''For Two Pins'' is a lost 1914 American silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company and starring Jimmy Hodges, Marguerite Ne Moyer, and
Raymond McKee
Eldon Raymond McKee (December 7, 1892 – October 3, 1984), also credited as Roy McKee, was an American stage and screen actor. His film debut was in the 1912 production ''The Lovers' Signal''. Over the next 23 years, he performed in no less ...
. Also among the cast was
Oliver Hardy
Oliver Norvell Hardy (born Norvell Hardy; January 18, 1892 – August 7, 1957) was an American comic actor and one half of Laurel and Hardy, the double act that began in the era of silent films and lasted from 1926 to 1957. He appeared with his c ...
, who had a small role as a policeman.
Plot
John mislays his favorite tie pin. He encounters a drunk on the street who is wearing a similar pin, and believing that the drunk has stolen it from him, John takes it. The police, summoned by the drunk, try to arrest John, who resists and runs away with the police in pursuit. When he arrives home, he finds his wife Martha wearing his pin. She surreptiously pins it on the back of the drunk, and when the police discover it there, they throw the drunk into a creek.
[''The Lubin Bulletin'' vol. 1, no. 12 (May 29, 1914), p. 20]
[Rob Stone, ''Laurel or Hardy: The Solo Films of Stan Laurel and Oliver "Babe" Hardy'' (Temecula, CA: Split Reel Books, 1996), pp. 7–8.]
Cast
* Jimmy Hodges as John Dunn
* Marguerite Ne Moyer as Martha Dunn
* James Hevener as The Drunk
*
Raymond McKee
Eldon Raymond McKee (December 7, 1892 – October 3, 1984), also credited as Roy McKee, was an American stage and screen actor. His film debut was in the 1912 production ''The Lovers' Signal''. Over the next 23 years, he performed in no less ...
as The Chief of Police
*
Oliver Hardy
Oliver Norvell Hardy (born Norvell Hardy; January 18, 1892 – August 7, 1957) was an American comic actor and one half of Laurel and Hardy, the double act that began in the era of silent films and lasted from 1926 to 1957. He appeared with his c ...
as a policeman (uncredited)
Production and reception
''For Two Pins'' was filmed in
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the seat of Duval County, with which the ...
, at the Jacksonville unit of the
Lubin Manufacturing Company
The Lubin Manufacturing Company was an American motion picture production company that produced silent films from 1896 to 1916. Lubin films were distributed with a Liberty Bell trademark.
History
The Lubin Manufacturing Company was formed in 1 ...
, under the supervision of
Arthur Hotaling
Arthur Douglas Hotaling (February 3, 1873 – July 13, 1938) was an American film director, producer and writer. He directed 113 films between 1910 and 1928, including the 1914 film ''Outwitting Dad'', which featured the onscreen debut of ...
.
[ It was a short split-reel comedy, lasting approximately 7–8 minutes, and sharing a single reel of film with a second, unrelated comedy, '' The Particular Cowboys'', featuring Frances Ne Moyer and Raymond McKee.][ The films were released by the General Film Company on May 26, 1914.][
''For Two Pins'' is one of several short comedies made in the spring of 1914 that include the earliest screen appearances of ]Oliver Hardy
Oliver Norvell Hardy (born Norvell Hardy; January 18, 1892 – August 7, 1957) was an American comic actor and one half of Laurel and Hardy, the double act that began in the era of silent films and lasted from 1926 to 1957. He appeared with his c ...
. In most of these films he was an uncredited extra
Extra or Xtra may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Film
* ''The Extra'' (1962 film), a Mexican film
* ''The Extra'' (2005 film), an Australian film
Literature
* ''Extra'' (newspaper), a Brazilian newspaper
* ''Extra!'', an American me ...
playing one of a group of cowboys or, as here, policemen.[ Although the films themselves do not survive and Hardy is not credited in the studio's advertisements, he can often be recognized in surviving promotional stills.
The bumbling cops who appeared in ''For Two Pins'' and many other Lubin split-reel silent comedies were modeled on the ]Keystone Kops
The Keystone Cops (often spelled "Keystone Kops") are fictional, humorously incompetent policemen featured in silent film slapstick comedies produced by Mack Sennett for his Keystone Film Company between 1912 and 1917.
History
The idea for the ...
, who appeared in shorts produced by Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett (born Michael Sinnott; January 17, 1880 – November 5, 1960) was a Canadian-American film actor, director, and producer, and studio head, known as the 'King of Comedy'.
Born in Danville, Quebec, in 1880, he started in films in the ...
for the Keystone Film Company
Keystone Studios was an early film studio founded in Edendale, California (which is now a part of Echo Park) on July 4, 1912 as the Keystone Pictures Studio by Mack Sennett with backing from actor-writer Adam Kessel (1866–1946) and Charles ...
. Within the studio the Lubin cops were known as the Riverside Police, named after the Riverside district of Jacksonville, where the films were shot.[ Most of the reviews of ''For Two Pins'' in the trade papers focused on the role of the cops as the film's primary laugh producers. ''The New York Dramatic Mirror'' wrote, "While not to be taken seriously as concerns its plot, there are in this the phoney police and all the trained tumblers that the company could command",][ ''The Bioscope'' noted briefly that "the full strength of the force is employed upon a farcical business", and the judgment of ''Moving Picture World'' was that "the Lubin comedy police force always compel laughter".''Moving Picture World'', vol. 20, no. 11 (June 15, 1914), p. 1540.]
/ref>
References
{{reflist
See also
* List of American films of 1914
A list of American films released in 1914.
See also
* 1914 in the United States
References
External links
1914 filmsat the Internet Movie Database
{{DEFAULTSORT:American films of 1914
1914
Films
A film also called a movie, ...
* Oliver Hardy filmography
__NOTOC__
These are the films of Oliver Hardy as an actor. For the filmography of Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were a British-American Double act, comedy duo act during the early Classical Hollywood cinema, Classical Hollywood era of Am ...
1914 films
1914 short films
American silent short films
Silent American comedy films
American black-and-white films
1914 comedy films
Films directed by Arthur Hotaling
American comedy short films
1910s American films