An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.

After committing a murder, Kay assumes a new identity and boards a ship. But, Kay is unaware that Sam, a skirt chasing detective, is following her and must outwit him to escape imprisonment.

A screenwriter falls in love with a Mexican woman while searching for a story line south of the border.

A dejected Parisian sewer worker feels his prayers have been answered when he falls in love with a street waif.

Four middle-aged actors jointly adopt an orphaned baby girl, raising her in a backstage milieu.

Charley has in-laws that look down on him because he's not rich. So, to try to keep up, he rushes out to buy a car--but no matter, they still think he's a drip--as does his wife. Later, when he's given a simple job to do by his boss, he screws it up--and loses face once again with his family.

Charley Chase plays the type of character he does best, which is a weak nerd who is constantly letting people push him around. This happens at his work when a co-worker sneaks off with the boss's daughter who just happens to be the crush for Charley. After accidentally getting loaded on bootleg whiskey, Charley gets some courage and goes out to get his woman.

A man starts working in a department store and has to deal with a female kleptomaniac.

Jimmy always fantasied about racing. But now he has to pay the mortgage before noon or else he won't own his shop any longer.

Will Rogers plays a lazy man who is chosen by a group of men to run for Congress.

A couple of pals tries to stay out of trouble, without much luck.

In this short, Will Rogers introduces and concludes the movie. And, then, he acts in different fake versions of highlights from famous movies--such as Douglas Fairbanks as ROBIN HOOD, the bull fighting scene from BLOOD AND SAND as well as a recreation of a KEYSTONE COPS short.

A young cowboy takes a job at a ranch owned by two aging spinsters, unaware that both are completely in love with him.

A shy cowboy is interested in the local school teacher, but must compete with a bully for her attention.

Satire on the epic Western 'The Covered Wagon (1923)'.

'Snub' Pollard as a eccentric movie director.

A morals reformer returns from Hollywood to his small town, and shows his fellow citizens the results of his investigation.

'Snub' Pollard wants to hang himself but figures joining the circus was better idea.

'Save the Ship' is a plotless silent short film which has the 33 year old Stan Laurel acting in a run of the mill production to pay his bills and as a token by Hal Roach.

Hal Roach produced comedy has Will Rogers playing the title character, a rather slow, dimwitted man who works on a ranch where he usually gets pushed around at. A woman (Marie Mosquini) comes to town looking for someone to help her photograph some of the animals so she picks Hank and soon regrets it.

At Thanksgiving, a tramp arrives in a homeless-hostile town.

A group of oil magnates are trying to think of new ways to attract business. One of them suggests that they contact the inventor Pollard, who has devised a new gasoline substitute. Pollard himself lives in a home filled with his eccentric inventions. When he gets the message from the oil company, he is excited about the opportunity to demonstrate his innovation.

Stan plays a waiter at a crappy restaurant and frankly such fare was better done by Chaplin and others. However, in two cute scenes, the film shines. The first is a Limburger cheese bit that is low-brow but funny. The second is the final scene with dogs following Stan at the end.

An unconventional super detective (Snub) pursues a trio of crooks who've stolen the fortune of his girlfriend's father. Along the way, absurd things happen like he's tricked into trailing a cow and he enters a cross-country foot race.

Paul Parrott plays an obsessive-compulsive bill poster in this thoroughly average Hal Roach comedy from 1923. Hired to help publicize a new Gloria Snootful picture, Paul goes bonkers with glue and paper and ends up attaching promotional material to any surface within his reach, including the rear ends of a number of people, though his attempt to nail a poster to a glass window is somewhat less successful.

Jack Frost is a silent comedy short

The story of the first Thanksgiving is re-imagined as a father tells it to his son.

This Hal Roach comedy short I found on the "American Slapstick" DVD collection of rare silent comedies starts bizarre and has an anything goes-quality one rarely sees in Mr. Roach's output. It stars Snub Pollard who is initially introduced as a baby left on a doorstep before we see him fully grown about 20 or so years later still in that basket! From there, he gets bumped car to car crossing the street prior to getting literally thrown through a window as an auction is taking place! Also appearing is James Finlayson as a man who's items accidentally get sold.

