Plain Clothes

The new four-disc DVD set devoted to the work of Harry Langdon has brought a number of forgotten, long unavailable short comedies back into circulation. Although Plain Clothes is not the best of the lot, it's a pleasant two reel comedy that offers Langdon's screen persona in full bloom. (I almost called it his "mature" persona, but that's definitely not the right word!) Harry plays a low-rent private detective, and on his first entrance we find all the familiar elements in place: the clown-white face, the battered hat, the over-sized jacket, and the uncertain, hesitant gestures. In the opening sequence with Harry and his girlfriend it's clear that she's the aggressor in the relationship. She has to lure him to a window seat to snuggle, but it isn't easy: Harry is cautious and plays hard-to-get. Their courtship scene is nicely staged, cute without turning cutesy, and precisely the sort of character comedy only Langdon could get away with.

Apparently the sole surviving source material for this film is a 16mm print which, unfortunately, suffered some decomposition in a key sequence early on, so the plot exposition is a little garbled. It seems that Harry has fallen behind on paying the rent for his office; his furniture is being carted away when Mrs. Rhodes, owner of a stolen necklace, hires him to find it. The footage is choppy at this point and it's not clear how or why she chose to hire him—why, for that matter, would anyone?—but the basic story is simple enough, and the damaged footage doesn't hinder our enjoyment all that much.

The mother of Harry's (unnamed) girlfriend runs a boarding house, and by an amazing coincidence the establishment happens to be the hide-out of the Ferrett Gang, the crooks who stole the necklace Harry has been hired to retrieve. Neither the girl nor her mother is aware of the gang's true identity, and it takes our hero awhile to figure it out, too. In the film's best sequence, Harry invites himself along with a dozen or so cops when they pile into a car and go on a raid; they've been tipped off that a gang member has attempted to hock the jewels at a neighborhood pawnshop. Just watching Harry ride in the back of the speeding patrol car, smiling blissfully, is good for a chuckle. He looks for all the world like a little boy who has been given permission to stay up late and hang out with the big guys. This impression is reinforced when he instructs the driver to stop for a moment so he can hop out and excitedly tell his girl they're on a raid! Harry rejoins the cops just in time for a shoot-out in an alley where his excitement gets the better of him: he wastes bullets (and endangers everyone) by shooting in all directions, then switches to hurling bricks. The finale brings Harry back to the Ferrett Gang's hide-out, i.e. the boarding house run by his girlfriend's mother. Matters are ultimately resolved and order is restored, not so much because of Harry's efforts as in spite of them.

Plain Clothes is a straightforward, amusing entry in the Harry Langdon canon, a fairly low-key comedy that gets most of its laughs not from slapstick but from character. And what a character he was!