Bell Boy 13 (1923) User Reviews

MacLean Hops To It

[boblipton · 7/10 · 26 January 2020]

Douglas MacLean is the nephew of John Stepping, who owns a bond brokerage house. MacLean wants to marry pretty actress Margaret Loomis. Stepping disapproves, and disinherits MacLean. When MacLean speaks with Miss Loomis at her hotel, she says a young man should work. Confronted with the prospect of working or starving, MacLean becomes a bellboy at the hotel, whither Stepping comes to track him down.

Looking at this movie, I was struck by how much it resembled the sort of feature that Harold Lloyd was appearing in for Hal Roach; there is even a thrill comedy sequence in which MacLean is perched on a high ledge, overlooking traffic. It's hardly surprising, as both men were working as light comedians, and making use of the same sort of gags. MacLean's feature, is perhaps better balanced, in that Stepping gets a funny sequence to show off his comedy chops, as he wanders from hotel room to hotel room, thinking each his own, encountering pretty girls in various states of undress.

After appearing on the stage and as a supporting juvenile, MacLean was hired by Thomas Ince to play the young go-getter in comedies. With his breakout movie, 23 1/2 HOUR LEAVE, MacLean was set in his star persona, a character he would play through the end of the silent era. At that point, he shifted to the role of producer, and continued through 1941. He died in 1967, age 77.

Although his disappearance from the screen made his memory vanish except for a few specialists in old films, his work is strong, and naturalistic. During the 1920s, he starred in more comedy features than the 'Big Three' - Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd - put together. working with the Library of Congress, silent film historian Ben Model has released this forgotten comedy and MacLean's ONE A MINUTE on dvd, with his own delightful score.

An Ideal Douglas MacLean Farce

[briantaves · 30 October 2011]

After the Christmas 1922 hit, The Hottentot, starring Douglas MacLean, another of his comedies was released by First National at the beginning of January, 1923, Bell Boy 13. Following so closely on the heels of The Hottentot, Bell Boy 13 benefited from its predecessor's spectacular success, but at the same time the new release was widely regarded as a lesser, shorter film. Yet today, with only the comparison of the surviving shortened version, Fast and Furious, to approximate the full length of The Hottentot, the full-length Bell Boy 13 seems ideal.

In Bell Boy 13, MacLean plays Harry Elrod, a young man dreaming of his wedding and inheritance, although his uncle forbids his marriage to an actress. Asked in the office to mail some bonds worth $25,000, he promptly pockets and forgets them, but is trailed throughout the movie by an apparently crooked menace trying to pilfer them. In one sequence, steadily building in amusement, the crook repeatedly almost gains the bonds, but sudden, unintentional movements by Elrod give him the slip.

Intending to elope, Elrod is instead taken home by his uncle for a sing-along with a dreadful marriage prospect, and must fake a fire to escape. He is then followed by the fire-engine, assuming he is the chief because of the helmet inadvertently placed on his head. Meeting his girlfriend in a hotel, he learns that she has changed her mind, and decided they must have his uncle's consent, and Elrod must work for a living. Receiving a note that he is disinherited, Elrod takes the advice of the delivery boy and becomes a bell hop himself.

Both his girlfriend and uncle disapprove of the job, and when his uncle gets him fired, an intertitle announces "Bolshevism!" Elrod rallies his former coworkers by asking "Why work when you can go on strike?" and "Do you want to be crushed under the heel of capital?" The manager of the hotel, now in chaos, tells the uncle to either buy the business or call off his nephew. Elrod indicates the strike will only end if a wedding is allowed, and the uncle finally capitulates. At that very moment, the villain gets hold of the bonds, but simply mails them himself—he is a harmless lunatic, billed in the opening credits as "?". Nonetheless, the device has provided laughs and tension, and the whole movie succeeds in creating a tone of light farce. William Seiter's direction heightens the amusement through the choice of shots and editing.

Violet Clark adapted the story by Austin Gill for the five reel movie. Cooperation in the scenes with the fire and fire truck were secured thanks to the good relations with the Los Angeles Fire Department through the production of Bell Boy 13 producer Thomas Ince's documentary, Fighting the Fire Fiend (1920), as revealed in my Ince biography. After just over a year in release, Bell Boy 13 grossed $261,135; it had cost $111,597 to produce.