After their house is blown away by a twister, a farmer and his wife decide to move to California. Once over the border they're greeted by rain, hail, snow and an Indian uprising.

When a store clerk organizes a contest to climb the outside of a tall building, circumstances force him to make the perilous climb himself.

'Snub' Pollard is an local actor getting a big break in the movie industry, coming home to show off his fame.

An ice-cold Snub adopts a gamin and her brother; A mean landlord seeking rent complicates matters and the trio take a train to Florida. But by mistake the train goes to Iceland.

Newly Rich is a silent comedy short

Snub Pollard comedy directed by Charley Chase and produced by Hal Roach.

A very rich old man promises to leave his extended family his fortune if they all move in together and get along for one year.

The Stone Age is a silent comedy short

The owners of a movie studio are having problems with a temperamental director, and they promise an actor on one of his pictures that he can have the job if he can find a way to make the director leave the picture.

A couple of old guys remembering the old days when courting Marie Mosquini.

A visiting New Yorker inspires the hotel keeper toward improving his establishment.

Eddie suspects his wife of having an affair with Snub. Snub, meanwhile, just wants to get to work on time.

In the Movies is a silent comedy short

Marie's inebriated husband refuses to go to bed, so she asks Snub, a homeless man she finds sleeping in the park, to assist.

The monkey gland operation is about to be performed upon Snub. A flash-back shows how the lack of pep has affected his spirits. While under ether he dreams that he has become an ape and is forced to swing upon the chandeliers and walk up the sides of the buildings. He wakes up just before the operation is performed and takes the chance to beat it out of the hospital. The horror of the dream gives him more pep than monkey glands.

Stop the presses! Snub Pollard is working there.

The governor's (Snub) life is in constant jeopardy because of the bomb throwers who use every conceivable means to get him.

Like many a Snub Pollard comedy, "Years to Come" is a complete flight of fancy. In this one, it is the year 2000, and the roles of women and men have been completely reversed. That's where almost all the jokes come from.

The Hustler silent movie

Snub is an street sweeper with OCD, living in a neighborhood full of fussy people. He is sweeping the street when he anticipates a cop who is about to throw some litter into the road and dashes over to catch it in his cart. He then tries to save a drunken man from falling into the road before stopping his cart to pick up a solitary leaf which has dared to fallen upon the ground. The eccentric and obsessed street sweeper meticulously disposes of the leaf but when he turns around he finds half the tree has shed its leaves at that very moment

While his wife is shopping, Snub attempts to take a fifteen minute break.

Snub Pollard and Marie Mosquini are to be married, with Ernie Morrison as their best man. It's the usual gag-filled Pollard one-reeler, with William Gillespie pointing out that if she wants to get married, he has a marriage license too.

A Hal Roach slapstick comedy featuring 'Snub' Pollard & Marie Mosquini.

"At the Ringside" is filmed in a "slum" which is rather obviously a studio mock-up on the Hal Roach back lot, and it clearly copies the Lambeth-style slum in Chaplin's "Easy Street" (which was also a too-obvious mock-up). The first half of this film is a blatant copy of "Easy Street". Pollard plays the local constable, charged with maintaining order in the tough slum district.

An auto accident hurls Snub into a skating rink, where he encounters Rowe and Marie. Among the various slip-and-falling going on, two frisky escaped monkeys from a show put on skates to join in and create pandemonium.

Blue Sunday is a silent film comedy

While attempting to hunt a formidable Peruvian Duck, Snub Pollard and Ernest Morrison inadvertently come to the aid of a kidnapped tourist.

A typical Pollard-Morrison outing is Rush Orders (1921), in which the pair ride into town on a railroad handcar (with Morrison providing the locomotive muscle). When there it's all about the hustle for food with rivals and advertisement in the café business..

