Country: United States
Language: English (intertitles)
Director: Richard Wallace
Writers: Carl Harbaugh, Stan
Laurel, Leroy Scott, Jerome Storm, Beatrice Van, H.M. Walker (titles), Hal
Yates
Stars: Mabel Normand, Carl Miller
and Max Davidson
Release Date: 7 November 1926
(USA)
Production Co: Hal Roach Studios
Sound Mix: Silent
Color: Black and White
Genres: Short | Comedy
Rose, who works for a
penny-pinching junk dealer, dreams of romance with wealthy bachelor Ted Tudor.
Mabel Normand is remembered primarily
for the short films she made for Mack Sennett's Keystone Studio between 1912
and 1916, dozens of simple, frenetic, freewheeling slapstick comedies that made
her the most popular comedienne on the screen. Her costars included Charlie
Chaplin, Roscoe Arbuckle, and Ford Sterling, and even today it seems that
practically everyone interested in film comedy has seen at least excerpts of
Mabel's work. Film buffs may also know that Mabel's life was a deeply troubled
one. Her romance with Sennett went sour, and by the early 1920s she was mired
in scandal and plagued with health problems. She was drinking heavily and,
according to some accounts, abusing narcotics also.
Mabel left Hollywood in 1924 to
try her luck on the Broadway stage, but when her show flopped she returned to
California and attempted a comeback in the movies at the studio of Sennett's
number one rival, Hal Roach. RAGGEDY ROSE was the first of Mabel's new comedies
for Roach, a featurette running a little under an hour. The film was
co-scripted by Stan Laurel, who also served as assistant director, and features
two supporting players who would soon become familiar faces in Laurel &
Hardy comedies, James Finlayson and Anita Garvin. (I gather Oliver Hardy was
originally slated to appear as well, but had to drop out of the cast as the
result of a household injury.) Mabel's longtime colleague Richard Jones,
director of her biggest success, MICKEY, was also involved in the project as a
supervisor. All the ingredients were in place for a triumphant comeback.
I wish I could say that RAGGEDY
ROSE is a smashing success, an unjustly forgotten gem of silent comedy, but
while the film is pleasant and moderately engaging it somehow fails to take
off. Based on the evidence here a viewer unfamiliar with Mabel's Keystone work
might wonder what her reputation as a great comic talent was based on. To be
fair, it seems as though the filmmakers were attempting something a little
different from the raucous farces of earlier days, playing Mabel's character
for audience sympathy to a greater extent than her Sennett films ever had.
(Perhaps too this was a response to the ugly publicity that had dogged Mabel
for years; there may have been genuine concern that audiences had turned
against her.) Our introduction to Raggedy Rose kicks things off on a rather
sticky note when we're told that "Everything in her life had been second
hand-- Even the sunshine." There is much emphasis on Rose's lowly state
despite her hard work and unfailing cheer. Rose is employed by a penny-pinching
junk dealer who works her like a mule. Her outfits, befitting her nickname, are
raggedy, and we're given scene after scene of Rose sorting enormous piles of
second-hand clothing while dreaming of a better life. Rose's poverty is
underlined by the joy she displays when she finds a forgotten dime in a pair of
pants-- although the dime is quickly seized by her grasping employer.
In short, it seems that Mabel is
trying to be Mary Pickford in this film, and while there's nothing exactly
wrong with that, real comedy is in short supply in her scenes. Her best moment
is a brief, poignant fantasy sequence in which she imagines herself in a
beautiful dress, dancing with a handsome suitor. Meanwhile, most of the laughs
in RAGGEDY ROSE are supplied by Jimmy Finlayson's characteristic mugging, and
by Anita Garvin's enjoyably bitchy turn as Rose's rival. It's Garvin who,
rather surprisingly, is given the film's closing gag, the biggest laugh in the
entire movie. Perhaps Mabel was no longer capable of handling the more demanding
physical comedy. She looks puffy-faced and heavily powdered here, almost
resembling Harry Langdon at times. It's said that during much of Mabel's stay
at the Roach Studio she was seriously ill with pneumonia (she would die of
tuberculosis less than four years later), so it's sadly ironic that she spends
the latter portion of this film in bed wearing pajamas, faking illness.
On the surface RAGGEDY ROSE is a
fairly pleasant, interesting film, certainly worth the time of any silent
comedy buff, but unfortunately it is a movie that is haunted by the legend of
its tragic star. Mabel Normand comes off as sympathetic and appealing, but
clearly her best work was already behind her.
Trivia
Oliver Hardy was originally part
of the cast, but was forced to withdraw during the filming after injuring
himself in a kitchen accident. While cooking a leg of lamb, Hardy spilled a pan
of hot grease on himself, badly burning his hand and wrist. In his gyrations of
pain that followed, he managed to fall out the back door of his house and
twisted one leg.
