"Shanghaied Lovers" was only the third short starring Harry Langdon made at Mack Sennett Studios, and it was unavailable or presumed lost for many years. It was not even possible to release it in the otherwise-comprehensive set of Langdon's silents from Allday Entertainment in 2007. Now a company called Looser than Loose has restored the short from two different sources and made it available to us.
Somewhat surprisingly, here, Harry is already essentially the stunned, childlike innocent whom he seemed not yet to have developed in his previous two Sennett films and who would bring him his success in his comedy career. He's a little more proactive and violent than later Harry, but this shows he had a handle on his character very early in his film career. As the title suggests, Harry and his new bride, after a funny sequence in which Harry reacts in impotent shock at a series of every conceivable unlucky omen befalls them, end up on a rough ship, with Harry Shanghaied and Alice Day sneaking aboard to be with him.
Already there is a sense in this film that the humor comes out of Harry Langdon's helplessness and reactions rather than the frenetic material typical of a Sennett film. There's some typical knockabout fighting in one scene, but the real laughs come from the fact that while the ship is flooding Harry is meekly trying to get in the line to talk to the captain, then doing his best to get out of the way of his fists. In other funny scenes, the laughs after Harry has accidentally delivered meals of rubber-band soup and cat, the laughs come as he concernedly watches them being eaten, then he expression as he has to eat them himself.
After Alice Day has dressed up as a mustachioed sailor, much of the gags are based in gay-panic humor as Harry tries to evade her advances and runs scared from her kisses. Probably the funniest moment of the short is simply Harry's expression when he's told that he is to bunk up with the slight little sailor who suspiciously tried to hug him earlier.
"Shanghaied Lovers" also introduces the sweet-sad undertone that was such an effective counterpoint in many of Langdon's silent shorts, spending a scene with Harry before the mast as he cries over being unable to be with his new bride (who, little does he know, is just below deck).
The short as a whole has rather that feel of being a disparate collection of gags connected only their setting or situation that a lot of the Sennett films of the time had, but Harry has already, it seems, has had a transformative impact on the house style. It's a very funny short showing Harry Langdon already a truly unique character in the world of comedy working his magic, and we're very lucky to have it viewable again.
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