His Best Girl is a silent film comedy

A tenderfoot arrives in a western town and the inhabitants give him a rough time.

A once-act farce about two neighbours who purchase a car that they can use to go on drives with their wives.

Snub Pollard (sans moustache) and Hughie Mack are tenants sharing a bed in a small hotel. They wake up at 6am and prepare breakfast with two eggs which are taken out of Snub's jacket pocket and put into a coffee perculator. The landlady (Vera White) storms up the stairs when she smells the coffee being made and demands that the janitor (Earl Mohan) break down the tenants' door with a pick-axe.

A 'Snub' Pollard & Marie Mosquini slapstick comedy.

Snub, as a member of the London police force, is assigned to a neighborhood where a terrific free-for-all battle is taking place. After the struggle is snuffed out by a particularly belligerent chap who wades into the crowd and sends its members into the land of twittering birdies with an assortment of right and left-handed blows, Snub steps forth and accepts credit for the feat.

Run ’Em Ragged, Snub Pollard’s 39th starring vehicle, uses familiar slapstick-- Over-the-top make-up, ethnic humor, and a chase across Los Angeles’s Echo Park-- But there is more here than knockabout; Sophisticated sight gags test the limits of the characters’ perception, making expert use of such props as a seemingly bottomless rowboat.

Snub Pollard comedy

After being ejected from an establishment for being drunk and disorderly, George Rowe, Sammy Brooks, Hughie Mack and Snub Pollard form a drunken singing quartet in the street before a car comes and takes Sammy and George away, leaving the other two staggering in the road. Snub and Hughie agree to go somewhere "where there are no wives, landlords or prohibitionists", and so three months later they emerge on a prairie with supplies dwindling.

Don't Rock the Boat

Captain Dandy (Snub Pollard) is about to sail and arrives on the dock where several women take turns to individually say goodbye to him (the last one even wrestles him to the ground) before he boards the ship.

As tens of guests pile out of a wedding ceremony a jilted and bitter rival (Eddie Boland) vows revenge on the new bride. The wedding limo pulls off leaving the groom (Snub Pollard) behind, who then has to chase it down the street. He catches it up but is made to sit on the back of the car "as ballast". The car comes to a halt where the groom mistakes a policeman's gesturing of traffic as an offer of a handshake. Finally, the groom arrives at his house where his servant greets him, but unbeknownst to him, the servant's child (Ernest Morrison) has set up a scare in the shape of an "angora" bird in a cage under the dinner table before they get there.

Snub conducts a blind pig in a barn, where the village cronies gather for their "licker," and the place is raided by revenue officers.

'Snub' Pollard in a lot of wedding problems.

After numerous failed attempts to commit suicide, our hero (Lloyd) runs into a lawyer who is looking for a stooge to stand in as a groom in order to secure an inheritance for his client (Davis). The inheritance is a house, which her scheming uncle "haunts" so that he can scare them off and claim the property.

A bicycle messenger is sent to make a posh delivery to a wealthy artist's estate-- populated with attractive models.

Delivery man 'Snub' Pollard and his assistant Sunshine Sammy nearly run over Marie Mosquini in the street and ends up at dance school.

Snub and his wife give up their bungalow and allow another couple to move in. Then it develops that they can't find another home, and must live in an improvised tent. (From IMDb)

A young adventurer trades places with a European prince and falls in love above his station.

Snub goes butterfly hunting in Grffith Park and catches Marie Mosquini by accident. They go to a café where all the men have a lot of hair on their faces and the usual mischief ensues.

The film begins with a girl who is supposedly irresistible to all men. Several guys all come to her to pledge their undying love--including Harold Lloyd's brother, Gaylord (who is a dentist). Shortly after this, a new dentist (Snub Pollard) arrives to work in an office across the hall. In a very funny scene, Pollard manages to steal all of Gaylord's patients from his waiting room. However, when it comes to dental work, Snub is highly unlikely to receive the American Dental Association's seal of approval. That's because he's incredibly rough and manages to toss a guy out the window when he pulls his tooth.

