Nobody seems to be genuinely poor in movie comedies anymore—and by poor, I mean flat broke, skint, penniless and generally behind the eight ball. If they are poor, they’ll come into good fortune for the happy ending. Or they’re an exaggerated “Hollywood poor” that kinda looks like fun. You have to go back to the silent era to find laugh riots in which the characters start poor and end poor, with the victory being that they’re still alive (and maybe in love) after being kicked out by the landlord or chased by the police. “The End.” All of that happens in this star-making two-reeler starring Harold Lloyd. He’s a down-and-out fledgling playwright who crosses paths with a struggling chorus girl (Bebe Daniels) and, after an ill-fated attempt to sneak into the office of a theater manager and land a career break, both wind up at an illegal gambling club behind the opulent gates of a wealthy home. Lloyd gets lucky at the tables and then unlucky real fast when the police raid the joint. Fast-paced, sweet and sour all over, and driven by a terrific performance from Lloyd, jumping, climbing, and getting knocked all over the screen, this is still a good movie today.
Another thing that doesn’t happen anymore: Movie stars don’t get their fingers blown off for real while posing for photos. That happened to Lloyd, too. Around this time, someone had the bright idea to take a publicity shot of Lloyd lighting a cigarette off the lit wick of what they thought was merely a harmless smoke bomb. Turned out that the bomb had a lot more kick than that and when it exploded it took off his thumb and forefinger and nearly french-fried his face. The upside is that the story got more publicity than the photos ever would and some texts partly credit that with the roaring financial success of this, the first film produced under Lloyd’s contract with Pathe.