Yankee Doodle in Berlin (1919)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Director:

F. Richard Jones

Writer:

Mack Sennett (story)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

Behind enemy lines, Captain Bob White disguises himself as a woman in order to fool members of the German High Command, including the Kaiser himself. |

Plot Keywords:

Kaiser | Aviation | Paul Von Hindenburg | Hoax | City Name In Title

Cast

Bothwell Browne	...	Captain Bob White
Ford Sterling	...	The Kaiser
Malcolm St. Clair	...	The Crown Prince (as Mal St. Clair)
Bert Roach	...	Von Hindenburg
Ben Turpin	...	A Guardsman
Charles Murray	...	An Irish Soldier (as Charlie Murray)
Marie Prevost	...	A Belgian Girl
Eva Thatcher	...	The Kaiserin
Joseph Belmont	...	Von Tirpitz (as Baldy Belmont)
Chester Conklin	...	Officer of Death's Head Hussars
Phyllis Haver	...	Undetermined Role
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Juanita Hansen

Also Known As:

The Kaiser's Last Squeal (USA)

Runtime:

58 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Company:

Mack Sennett Comedies

Sennett beats the Kaiser

A funny and stylistically interesting feature from the Sennett studio directed by wunderkind Richard Jones. Although his comedies generally featured human-looking comics for Sennett and Roach, as opposed to the grotesques made popular at Keystone, in this one he combines the two styles: the Allies look and act like normal people, but the Germans are in the full grotesque makeup of the earlier films, acting with the exaggerated mannerisms one expects from the Sennett studio. The entire Sennett company is on view here and the jokes are crude, take advantage of the propaganda of the era -- there is a joke about German soldiers capturing a Belgian convent -- and funny.

If you don't know this style of comedy, you may be taken aback by it. If, however, you like this sort of thing -- and I do -- you will have a lot of fun.