one of Gloria Swanson's earliest screen appearances. She's the stenographer on the left that Charles Chaplin speaks to when the film begins. She auditioned for the female lead, but Chaplin didn't see that the role suited her. She would later admit that she hated slapstick comedy and had been deliberately uncooperative.
This is the first of 14 Essanay Films that Charles Chaplin made after leaving Keystone when Mack Sennett would not meet the comedian's $1000-a-week salary demand. Essanay gave him $1250. This is the only Chaplin film made on location in Chicago.
The was the first film on which Charles Chaplin received screen credit. On all his previous comedies for Keystone he was not credited (though credits would be added to later reissues of those films).
Restored in 2014 through the Chaplin Essanay Project by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and Lobster Films in collaboration with Film Preservation Associates, from two nitrate prints preserved at the British Film Institute and a nitrate dupe negative in the Blackhawk Collection preserved at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Intertitles have been reconstructed from surviving original titles and re-release titles of the 1920s found in both 35mm and Kodascope 16mm original elements.
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