'Snub' Pollard and Mildred Davis star in this 1920 comedy short.

Snub Pollard and his friend are clearly under their wives thumbs. But his grandfather turns up and tells them to assert themselves, which they do. Her father is not impressed.

Snub plays a rich guy who wants to impress the ladies with his virility. So he pays a tough boxer to take a dive in a staged fight, though the fight definitely does not go anything like expected.

After a wild bachelor party, our hero finds himself aboard a sailing vessel where he encounters numerous adventures. In a dream sequence, he fantasizes that the ship is seized by a band of female pirates.

An American short comedy film.

A comedy short featuring Mildred Davis.

Count the Votes is a 1919 American short comedy film. It is considered to be lost.

Soft Money is a 1919 American short comedy film. The film is considered to be lost.

Harold and his rival fight over Bebe on her birthday, first at her home and then at a nearby skating rink.

Chop Suey & Co. is a 1919 American short comedy film

Harold becomes the victim of a clever bulldog pup who chases him in and out of various places.

The adventures of a penniless young man, who finds himself in a house full of crooks.

Harold and Snub are self-proclaimed big-game hunters who stop at a remote outpost. They hire two native guides to lead them into the woods, but the guides run in terror when they see a rather tame bear in the distance. Harold is annoyed that he cannot find any bears to hunt--unaware that two timid bears are closely following him. Meanwhile Snub encounters an equally tame wildcat who eats his picnic lunch. Snub sprints away. Back at the outpost, Harold twice rescues Jeanne--once from the clutches of an unwanted suitor and once from one of the bears. The grateful, gun-toting Jeanne tells Harold she wants him to be her "sweetie."

Boy trying to impress girl, gets chased by her father and the police right into an ongoing marathon.

Our hero is a barber in a small Mexican town, wooing a local senorita, against the wishes of her mother.

A short film starring Harold Lloyd.

While running away from his girl's father, Harold's car breaks down in front of a dance hall run by crooks. Harold has to not only stay one step ahead of the girl's father, but also those trying to rob them of everything they have.

A bumbling American soldier saves a girl from a bunch of Cossacks.

A salesman takes a job at a department store to impress a girl and winds up stopping a kidnapping.

Harold Lloyd's character loves Bebe Daniels' character and is about to marry her. But then he meets the clan of Snub Pollard where it's a riot all the time.

Lloyd is a serious young middle-class guy on the make who wants to marry the boss’ daughter. The problem is getting in to see the boss so that he can ask for her hand in marriage as the office is guarded by a bunch of comic, clumsy flunkies who throw everyone out who tries to get in.

Stan Laurel is picked up at the train depot and brought back by the husband to the family home where the wife is having a suffragette meeting. None too pleased they cause mayhem and then the neighbours are brought into it as Stan cleans up the backyard by throwing all the rubbish into their award winning garden.

Stan Laurel is picked up at the train depot and brought back by the husband to the family home where the wife is having a suffragette meeting. None too pleased they cause mayhem and then the neighbours are brought into it as Stan cleans up the backyard by throwing all the rubbish into their award winning garden.

Lloyd and Pollard help a young girl out of the water but they are then chased by a shrew. On a bicycle built for two, Lloyd lazes about on the back while Pollard sweats from all of his effort. Thieves escape by car but it breaks down. Lloyd and Pollard help them start up again but the thieves steal the tandem bicycle, leaving the car in the hands of the heros.

Stan plays a janitor at a hotel dropping letters and trying to retrieve them with a vacuum, getting wet, helping a lady shoot her cheating husband and being chased by the police.

A nervy young man follows a pretty lady into a diner to flirt with her, but winds up getting stuck with the tab.

A short film starring Harold Lloyd.

Luke is a pickpocket, hiding out from the cops in a dive in the slum part of town. He later winds up in a boxing match which again brings the law on his tail.

Luke's Busy Day is a 1917 short comedy film starring Harold Lloyd.