Skirt Shy

As the silent era came to a close, Harry Langdon's career was already in trouble. While making features for First National he fired key members of his creative team; subsequently—and consequently—the quality of his work declined. After several flops, the studio dropped him in 1928. He was at loose ends as the talkie revolution erupted, and was presumably grateful when producer Hal Roach signed him to make two- reel comedies with full sound. Unfortunately, Langdon's first two shorts for the studio are unavailable for reappraisal, as their soundtracks are missing. Skirt Shy is his earliest surviving talkie comedy, and it offers ample evidence that adapting Langdon's offbeat comic style to the demands of sound presented formidable difficulties. After a promising start and several amusing gags, this comedy falls apart midway and never recovers.

The premise is quickly established in the opening sequence. Dobbs the butler (Harry) and Nancy the maid (adorable Nancy Dover) are servants in the household of Maggie Herring (May Wallace), who appears to be a well-off dowager. Actually, her house is heavily mortgaged, and is on the verge of foreclosure. Maggie's last hope is marriage to her wealthy, elderly suitor Edgar (Tom Ricketts), who courts her ardently, and yet is too bashful to pop the question. On the very day her mortgage payment is due he once again fails to propose; so Maggie departs to plead with her creditors for more time. But Edgar returns, and the butler and maid must somehow detain him until Maggie gets back from the bank. Oddly enough, Nancy decides the best course of action is for Harry to dress in drag and impersonate his mistress, in hopes that the near-sighted Edgar won't know the difference.

That's the set-up. Sure it's silly, but it's a perfectly good premise for farce comedy, as long as viewers are willing to suspend disbelief and accept the notion that the old man can't tell the difference between a guy in drag, and the lady he was courting just minutes earlier. But the premise goes off the rails almost immediately. Harry makes no effort to disguise his voice, and leaps about nervously, scaring the cat, breaking a vase, etc., in a way that would signal anyone who is even semi-conscious that he's not the person he pretends to be. And yet Edgar falls for it, so we can only assume he's not the brightest bulb on the tree.

As if this wasn't already a stretch, a new wrinkle is introduced. A second suitor shows up, a physically imposing, aging cowboy who wears six-shooters on his hips. He's an old beau of Maggie's who hasn't seen her in twenty years, who has shown up out of nowhere—or Texas, perhaps —determined to marry her, and eager to fight off any "galoot" who tries to stop him. How do we know this? Because he announces it all to the mailman! (The cowboy is played by Arthur Thalasso, who in happier days played opposite Harry in his best feature, The Strong Man.) This guy takes one look at Harry in drag, instantly accepts him as Maggie, and pleads his love. Now the filmmakers have pushed credibility way past the snapping point. We're expected to accept this ridiculous twist as a set-up for the extended battle between the cowboy, the old man, and Harry, which takes up the rest of the film.

During this finale, despite the preponderance of lame slapstick gags, Harry manages to sneak in a couple of quiet, characteristic solo routines: first, when he struggles with a pair of boxing gloves snagged on a branch, and next, when, much to his surprise, pieces of fruit miraculously fall into his outstretched hand, one after another. Those moments are brief reminders of the quirky brand of comedy that made him famous in the first place. Unfortunately however, much of this film's climax consists of the kind of tiresome, violent shtick we expect from lesser comedians, not Langdon. Following the release of Skirt Shy, Langdon made several more talkie comedies for Roach, and happily, they got better.

May Wallace is going broke. Her only hope is that senile beau Tom Ricketts will propose. When he comes around to do so, she is out and butler Harry Langdon must dress in drag to take her place. Meanwhile, another old beau shows up....

After the failure of his independent feature production company, Harry found himself working for Roach and, while he maintains his slow, befuddled comedy timing, there is a definite change in character -- the last time he performed in drag it had been the interminable THE CHASER. Here, still slow to react when pushed around, he begins to develop a new screen character for the sound stage, still using his classic gag of fighting with and losing to inanimate objects -- here, a couple of boxing gloves that have gotten themselves attached to a tree branch.

Although Langdon's association with the Roach studios as star performer did not last long, he did form a good working bond with his director, Charlie Rogers, with whom he would reteam as co-stars of some good PRC comedy features a dozen years later. Also noteworthy is the teaming of Fred Guiol, who would eventually wind up working for George Stevens for the next twenty-five years -- but here Guiol contributes as an uncredited co-director while Stevens is still the cameraman.

Harry plays the butler of the house but spends the majority of this short masquerading as the lady of the house in a most unlikely manner. Lucky for him the elderly gentleman caller is blind as a bat. Of course, that doesn't explain what the second amorous caller sees in him...uh...her. It's mostly an excuse for the two men to draw pistols at each other and for Harry to be constantly caught up in the cross fire.

What with all of the gun play and running around in the garden it doesn't leave a lot of time for any Langdon routines to be fully developed. We do get to see Harry's mind at work when he and the maid try to hatch a plan to save the house. That is, the maid thinks while Harry keeps striking poses similar to Rodan's 'The Thinker'. He finally decides to sleep on it. Later out in the garden Harry has a private battle with a pair of boxing gloves attached to a tree branch that continually hit him in the face. He brushes them away and they swing right back into his face. Most comedians would wrap up the gag after a couple of smacks but not Langdon. He sits there continually swatting and being smacked. His mind is essentially of one-track and he would still be sitting in that garden being smacked in the face to this very day if it was at all possible. It was these idiosyncrasies that made Langdon so unique to watch.

Harry Langdon made some amusing films early in his career. Then, after making some very bad career choices, his promising career began to spiral downward--until he landed, for a short time, at Hal Roach Studios. However, judging by this short, the studio had no idea what to do with Harry and the film is just awful--with practically nothing to recommend this short.

Harry dresses up in drag to impersonate the lady of the house--though exactly why we really don't know. Then, the elderly man calling on her doesn't seem to realize it's Harry and not his sweetie--indicating he's blind and/or incredibly stupid. Then, a crazy old cowboy shows up to court the same old lady and doesn't seem to realize it's Harry. This can't be chalked up to bad vision, as the cowboy begins shooting (very accurately). None of this makes any sense and the closest thing that comes to comedy is seeing Langdon in drag. The film lacks a coherent plot as well as laughs and looks more like outtakes than a film. Dull and listless from start to finish.

At first I thought this was a terrible film. The "script", as such, is nonexistent and nothing makes any sense at all. But I found all the characters delightful, cute and hilarious. Then it occurred to me: this WAS improvised, probably set up and shot in a day.

So, if you think of this as an elaborate theatre exercise, it becomes immensely enjoyable. Imagine sitting in a drama class while the leads of the school's drama team makes up this skit: wouldn't you laugh?

Now that I understand what this is really all about, "Skirt Shy" has become one of my favorite of the Hal Roach Langdon films.

Harry is given plenty of time just to do his shtick; little Nancy Dover is breathtakingly cute and more than a little ornery—she may be Harry's most perfect screen partner. She actually does what most of us have wanted to do at some point in a Langdon film: slap a little sense into him!

Tom Ricketts apparently was actually 76 years old when he made this film, and is a very funny guy, runs like hell and even does pratfalls(!). I actually wish they'd spent more camera-time on him.

May Wallace at 52 looks 82 but joins in the farce vigorously and swings a mean shovel; and whoever plays the cowboy is also good in his very over-the-top improv.

All these Hall Roach films of Harry Langdon need to be restored and made available for viewing. Langdon is exceptional with his voice, and actually funnier to me in sound than in his silent comedies, even though a few of the silents are better put-together.