Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914)

A con man from the city dupes a wealthy country girl into marriage.

Directors:

Mack Sennett, Charles Bennett (uncredited)

Stars:

Charles Chaplin, Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Marie Dressler	...	Tillie
Charles Chaplin	...	The City Slicker
Mabel Normand	...	Mabel
Mack Swain	...	Tillie's Father
Charles Bennett	...	Douglas Banks - Tillie's Millionaire Uncle / 1st Restaurant Proprietor
Chester Conklin	...	Mr. Whoozis / Singing Waiter

Storyline

Charlie talks wealthy farmer's daughter Tillie into eloping with him (and taking her father's money). In the city Tillie gets drunk and lands in jail while Charlie runs off with her money and his old girlfriend Mabel. Later Charlie reads that Tillie (now working as a waitress) has inherited the estate of her multi-millionaire uncle. Charlie dumps Mabel and talks Tillie into moving into her uncle's villa, and Mabel arranges to become a housemaid there. The uncle (never really dead) returns and summons the police to have them all thrown out.

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Plot Keywords:

slapstick comedy | marriage | curtain call | revenge | millionaire | 

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Taglines:

in SOUND and MUSIC

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Genres:

Comedy

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

21 December 1914 (USA)

Also Known As:

For the Love of Tillie

Filming Locations:

Sans Souci Castle, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$50,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Keystone Film Company

Technical Specs

Runtime:

74 min 82 min (2003 restoration)

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Mack Swain, who played Tillie's father, was actually seven years younger than Marie Dressler, who played Tillie.

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Goofs

Tillie's father chases Tillie and Charlie around the farm in broad daylight. When he gives up and picks up his hoe to till the soil, the sun is now clearly behind him.

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Quotes

Police Chief: Have you a niece built like a battleship who calls herself Tillie?

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Alternate Versions

Re-released in the 1950s with a organ score and narration. The narration, though, was being read while the title cards were seen.

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Connections

Followed by Tillie's Tomato Surprise (1915)

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Soundtracks

New Orleans Bump
(used as a music insert in later public domain sound copies)
Written and performed by Ferdinand 'Jelly Roll' Morton

User Reviews

Worth Seeing For the Cast, Not For the Comedy

The comedy in "Tillie's Punctured Romance" is admittedly mediocre, but many who love classic cinema will still find this feature worth seeing once just for its cast. Besides Mabel Normand, it has Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressler in some of their earliest film roles, plus Edgar Kennedy and Mack Swain in smaller roles, and of course the Keystone Cops. Most of these wonderful performers are not shown to their best advantage here, but it is still a rare chance to see them all together.

The film in itself is only fair. The story-line had possibilities, but Mack Sennett's disjointed, knockabout style just doesn't work very well in a full-length feature. Most of the material is quite predictable after a while, and except for the "Cops", who have a few funny moments, the cast members do not have roles that give them a chance to do what they do best. There are a handful of decent gags amongst the routine physical humor, and a film-within-a-film sequence that comes off all right, but in general there just was not enough worthwhile material to fill up a running time of this length. With this cast, though, it might have made a very good two- or three-reeler.