The same year that Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton invaded Coney Island (1917), Marie Dressler also had a comic romp at that famed playground. In her third and final outing as Tillie, she plays an unhappy wife who decides to have FUN and teams up with henpecked neighbor (Johnny Hines) to have a whirl. When their taxi crashes, they run for it rather than get stuck at the police station. They escape in an ice wagon but then need hot toddies to warm up. After a stein of beer as well, they're both bombed so they hit the amusement park.
No real plot but lots of slapstick action and terrific views of 1917 Long Island and Coney Island. The rides are primitive but good enough to allow Dressler to fall and tumble and mug for the camera. Hines is funny (though certainly no Chaplin, Dressler's co-star in Tillie's Punctured Romance) and is an foil. Dressler was 49 when she made this film; Hines was 22! Not a great comedy, but they are fun to watch, and it's a miracle a print of this still exists. Frank Beamish is the husband, Rubye de Remer the wife, and Nora Cecil can be seen at the ice cream stand, which seems to be an early Tim Horton's.
Dressler may well have been the funniest woman in the history of films, so it's nice to be able to see her early slapstick silents. But by 1918 her film career was gone. She returned at the end of the silent era, had a notable hit in The Patsy with Marion Davies, made the transition to talkies and would win an Oscar for Min and Bill. By the time of her death in 1934 she was the biggest box office draw in the country.
No real plot but lots of slapstick action and terrific views of 1917 Long Island and Coney Island. The rides are primitive but good enough to allow Dressler to fall and tumble and mug for the camera. Hines is funny (though certainly no Chaplin, Dressler's co-star in Tillie's Punctured Romance) and is an foil. Dressler was 49 when she made this film; Hines was 22! Not a great comedy, but they are fun to watch, and it's a miracle a print of this still exists. Frank Beamish is the husband, Rubye de Remer the wife, and Nora Cecil can be seen at the ice cream stand, which seems to be an early Tim Horton's.
Dressler may well have been the funniest woman in the history of films, so it's nice to be able to see her early slapstick silents. But by 1918 her film career was gone. She returned at the end of the silent era, had a notable hit in The Patsy with Marion Davies, made the transition to talkies and would win an Oscar for Min and Bill. By the time of her death in 1934 she was the biggest box office draw in the country.