Saturday Afternoon

This is a short from a silent film comedian popular at the time but forgotten a century later: 

Harry Langdon, the forgotten silent film comedian. Conversation elsewhere sparked my interest in finally viewing something from an actor even I hadn’t seen before. Saturday Afternoon was found on YouTube; it was selected at random. Well, I wonder if the wrong choice was made, or Langdon and his bizarre child-like face (to steal a thought that others have made) hasn’t aged well through the passage of a century.

This short a little less than half an hour in length was sadly inert and dull the majority of the time. Langdon was a henpecked husband who was happy to sneak out of the house from his nagging wife to hang out with Vernon Dent—yes, the guy who was a supporting player in many Three Stooges shorts. There is a routine revolving around him finding a dime under the carpet but otherwise business only picks up in the final 7 or so minutes as Langdon and Dent engage in the sort of slapstick I love from the likes of Keaton, Chaplin, and Lloyd.

As cliché as the phrase is, that was too little, too late for me. Not that I’ll never give Harry Langdon another chance but there’s still plenty from the silent film stars I am more familiar with who I’d rather continue viewing their filmography instead… or perhaps even check out other forgotten silent film comedians.