From the opening sequence to the final fade-out, Too Many Mammas is a great little short. Charley Chase provides a solid reel's worth of skillfully executed physical comedy, precisely coordinated farcical mix-ups, and clever gags. Charley plays the lead role, but he's assisted in a big way by Martha Sleeper, Noah Young, and other familiar members of the Hal Roach stock company. I think this effort ranks with the very best of the one-reel comedies Chase crafted when his screen character was still known as "Jimmy Jump." For that matter, Too Many Mammas packs as many laughs as some of Charley's superb two-reel classics from his 1925-29 heyday.
Charley, or Jimmy rather, works in an office where it seems almost everyone is having an affair, illicit or otherwise, despite the admonition on the wall: Business Before Pleasure. The film kicks off with a touch of sci-fi: a futuristic telephone installed in the office permits callers to see the person they're speaking with, and vice versa. (Hmm . . . I wonder if those things will ever catch on?) Thus when the boss receives a call from his mistress (played by the sexy Olive Borden) phoning naked from her bathtub, she is quite visible to the highly embarrassed Jimmy when he takes the phone. Pleasant as it may be, however, this prehistoric version of Skype turns out to be a red herring where our story is concerned. The plot proper gets under way when the boss invites his girlfriend to a café called The Humming Bird, and compels Jimmy to come along as his "beard," just in case word gets back to his wife. Consequently Jimmy feels obligated to lie to his own girlfriend and tell her he can't take her to the theater because he has to go to a directors' meeting. Now the ground is prepared for both Jimmy and his boss to get into plenty of trouble with their respective partners before the evening is out.
The rest of the film takes place at the Humming Bird, which appears to be quite a swinging joint. This is where we meet Martha Sleeper, who makes a strong impression as a hardboiled Apache dancer who is moved when Jimmy attempts to come to her "rescue," and returns the favor later on. It's a highlight when Jimmy is forced to masquerade as Martha's dance partner to allay the suspicions of her tough husband; Chase was often at his best in comic dance sequences, and this one is a particular treat. Eventually, the boss's wife arrives, followed by Jimmy's girlfriend -- accompanied by her tough brother, a bootlegger -- and things really start to cook.
Chase sets up his situation so briskly, and packs so many laughs into such a brief running time, it's hard to believe this short is over in less than ten minutes. One gag in particular, involving red-hot mama Olive Borden as an obliging human prop, is hilarious and worth the price of admission in itself. As a viewer of the day might have said, Too Many Mammas is a pip!
