His Day Out

It is very possible that a person might see this film and not even realize that it is not a Charlie Chaplin film. That's because Billy West was THAT good at copying the comic--and unscrupulous film distributors often pretended this WAS a Chaplin film. This is because at the time Chaplin was the most popular film comedian in the world and lots of wannabees wanted to cash in on his success. Some of the fakes just copied his style but not the look (such as Harold Lloyd and his 'Lonesome Luke' character) but others went so far as to copy the outfit, hair and even mustache in a sleazy attempt to steal audiences. Of all these crooks, West was probably the best and his films are almost indistinguishable from Chaplin's--and sometimes are better (especially if you compare it to Chaplin's earliest films from 1914-1915). The only obvious ways the two are different are the supporting casts. Chaplin tended to use familiar friends such as Mack Swain but here the villain is Oliver Hardy--a man who never worked with Chaplin.

The beginning of the film is very Chaplin-like. You see Charlie, I mean Billy, in the park trying to steal a girl from another man (Oliver Hardy in thick mustache). After playing the masher for a while, the film switches gears and the setting is now a barber shop--where Billy agrees to watch it and cut hair while the owner is out--even though he knows nothing about the business. This latter portion of the film is definitely better than the park sequence--with quite a few laughs. It all culminates at a barber's dance as Billy finally gets the upper hand on his rival. As for the film, it's very good and perhaps my 6 is too low a score. It probably SHOULD get a 7 or 8 for entertainment value, but I am loathe to reward a plagiarized film with such high marks.

By the way, historically speaking, it's interesting that one of the characters in the barber shop sequence is very obviously a homosexual. Poking fun of gay characters might seem very offensive now, but in the Pre-Code days (pre-1934), such laughs were relatively common and acceptable.

Imagine, for a moment, a Charlie Chaplin movie, without Chaplin's timing, light-footed movement, or talent for building gags. The Chaplin tramp is there, the gestures are pretty much the same, as is the pantomime. But our hero is rather flat footed, he moves like a graceless Keystone Cop. And the jokes are ones that you have seen before (for the most part). And the only spark, is the one an unscrupulous movie producer might get from thinking how he might sell this as a Chaplin pictures, if he removes the title cards which fairly label the star.

Imagine this, and you are in the world of Billy West, who looks like Chaplin, and acts something like Chaplin, but does not think like him, or come close to moving like him. In this film, our imitator escapes a couple of cops, and fights for the Mabel Normand imitation with Oliver Hardy (who, in this film, is an Eric Campbell imitation). The dynamic between West in Hardy is more Popeye and Bluto (without the funny gags). The only original jokes involve our heroine's romantic assaults on Hardy's mustache.

Imitation like this is not a great artistic sin. Jazz would not have become what it did if trumpeters did not all imitate Louis Armstrong, and tenor sax players imitate Lester Young. But there is nothing here that need detain a viewer. The novelty of a Chaplin that isn't really funny does not outweigh the fact that the picture really isn't funny.

We're used to seeing Oliver Hardy as Ollie, the beefy, irascible member of a certain comedy team. You might not have known that he had a movie career before he joined up with a certain skinny Englishman. An example of Hardy's early work is Arvid Gillstrom's "His Day Out", wherein he plays second - or third - banana to Charlie Chaplin imitator Billy West.

Like a lot of the early comedies, this short has a simply plot, with a lot of the comedy relying on physical gags. It's weird seeing someone imitate Charlie Chaplin; there's a reason why Billy West is pretty much forgotten nowadays, while every film buff knows who Charlie Chaplin and Oliver Hardy were. It's not a terrible movie, but the truth is that Hardy is really the only reason to watch it (and he's only briefly in the movie). What a nice mess he got himself into!