Three's a Crowd

Harry Langdon dreams of having a wife and child. When pregnant Gladys McConnell runs away from her husband, Cornelius Keefe, in the hope and expectation that this will let him reconcile with his father, she collapses in front of Harry, seemingly giving im everything he hopes for.

Of course, he doesn't know quite what to do with anything, which is half of his comedy; the other half is the slapstick that goes on, not on the screen -- although there's a fine final gag to this movie that works quite well -- but behind his eyes. We get a glimpse of what goes on in his head in a dream sequence in which Keefe returns for Miss McConnell and the baby. It is as disastrous as anything the audience might imagine.

This was the third movie on Langdon's First National contract. The previous two had been successful for First National, not so much for Harry when they went over budget. Caught between disagreements on his staff, he fired Frank Capra as director, and did the directing himself. You can argue that this made it a much better Langdon movie, and I agree. I liked it a lot. It also made it less popular with the contemporary audiences.

The copy I looked at was in pretty good shape, although there were spots of outgassing from the film it was pulled from on two occasions.