Cast overview: | |||
Bothwell Browne | ... | Captain Bob White | |
Ford Sterling | ... | Kaiser Bill | |
Malcolm St. Clair | ... | The Crown Prince Freddy (as Mal St. Clair) | |
Bert Roach | ... | Von Hindenburg | |
Eva Thatcher | ... | The Kaiserin | |
Marie Prevost | ... | A Daughter of Belgium | |
Ben Turpin | ... | A Prussian Guardsman | |
Charles Murray | ... | An Irish-American Soldier (as Charlie Murray) | |
Chester Conklin | ... | Officer of Death's Head Hussars | |
Heinie Conklin | ... | Prussian Guard Drill Leader (as Charles Lynn) | |
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Joseph Belmont | ... | Von Tirpitz (as Baldy Belmont) |
Captain Bob White, an American aviator is sent on a dangerous mission to Germany to steal the enemy's plans for an expected drive. Bob impersonates a woman in order to entrap the Kaiser whose weakness for women is well known. Bob flirts with the Kaiser, Hindenburg, and the Crown Prince, and each one becomes jealous of the others. Bob lures the Kaiser to his downfall with an Oriental dance. Hindenburg tells the Kaiser's wife that her husband is visiting a woman in her chambers, and the results prove disastrous for all three men. Bob eventually gains the military secrets and the enemy is defeated in time. Written by Pamela Short
BOSWELL BROWNE was a famous female impersonator of the WWI era appearing in vaudeville acts with his Salome routine and other comic acts as a female impersonator. Mack Sennett uses him here as the American soldier who uses his wiles on the Kaiser (FORD STERLING) and his son (BEN TURPIN) so that he can perform a Mata Hari kind of spying on the German army.
It's a strange comedy (to put it mildly) and if all the laughs weren't so dependent on outrageous slapstick buffoonery from the entire cast, it may have worked. Film quality is sometimes very poor due to age but for the most part it's given a halfway decent print on TCM that is at least watchable.
All of it is very obvious lowbrow humor making fun of the inept German army and it's only worth a look as a curiosity piece. Not at all in the same category as Chaplin's SHOULDER ARMS or his WWII comedy THE GREAT DICTATOR, it's merely fluff of a crude kind capitalizing on sophomoric humor.