User Reviews

Oddly, this Charley Chase short was included in the DVD "The Lost Films of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy: Volume 9"--even though neither Stan or Ollie were in the film nor did they apparently have anything to do with its production according to IMDb. What I think happened was that this was the last volume and they had some extra space, so they chucked in a couple Chase shorts (MIGHTY LIKE A MOOSE and MUM'S THE WORD).

While I loved MIGHTY LIKE A MOOSE, MUM'S THE WORD is far from Charley Chase's best because the plot is so poor. Charley's mother remarries and doesn't tell her new husband about her son. So, when Charley arrives, she introduces him as the new valet for her husband. Why not just tell him the truth? And why say he's a valet? Talk about contrived. The rest of the film consists of Charley bumbling and the husband thinking Charley is his wife's lover. About the only good thing is the ending--it was pretty clever and tied everything together well.

Overall, it's a watchable but far from stellar example of a Chase film. Great for fans but probably a silent that non-fans could do without.

I have't seen enough of Charley Chase's films to say if this is one of his best or worst, but of the ones I've seen, I'd have to say this is one of his better ones (I saw "Mighty Like a Moose" the other day and I thought that, overall, it wasn't as good as this one). The premise--Charley's mother has remarried but, for reasons of her own, hasn't told her new husband about Charlie. When he shows up for a visit, she has him pretend that he's a valet she's just hired--isn't particularly inventive, but Chase manages to do quite a bit with it. The first half of the film drags (actually, it drags quite a bit) but the last half picks up considerably. Young--she was only 19 when she made this--and very sexy Martha Sleeper plays Charley's love interest, who turns out to have been hired as the live-in maid of the house just when Charley gets there. Sleeper was a revelation to me--I had never heard or her before, and when I looked up her credits I was astounded to find out that she had appeared in almost 100 films. She had only been in the business for three years when she made this, but she handled her end like a pro. She and Charley worked very well together, especially in a funny scene where Charley is attempting to shave his new stepfather and Sleeper is trying to shine Charley's shoes at the same time (don't ask). She had a real flair for comedy, and didn't play it too broadly--which some actresses do when they don't have that much experience doing comedy--and had real chemistry with Chase. Plus, as I said, she's quite hot.

It looks like I think more of this picture than most of the others who've reviewed it here. I guess they've seen more of Charley's work than I have, but if this is an example of a Charley Chase film that ISN'T one of his better ones, than I'm going to have to check out a lot more of his work, because I think this short is really quite funny.

Buster Keaton once told an interviewer that he didn't care for farce comedy because farcical plots are based on falsehoods. That is, one character tells a lie, someone else tells another, and the whole thing snowballs. As Keaton astutely pointed out, if these people would just tell each other the truth you wouldn't have a story at all. Even so, and despite such flimsy underpinnings, farce can be enjoyable if a clever screenwriter manages to come up with a reasonably well-motivated story, good gag sequences and a witty line or two, especially if the piece is played full-tilt by spirited performers who believe wholeheartedly in what they're doing. But if the plot isn't properly motivated, or the gags are weak, or the performances are halfhearted, you've got a dud on your hands. Unfortunately, Mum's the Word is one of the misfires.

The whole plot of this film hinges on a middle-aged woman who has remarried, and who refuses to tell her new husband that she has a grown son; meanwhile, her husband is hiding a similar fact from his own past. Okay, that's a decent enough premise, but we need something more, we need to know WHY they are so determined to keep such significant secrets from each other. All it would take is a line or two of explanation to satisfy the viewer, but we're given nothing to go on, so everything that follows feels unmotivated.

Worse still, nothing especially funny develops. Charley Chase was a gifted comic, but like anyone else he needed decent material, and in Mum's the Word he doesn't have much to work with. There's a moderately funny sequence when Charley, pretending to be his new father-in-law's valet, attempts to give him a shave. But the gags consist mainly of spinning the man's chair and getting lather in his eye and his mouth; usually Chase could do better than that. Later Charley attempts a variation on the famous 'mirror routine' in which, seen only in silhouette, he appears to be his father-in-law's shadow. But again, the sequence fizzles out without much of a pay-off. (Chase had performed the routine to much better effect with his brother James Parrott in Sittin' Pretty, two years earlier.) Towards the end Mum's the Word does offer some nicely timed moments when the players sneak out of their rooms, encounter each other, and then dash back again. Otherwise, however, the enterprise feels somewhat strained.

Charley Chase is likable even when he's struggling with weak material (and for me that makes him the opposite of Jerry Lewis, who I dislike even when his material is good) but it's disheartening to see him struggle for laughs, as he does in Mum's the Word. Newcomers to Charley will find more to enjoy in some of his better comedies, such as Innocent Husbands or Mighty Like a Moose.

Virginia Pearson has married Anders Randolf, but hasn't told him she has a grown son in Charley Chase. When he comes to visit, she wants the old boy to like him first, so Charley has to valet for him. Meanwhile, there's new housemaid Martha Sleeper to attract Chase's interest, and to try to take off his shoes while he's shaving Randolf with a straight razor.

Ouch! It's a very funny and typical short comedy from Chase's peak silent period, a virtual three-act farce in two reels, punctuated. By Chase's great comedy sequences, with people sneaking around and missing discovery by fractions of seconds. The timing will be familiar to anyone who grew up, as I did, with Looney Tunes, and Friz Freleng's door-slamming routines, derived, as this one is, from stage farces.

Charley Chase and Martha Sleeper create sympathetic characters, and give this two-reel comedy enough energy to keep it going even when the story exhausts its possibilities. The rather flimsy premise is not interesting or imaginative enough to carry the 20-plus minutes of running time, so it really relies rather heavily on the characters.

Chase plays a young man making a surprise visit to his mother just after her re-marriage, who is then obliged to act as a valet to his stepfather until his mother can summon up the courage to tell her new husband who he really is. Chase then gets involved in a series of slapstick difficulties with Sleeper, as the new housemaid. The story is predictable, and it offers only a couple of good moments as the confusion gets sorted out.

The slapstick works better, and it includes a couple of sequences that are quite funny. The shoe mix-up and the subsequent shaving sequence both have some very amusing moments, and include some resourceful ideas. These sequences - which happen to the two in which Chase and Sleeper carry the action together - are the best in the movie. The rest is watchable and occasionally entertaining, but not quite up to that level. But the two stars do show that they can create some good comedy when given the right material to work with.