Charley is afraid of dogs, and one chases him into a phone box, which a stuffy aristocrat has just left to get more change, to continue the phone call with his fiancée, who is being forced b... Read allCharley is afraid of dogs, and one chases him into a phone box, which a stuffy aristocrat has just left to get more change, to continue the phone call with his fiancée, who is being forced by her parents to marry him. Charley agrees to help the girl, and is mistakenly hired as a ... Read allCharley is afraid of dogs, and one chases him into a phone box, which a stuffy aristocrat has just left to get more change, to continue the phone call with his fiancée, who is being forced by her parents to marry him. Charley agrees to help the girl, and is mistakenly hired as a butler at the same house. That evening, there's a big party at the house, and he has to fi... Read all
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*** (out of 4)
Charley Chase comedy has him playing a man afraid of dogs. A chance meeting on a phone leads him to the home of a beautiful woman whose parents are forcing her into a marriage with a no good nobleman. Chase, and that charm, must try to work over the girl but more importantly, impress her mom with his dog skills. This is a pretty good comedy that features Chase working well with the dog, known as Buddy. The two man quite a few shorts together and were a pretty good team considering how many laughs they could create. Just take a look at the scene where Chase tries to give him a bath and they both end up in the water. I think the majority of their scenes together are extremely funny and certainly more entertaining than the rest of the film. The entire subplot of the woman not wanting to marry the man is pretty boring and doesn't add too many laughs. One good scene is when Chase thinks he's suppose to give the man a bath.
Our leading lady (Mildred June) is being pressured by her parents to marry an icky-looking "nobleman." Charley, who has fallen in love with her strictly based on the sound of her telephone voice, comes to her aid by posing as her family's new butler. While playing this role during a house-party he finds The Girl at last; they quickly hit it off and plan to elope, but meanwhile he must perform some rather unpleasant duties such as bathing Madame's dog, known as The Duke. (It's already been established that Charley is one of those people who has problems with dogs.) One of the comic high points comes when Charley misunderstands his employer's instructions and believes he must bathe the OTHER Duke, i.e. the nobleman who is courting his girl. While this guy attempts to relate an anecdote to several party guests Charley interrupts and pantomimes that he must go upstairs and take a bath; the nobleman, naturally enough, is alarmed about just what activity Charley has in mind. Ultimately, the mix-up is straightened out and Charley attempts to bathe the pooch, but gets wetter, if not cleaner, than the dog. The climax involves several occupants of the house all hatching secret, simultaneous plots which become confusingly entangled, and dashing around the household at midnight in much confusion. I was reminded of a line from another Hal Roach comedy made around this time: "Anything might have happened that night -- And it did!"
Dog Shy is a fun two-reeler, and a nice introduction to Charley Chase for those who haven't had the pleasure of his acquaintance before now. In closing, I notice that there seems to be some controversy on this page about just what kind of dog is featured here. The Duke was portrayed -- and winningly, too -- by a pooch named Buddy who appeared in several Roach comedies around this time, including Laurel & Hardy's From Soup to Nuts. Buddy looks to me like a fox terrier mix, but don't quote me on that.
Chase starred in a series of shorts for the Hal Roach studios, a comedy factory of consistently decent quality. Speedily made, these shorts tended to be rather haphazard in structure, as Dog Shy reveals. The story seems to have two openings, first introducing the situation with the girl, then bringing Charley on the scene, but they don't flow together well and look like they were put together from two separate pictures. The plot is soon woven together, and there is an overarching love story, but logic and consistency don't much of a look in. The first few minutes go to great lengths in establishing that Chase's character is afraid of dogs, but ten minutes later we see him exercising and bathing a dog, his former fear (which provides the very title of the thing) inexplicably vanished.
But coherence isn't really the point of Charley Chase shorts, which tend to be a fast-paced bundle of oddball gags, especially those directed by the great Leo McCarey. McCarey's work is by this point looking increasingly professional, using a lot of long takes and careful arrangements to get the maximum value out of a comic performance. What cuts there are exist mostly for comic timing, especially in the brilliant "howling" finale. The jokes do tend to bounce off one another rather randomly, as no doubt cast and crew were all pitching in their ideas, but their execution has a good degree of cleverness and subtlety. A neat example is Charley's confusion over the "Duke" and his bath. We don't actually see Charley trying to bath the duke. Instead, we get a lengthy build-up to it, setting up our expectations. We later see an indignant duke running down the stairs half-undressed as Charley chases him with a scrubbing brush. The suggestion of what happened is funnier than would have been the actuality.
And then there are the talents of Mr Chase himself. That face of his goes through a massive range of expressions in Dog Shy. Chase was a master of the double-take, and actually had lots of different ways of doing them depending on what kind of shock he has had. Take for example his sudden stop mid-bow when realising he has been asked to bath the duke, and then the different double-take he does when hearing his dog howl answered by a kitten. For a slapstick comedy made so far into the silent era, Dog Shy contains a lot of pantomiming – that is, characters acting out their lines like a kind of improvised sign language, even when they are stood right in front of each other. Chase is however very good at making this sort of thing funny, such as his "Come up for your bath" routine which gets ever more elaborate, combined with an innocently cheerful grin. Chase may have been a little old-fashioned, but he did old-fashioned well.
Did you know
- TriviaThis film was released on the "Cut to the Chase" DVD collection.
- Alternate versionsIn 2005, Milestone Film & Video copyrighted a 22-minute version of this film, with a new piano musical score composed and performed by Ben Model.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Cinéman (2009)
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- Métier de chien
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- Runtime22 minutes
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- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1