Hard Work

Although best-known as the heavy in his brother Lupino Lane's comedy shorts, Wallace Lupino got to star in a handful of his own shorts in the 1926-28 period, all of which seem to be much harder to find than Lupino Lane's shorts of the same period. In this one, directed by future czar of Columbia comedy shorts Jules White, Wallace Lupino and his wife (with misbehaving son in tow) inherit an old house. As one would expect, it's a wreck, with cows walking out of the closet and everything in disrepair. Lupino of course goes on to destroy what is left of the house, with the assistance of his son. Like any Jules White film featuring humans (and not dogs, as in his (in)famous Dogville shorts), the comedy is violent and physical. My favorite scenes here involve Lupino crashing his head through a wooden ceiling (ouch!), having his son shoot soot through that hole into a once-clean kitchen, and the inevitable vacuum cleaner sequence where after vacuuming everything clean, all the dirt and grime is shot back into the room. Wallace Lupino wasn't the acrobat that his brother Lupino Lane was, but he plays the exasperated husband and father well. This is a one-reel Cameo short, distributed through Educational, and it runs about nine minutes, which is just long enough for a film that basically milks one situation and has no character development. As a piece of lowbrow silent physical comedy, HARD WORK succeeds in doing what it set out to do--getting some laughs out of a hard-working 1928 audience taking a break at the movies in the waning days of silent films, entertaining them until the main feature started.

When I saw that "Hard Work" was from Educational Pictures and starred Wallace Lupino, I was expecting to dislike the film. After all, Educational made a lot of bad comedies....and Wallace (younger brother of the more famous Lupino Lane and cousin of Ida Lupino) was mostly a supporting actor. However, I was shocked to see that it really is a great silent comedy.

The film begins with Wallace and his wife and young son heading to the home they just inherited. However, their joy is short-lived as the place is a mess and infested with animals. The rest of the movie consists of them trying, very unsuccessfully, to clean the place.

While "Hard Work" has the simplest of plots, the film sure made the most of the situation. Again and again, I found myself laughing at the horrible things that kept happening to Wallace....and it makes for very enjoyable viewing.