User Reviews

First, fair warning: I am a great fan of Charley Chase and quite likely to enjoy any movie in which he gets to perform. That said, he's pretty good in this one as a slightly fey shoe clerk who develops a yen for a married woman and slips a note into her shoe -- which her husband finds, of course. The usual complications ensue.

Although Chase and Raymond Griffith would attempt to stand out from their Keystone co-stars as relatively normal people, usually the young lovers, at this stage Charley is still learning the craft and borrowing liberally from other, better known performers' bag of tricks. He runs through the detailed hand movements typical of Ford Sterling. His choice in hats and emphatic gestures mark him as gay, giving the audience a chance to snicker. He would develop this in his sound characters as "the fig", more of a slightly nervous, browbeaten older man.

For the rest of it, story is what dominates, helped by the great Keystone editing. The Keystone men fall into their standard roles -- Charles Murray as a porter, Chester Conklin as a Walrus type, and the Kops add to the mayhem. The whole thing is business as usual and decent enough by the contemporary standards without any of Sennett's big names around. For me, it's Charley that makes it more interesting than that, and I can't be sure if it's him or me.

This is an odd little short. A guy takes his wife into a shoe store and a VERY effeminate shoe clerk waits on her. Although he sure seemed gay, the guy slipped a note into the shoe she bought--asking to meet her. She doesn't realize there was a note but just happens to go to the park where they meet. So who DOES get the note--the jealous husband--wrote rushes off to intercept them. Then, doing what so often happens in slapstick films, the hubby begins wildly shooting! However, the prissy suitor manages to escape and hides out in a trunk...which is later delivered to the room belonging to the husband and wife!! So, once again, he has to beat a hasty retreat--and the Keystone Kops are called to put a stop to all this. However, these idiots mostly run around firing madly as well--and it all ends up in a silly mess.

This film would probably offend a few folks today with the effeminate shoe clerk. But, in spite of this, it's actually a pretty fair comedy...a very LOW comedy with its super-reliance on the cliché of the wild gun-play.

The Great Toe Mystery (1914)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Madcap comedy form Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios has a husband and wife going into a shoe store where the husband is outraged when a shoe clerk (Charley Chase) starts flirting with his wife. The clerk drops a note in her shoes to come meet him and this here leads to a crazy chase when the husband finds out. Sennett believed that if you kept everything moving at a fast enough pace then the viewer wouldn't have time to get bored. This might be true but I think it can also lead to the viewer simply losing track of what's going on, which is exactly what happened here. I've really got to give this film a lot of credit in regards to its editing because the final five or so minutes of this thing move so fast that it has to have some of the greatest editing I've seen from this period of film. There are so many scenes being inter-cut and so much action going on that I lost track of everything but that editing was certainly something to behold. Chase, in one of his biggest early performances, is pretty good as the sly flirt and I think fans of his will see several mannerisms that the comic actor would use in his later, more popular movies.

Plot in a Nutshell: A store clerk makes a pass at a married woman and incurs the wrath of her jealous husband.

Why I rated this a '4': apparently back in 1914, it was considered the height of comedy to (A) have various characters run around shooting handguns in public places and (B) have people get knocked over - constantly - like bowling pins. Include these two elements and you've got a sure winner! Or so they thought back then. That's really all this film has in the way of 'comedy' and...yeah...it's as unfunny as it sounds. Further perplexing is the title...it's called a 'mystery' but there is no mystery at all. It's about a guy trying to avoid a jealous husband. That's it. What mystery, again? I give it a few points because it is so darn old, but I challenge anyone to honesty say this is very entertaining. Not so much.

Times watched: 1. Would I watch again (Y/N)?: No chance.

This farce opens at a shoe store at which a sissy boy clerk falls in love with a pretty girl whose great toe is seen modestly coming out of the toe of her stocking. Her husband objects and when Willy calls there are doings at the house, up and down the stairs and up and down the dumbwaiter. It is sure to make 'em laugh. The cops appear. - The Moving Picture World, August 15, 1914