Johnny and Emma Ray | A Peaceful Flat / 1917

neighborly revenge

by Douglas Messerli

 

Johnny and Emma Ray (writers and performers, as the Caseys) A Peaceful Flat / 1917

 

Johnny and Emma Ray’s Reserve Photo Play film of 1917 features the comic duo as a couple, the Caseys much besieged by the children and the parents of the Little family residing in the same apartment dwelling.

 

    The 15.45-minute film begins with Casey attempting to take an afternoon nap on the apartment building’s front stoop. The Little children, male and female, taunt him by waving a weed and a turtle on a string into his snoring face. When he finally catches the girl attempting to play yet another trick on him, he grabs her up to spank her bottom, Mrs. Little catching sight of the act from an upper window screaming down to him to let her little innocents alone. Even after he gives up the idea of corporal punishment, she throws a jug from her window that lands on his head, leaving him dizzy and spinning around in space.

      When Mrs. Casey discovers him in that condition, she immediately attempts to determine what happened and on perceiving the guilty party rushes up to the Little apartment to scold the perpetrator. Mrs. Little immediately goes into full battle as the two women punch it out and pull each other’s hair, with Mrs. Little clearly winning the match and sending Mrs. Casey on her way.

      When Mr. Casey observes his disheveled wife and hears what has happened, he too climbs the stairs to the Little apartment to have it out with the neighborhood monster. Mrs. Little, seeing him coming, pulls out a gun and shoots at him several times, forcing him also to retreat the stoop where both Caseys now mend their wounds.

      A few minutes later, Mr. Casey attempts to water the front patch of grass. But the naughty Little brats turn off the hose, and switch it back on again just when he isn’t expecting the flow of the water so that the hose spurts all over face and chest. Pulling the watering hose away from his face, he sprays Mr. Little who just at that moment has returned home from work.

      Mr. Little, like his wife, punches out Casey for his actions, leaving the man again in a spin of regret. But Little has also dropped a piece of paper he was carrying upon which is written a note from a female who plans to call him that evening for a secret date.

      Finally seeing a way to get even with their violent neighbors, the Caseys plot out a grand deception. Casey calls Little and, presumably in a woman’s voice, convinces Mr. Little that she will be in the nearby garden, heavily veiled, at 7:45.

       At the dinner table, Little stands announcing that he has joined the “home guard” and must meet up with others at 7:45, soon after leaving the apartment to make his date.

 

      Casey, dressed in drag waits in the park for Little’s arrival as Mrs. Casey rushes up to tell Mrs. Little that she’s observed her husband go off with a strange woman.

       Rushing out of the apartment Mrs. Little arrives in the garden to find her husband just about to embrace the veiled siren. Cuffing him, she pulls him away and beats her husband with a stick as she marches him down the street, much to the amusement of the Caseys who have finally bested their troublesome enemies.

       Once more, drag is used here simply as a comic device with no homosexual implications except that unknowingly the neighbor is ready to embrace the disguised male whom he hates.

 

Los Angeles, May 31, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2022).