Series: Charley Chase Director: James Parrott Producer: Hal Roach Titles: H.M. Walker Photography: Len Powers Editor: Stars: Charley Chase, Eugenia Gilbert, Anita Garvin Company: Pathé Exchange Released: 09 January 1927 Length: 2 reels Production No.: B-14 Filming dates: September 7-14, 1926 Rating: 5/10

Many Scrappy Returns

The suspicious wife (Eugenia Gilbert) is at home when husband Charley (Chase) walks in. She warmly greets him and explains why the dinner table is set up - his brother Wellington (Eugene Pallette) and his wife (Anita Garvin) is coming over to their house to celebrate Wellington's birthday. Charley shows his wife a ring he has got the brother as a gift. After an uncomfortable journey in the cab, the arguing couple arrive at Charley's house and are led into the dining room. Wellington is chastised by his wife for sitting down before the women and the two begin arguing in front of their hosts. Dinner plates, followed by a vase are smashed onto the floor by Wellington. Charley starts hiding all of the dinner plates inside his suit to prevent further damage to his property. Eventually his disrespectful brother storms off. Wellington's wife demands the Chase's take her home so that they can all have dinner at her house instead. The three of them get into the car and drive off. A little while down the road they find Wellington walking home and the insults and arguing starts up again between him on the sidewalk and his wife in the car. It's a relentless barage of abuse and ridicule which only ends when Wellington walks into a telephone pole and his wife leaps out of the car to comfort him.

The group arrive at Wellington's house and the two ladies go upstairs. Wellington goes into the lounge and begins flirting with a French maid behind a curtain. Wellington leaves and Charley enters and sees the maid but shrugs it off as nothing important. As the group congregate for dinner Charley whispers to his wife that they ought to stage an argument between themselves into shaming his brother and his brother's wife. She plays along and tears into Charley for sitting down before her at the table. Wellington and his wife look on in shock, especially as Charley begins breaking their dinner plates! His brother complains that the dishes cost ten bucks each, so after Charley is through smashing three he pays Wellington $30 before picking up an expensive vase and throwing it. When the vase fails to break Charley snatches back the $50 he had given Wellington for it in advance! Then it starts to get serious. Charley launches a plate at his wife and then chases her around the table brandishing a knife at her. The chase ends when she confronts him with her suspicions over his infidelity just as the maid is about to serve dinner. The maid drops her tray and proclaims her innocence (in French).

Zozo's insanely jealous husband, the chef (Bull Montana) is summoned to interpret the maid's dialogue and immediately threatens to kill Charley for hugging his wife. Charley's wife runs out of the house and drives off in the car leaving Charley to fend for himself against the chef, who causes Charley to escape by jumping out of a window. The angry chef threatens to kill his wife and Charley if he catches them together again before he and the maid are fired by Wellington. Back at Charley's house, Charley's wife packs her bags and leaves, telling Charley she hopes the jealous husband succeeds in strangling him. A while later the jealous husband sees his wife entering Charley's house before catching up with Charley a little further down the street. Charley tries to calm him down by offering to discuss the situation with him back at the house. So - before the reader gets confused, let us recap here: Charley's wife has left their house. The chef's wife (the maid) has left Wellington's house (because she was fired) and gone to stay at Charley's house and is let in by Charley's maid, which is seen by the jealous husband who was fired but it is not known by Charley. Charley invites the jealous husband into his house, despite the man's threats of killing someone if his suspicions are confirmed. Charley leads him upstairs and shows him the spare bedroom and offers the stranger a set of pajamas for the night.

