A Yankee Doodle Duke (1926) watch online HD

The series of short comedies made by Ralph Graves for Sennett 1924-1925 following the success of the full-length comedy The Extra Girl in 1923 (opposite Mabel Normand) tend not to get a very good pres and it is true that most of them are a bit pallid. But this film is really rather well written with a distinct if mild edge of social satire to it. Graves plays a would-be singer reduced to working in a seedy bar who meets and falls in love with a girl at an amusement park whom he then loses all track of. He is meanwhile mistaken, for no very good reason, for a missing British aristocrat by the eccentric but very rich Mrs. Chatterton (beautifully plays by Patsy O' Byrne) and invited on the strength of it to a high society party. The plot is complicated but very clear, the mockery of the silliness and snobbery of high society is effective, the slapstick is played with a nonchalant irony.

Graves is not a very charismatic performer - although in this film he performs a fine comic apache dance with quintessential Sennett babe Thelma Hill - but basically here he is straight man to some very good comic performances by the Sennett regulars, particularly the women. Ruth Taylor is a bit vapid ad the mystery girl but it fits the part while Dale Fuller as Mrs. Chatterton's daughter is splendid and one would like to have seen more of her (and not just her pantaloons). But even the smaller parts (Marvin Loback as Graves' partner Babe Bunting or the actor who plays what is presumably intended to be the real but mad British aristo) are unusually well characterised right down to the smallest characters (Billy Gilbert and Tiny Ward as two bar-room drunks or an actor, unknown t me, as the sentimental policeman). One rarely sees the Sennett repertory on such good form as this.