Charley Chase

This special two-disc collection, presented in cooperation with the Library of Congress, celebrates cinema’s lesser-known dog stars with their most memorable features, shorts, and newsreel appearances (1898-1928). Films dated as early as 1898 offer satisfying simple glimpses of dogs at play, anticipating the adorable animal videos that would become social media phenomena more than a century later.

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Slapstick experts host this look at the life and films of Charley Chase with rare film clips and photos.

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A documentary about some of the comedians of the silent era featuring clips from their films and biographical information.

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Modern comedians share their thoughts about Laurel and Hardy. Also includes archival footage of contemporary comedians. Hosted by Dom DeLuise.

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Robert Youngson once again compiles scenes from the golden age of comedy's silent film era. Laurel and Hardy are shown battling a gum machine, and Hardy is a debaucherous Romeo whose amorous plans are thwarted by Rex, the Wonder Horse. Charley Chase is hampered by hiccups and a female professor, and he fleeces a drunken Oliver Hardy with a mannequin in a nightclub. The third part finds bachelor Buster Keaton desperately trying to get married by 7:00 PM in order to collect a $7-million-dollar inheritance. Keaton is pursued by money-hungry prospects in one of the best chase scenes ever filmed. Narration is provided by Jay Jackson.

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Film historian Robert Youngson presents a feature-length anthology of rarely seen silent films by comedy legends Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Along with clips from many of the shorts that made the duo stars, it includes clips from a 1918 comedy starring Laurel on his own as well as scenes from three shorts Hardy made in 1917 and '18 with his original comedy partner, Billy West. To put the duo's work in context, the film briefly features other comedians who worked with producer Hal Roach.

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Three decades of fun packed into one convenient package with this compilation of classic black-and-white comedy clips featuring Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy.

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

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A compilation featuring comedic stars of the silent era including Fatty Arbuckle, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Charley Chase, and Laurel and Hardy.

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A compilation featuring comedic stars of the silent era including Will Rogers, Laurel and Hardy, and the Keystone Cops.

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The edition of Screen Snapshots celebrates 25 years of production. It looks at the content of edition #1, then a tribute to movie people who have died in those 25 years. Finally there are tributes to the Screen Snapshots series by Cecil De Mille, Walt Disney, Louella Parsons and Rosalind Russell.

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Charley writes to girls all over the world in order to get foreign postage stamps for his collection--but winds up with a passel of girls who think he's their fiance.

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Charley, over his wife's objections, has invited his boss over for dinner. Mrs. Chase walks out, and Charley hires a waitress to pose as his wife. Meanwhile, the boss picks up Mrs. Chase and brings her as his dinner guest.

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An obnoxious heckler at a baseball game infuriates everybody.

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A girl keeps meeting Charley the wrong moments, including losing her dress in his car, and later he finds himself in her apartment. Her jealous boxer-husband is obsessed with killing Charley after seeing them together again and again.

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Charley arrives in a backward mountain town to be the new schoolteacher and receives a hostile welcome.

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Deep in debt, Charley must marry a wealthy society girl, and attends an afternoon party to announce the engagement. Trouble is, he's menaced by two thuggish creditors and must take his kleptomaniac butler along, passing him off as an uncle.

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Charley buys a wreck of an automobile that's been made to appear new by a disreputable used car dealer, but he soon realizes it's literally falling apart. He stops payment, and then must dodge repossesors as well.

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At a nightclub, Charley fails to recognize his newly blonde wife.

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Charley gives his girlfriend a mink coat he was supposed to be guarding for three showgirls; when the ladies want their coat back, Charley goes to great lengths to recover it.

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Charley falls for a waitress who mistakes him for a gangster.

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Two guys who own a restaurant get word of a sure thing at the races and bet all their money on that horse; unfortunately, they bet on the wrong horse.

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A criminology professor sets out to find the "sleepwalking bandit", but when he finally catches up with the somnambulistic thief, it's not quite who he thought it would be.

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Charley mistakes a lunatic as the father of the girl he's interested in.

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A Charley Chase short, produced at Columbia. Charley is alarmingly forgetful, and this is his wedding anniversary. Will he give his wife a present and avoid her wrath?

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Charley Chase is engaged to be married and while in a department store, shopping for his fiancée, saves a woman from being hit on the head by a heavy box, but his fiancée only sees a newspaper-published picture of Charley holding the girl in his lap. His angry fiancée breaks off their engagement.

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To test his wife, Charley's friend puts him up to making a play for her, but she's on to it and pretends she's fallen for him, infuriating the friend. Charley must stay overnight, and unexpected complications put him in the wife's bedroom.

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Soda jerk reads mystery stories, fancies himself a master detective.

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Charley is a hypochondriac who is driving his family, his friends and his doctor crazy.

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Charley tries to get out of an arranged marriage so he can marry another girl. What he doesn't realize is that they are one and same girl.

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Charley's honeymoon is upset by a woman and her jealous husband.

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Charley's wife accuses him of preferring his Hoot Owl Lodge over her.

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Elissa Landi and Charley Chase host an East Asian themed garden tea party in Hollywood. After introducing a few Hollywood luminaries who are attending the party, they present a number of musical and/or dance performances to entertain the crowd. This set of performances also includes ethnic Chinese actress Anna May Wong modeling some fashions she brought back from her first ever trip to China. Through it all, one of the guests, already inebriated, is having a few problems mixing and serving the cocktails he wants.

