''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 *

as The Chief of Police *

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

. 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.
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References

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Plot

Cast

Production and reception

References

See also