Through a series of convenient mis-timings, Charley, the chef, his wife and Charley's maid all manage to walk around upstairs without bumping into each other but when the chef takes the pajamas he is offered (which were meant for the maid), suspicions are drawn that someone else is in the house when Charley's maid discovers them missing. Back at the brother's house, Wellington's wife encourages Mrs. Chase to return to her husband when she shows her a photo of them together, so together they drive back to Charley's house. When the ladies pull up outside they see the silhouettes of the four people inside the house through the windows. Wellington's wife flips and runs off down the street and back to her house to check that her husband is not one of the silhouettes. She finds Wellington asleep in his bed, wakes him up and explains how they are needed at Charley's house because he has a house full of wild women! At Charley's house, the two maids are still wandering around upstairs and somehow managing to avoid detection from the two men. Eventually, Charley finds his maid in the bedroom just at the moment his wife returns home. His wife then throws over their bedsheets to find the maid underneath. Charley's brother arrives (how did he get into the house, anybody know?) and tells Charley off, as the two wives console one another. Then the jealous chef finds Charley's maid in the closet, the chef's wife then sees her husband with her... it all gets confusing! The last scene sees the mad chef waffling Wellington with one almighty punch and then apologising to Charley for any suspicion he had against him!

Favourite bit Charley Chase is throwing plates around and breaking them when he spots an expensive vase.  After examining the price tag of $50, he gives his brother the equivalent in cash in advance, then throws the vase with the intention of breaking it. When the vase fails to smash, he takes the cash back from his brother's hand.

Trivia • Copyrighted November 11, 1926. • Also listed for December 12, 1926. • When the cab pulls up at Charley's house he does so behind Charley's car. I think the cabbie is Chet Brandenburg, but he is only seen very briefly and in the corner of the frame. • Charley and Wellington shake hands upon Wellington's arrival at Charley's house. • Although it is hard to determine who is worse - Eugene Pallette or Anita Garvin's character, it does appear that it is Garvin who is the catalyst for their arguments. She blasts her husband for being seated at the dinner table before the women. It is not so much what she says but rather, the way she says it. Later on when they are at their own house Wellington makes sure his wife is seated (even to the point of pushing her chair in for her) before he sits down. • When Wellington and his noisy wife begin arguing at the dinner table, look at the expression on Mrs. Chase's face as if to say "are you kidding me?" • Wellington's behaviour is disgraceful when he picks up a two dinner plates and smashes them out of anger. It isn't even his home! (Or his plates!) Not content with this, he later smashes a vase onto the floor just for good measure. • As Wellington and his wife argue, he tries to grab her right leg. There is a brief moment when he grabs her just above the knee. • Charley starts to drive the car before his wife has had a chance to close her door. • Anita Garvin calls her husband "Mama's darling little dickie bird" after he walks into the telephone pole. • Although Valentina Zimina plays a French maid, she was in fact Russian in real life. • As Charley lights up a cigarette in Wellington's house, the maid reveals herself to him and definitely wobbles ber chest in front of Charley. What an introduction! • A price tag of $50.00 is conveniently tagged onto the bottom of the vase Charley contemplates smashing in Wellington's house. • During the staged fight between Charley and his wife, she slaps him three times across the face. • Charley throws a fourth plate (at the painting on the wall) and breaks it, but doesn't pay the ten dollars in keeping with the trend set prior to this. • Charley's maid is called Yvonne. • The jealous husband (Bull Montana) is so angry, he even wants to fight the WIND for blowing his hat off! • It is a little out of character and odd that in one breath Bull Montana's character aggressively threatens to kill Charley and in the next scene he allows Charley to put his arm around his shoulder. • It does seem strange that Charley invites a man into his house who has sworn to kill him, and then simply invite him to sleep there during the middle of the day, without even talking to him about the situation? • At the end of the film when Charley's wife discovers the French maid in her bed, she pulls the covers off quickly and the maid sits up. Her breasts bounce about as though they are unprotected by any form of bra!

	Charley Chase Charley
	Eugenia Gilbert Charley's wife
	Anita Garvin Wellington's wife
	Amber Norman Yvonne (Charley's maid)
	Valentina Zimina Zozo
	Eugene Pallette Wellington (Charley's brother)
	Bull Montana Zozo's husband
	Chet Brandenburg Cab driver

CREDITS (click image to enlarge)	INTERTITLES (click image to enlarge)

Acknowledgements: Smile When The Raindrops Fall by Brian Anthony (book) Ed Watz (print) This page was last updated on: 09 January 2023