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A feisty Irish woman turns a truck driver into a championship boxer.

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Charlie tells his co-workers about his event-filled vacation to California, including his run in with two vagabond hitchhikers.

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Charley's somewhat prudish wife pretends to be a party girl.

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Good samaritan Shemp rescues a girl from an accident, and a newspaper photographer snaps a picture of her thanking Shemp. The paper mixes up the caption, implying that Shemp and the girl are lovers. This doesn't sit well with Shemp's fiancee, who breaks off their engagement, leaving him so heartbroken he asks the rescued girl's gangster boyfriend (Dick Curtis) to kill him. When Shemp's intended returns and apologizes, he realizes that his days are numbered unless he can find the gangster and call off the hit.

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After his wife complains about the number of nights Woodcock (Shemp Howard) spends at the Hoot Owl Lodge, he takes her on a belated honeymoon. The first person they meet is lodge member Joe Wilson, who asks Woodcock to help him retrieve some ill-advised letters to lovely hotel guest Irene (Christine McIntyre). Woodcock soon finds himself caught between his jealous wife, and Irene's Latin-tempered fiancee Ricardo.

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Charley gives his girlfriend a mink coat he was supposed to be guarding for three showgirls; when the ladies want their coat back, Charley goes to great lengths to recover it.

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Charley falls for a waitress who mistakes him for a gangster.

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The stooges are firemen at a station that still uses horses to pull the engines. A salesman who wants to sell the chief some modern equipment plants gun powder in one of the engines. The chiefs daughter catches him and after a chase both are knocked unconscious. When a fire starts, the stooges respond to the alarm, but don't realize its their firehouse that's burning! Somehow they manage to arrive in time to save the girl, and the villain gets his just desserts.

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Charley mistakes a lunatic as the father of the girl he's interested in.

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Charley's somewhat prudish wife pretends to be a party girl.

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Charley, his wife Rosina and their daughter Darla attend "Bank night" at their local movie theater, more eager to win the cash prize than see the picture. When little Darla is selected to choose the winning ticket, she draws her father's number. The crowd reacts angrily, thinking that the drawing is a fraud, forcing the child to choose another number. This one turns out to be her own ticket, after which a third drawing yields her mother's ticket. While pandemonium erupts in the audience, some gangsters arrive and raid the theater. A chase follows, resulting in the eventual capture of the crooks.

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Taken to a hospital, after suffering a dizzy spell, Charley is told by a 'nut', posing as a doctor, that he suffers from 'Tetra-Ethyl", and the only remedy is to sit down, relax, clear the mind and recite a nursery rhyme. The fake doctor gives Charley a package to deliver to Mr. Henderson, the "Supreme Crown of the Knights of the Brown Derby." At the hotel, hosting a convention of "Brown Derbies," Charley suffers a dizzy spell and the only place he can find to sit down is in Mr. Henderson's lap, where he recites "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Mr. Henderson, it is revealed, also suffers from "Tetra-Ethyl." Seized by an attack, Henderson sits down and tries to recite "Who Killed Cock Robin," but forgets the lines, which Charley and Henderson's daughter, Betty, sing in a song together. That, coming at the end of the second reel,is all it takes for Charley and Betty to decide to get married.

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Ollie and Stan deceive their wives into thinking they are taking a medically necessary cruise when they are really going to a lodge convention.

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Charlie is the great divorce attorney, in demand by all women wishing to shed their husbands. While explaining to one woman how to obtain a divorce by getting photos in a compromising situation...

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Two rich capitalists want to marry their children, but they don't like the idea at all. She tries to run away, and meets him at the station. They fall in love, unbeknownst to their real identities, and decide each on their own that they have to wreck their parents plan. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

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

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After many difficulties getting into a baseball game with his girl, Paul is pressed into service as a pinch hitter.

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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.

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Not one but two of Charlie Chaplin impersonators, Harry Mann and Monty Banks, a film directed by Charley Chase still under the name of Charles Parrott. They go driving around town experiencing various car theft problems.

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Her Tender Feet

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Charlie stays at a seaside lodging house frequented by sailors. He gets involved with a gang of crooks when a sea captain attempts to kidnap his landlady's daughter.

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A summer hotel is a magnet for young marrieds as well as other couples looking to rekindle the spark. Charley Chicken Lover, the hotel proprietor, finds himself smitten with one of the newlywed brides as does another guest despite the presence of his wife and a merry chase of crossed signals and misunderstandings commences!

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A two part comedy starring Hank Mann and Carmen Phillips, based on the 1909 play A Fool There Was by Porter Emerson Browne.

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It hasn't rained for week and there are no symptoms of coming rain to be found. An itinerant artist carrying a huge canvas rambles along a country road. He reaches the hut of a hermit inventor who is dying of thirst. The artist paints a picture of a reservoir so realistically that the water overflows and fills a cup which he holds in his hand.

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The will of T.W. Glutz provides that his bashful nephew, Hank, will inherit the entire estate if married by 2 P.M. of a certain date. Hank loves a girl who lives fifty miles away, but his uncle's executor, a lawyer, arranges a marriage with a somewhat antiquated home product. At 1 P.M. on the appointed day, Hank is sleeping off the effects of the night before. He wakens with a fever, a raging thirst, and an awful taste, when the lawyer enters and tells him the bride is waiting. "And my heart is fifty miles away," sadly muses Hank.

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A man plots to kill a friend and marry his wife in order to get hold of insurance money.

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