Charlie Murray was one of Sennett's first stars at Keystone, playing a lower-class worker (usually Irish) who engaged in hard labor and hard drinking. In this one, playing a hotel porter, he does a lot of heavy lifting, from over-sized steamer trunks to drunken guests. The result is a fairly standard and fairly good Keystone if, by 1915, a year after Chaplin had come onto the movie screen, already a bit old-fashioned.
It has the usually Keystone pacing, which may seem a bit odd to the modern eye. It does, however, seem to have the earliest Murphy Bed gag, beating Chaplin's 1 AM by about a year. As all lovers of old movie comedy know, a Murphy Bed, with its inevitable tendency to fold occupants into the wall at inopportune moments, is a key bit of comedy construction, exceeded only by the upper berth of a railway train.
Murray performs the gags in a straightforward fashion, moving inexorably from one to the next. That has its own charm. Reasonably enjoyable.
It has the usually Keystone pacing, which may seem a bit odd to the modern eye. It does, however, seem to have the earliest Murphy Bed gag, beating Chaplin's 1 AM by about a year. As all lovers of old movie comedy know, a Murphy Bed, with its inevitable tendency to fold occupants into the wall at inopportune moments, is a key bit of comedy construction, exceeded only by the upper berth of a railway train.
Murray performs the gags in a straightforward fashion, moving inexorably from one to the next. That has its own charm. Reasonably enjoyable.
