A Rainy Knight

Mack Sennett had been the King of Comedy for a decade, but his audience had remained largely unchanged. His stuff played well in the small towns of the countryside but if the big critics liked them, they didn't let the news get into the newspapers.

Given the changes of the 1920s, the movie audience had changed. There was now a large, middle class audience and they wanted something that looked more real. They wanted people who looked like them and plots that made sense. Sennett had already tapped into this vein with his features for Mabel Normand, but he was ready to try for it in his short subjects too. So director Lloyd Bacon, one of the Warner Brothers' workhorse directors in the 1930s, directed this one with much more verisimilitude than you'd expect from the studio that was also producing SUPER-HOOPER-DYNE LIZZIES. There are several scenes which are not only funny, they are also charming -- the one in which Raymond McKee has rescued Eugenia Gilbert and she changes out of her wet clothes behind a backlit sheet is excellent.

Sennett would have his staff continue in this vein later in the "Smith Family" saga, again with McKee in the lead. Although he is remembered for his wild slapstick, he was always on the lookout for new audiences to conquer.