Victor Heerman and Hampton Del Ruth | Are Waitresses Safe? / 1917 [Status of film unknown]

chaos reigns

by Douglas Messerli

 

Victor Heerman and Hampton Del Ruth (directors) Are Waitresses Safe? / 1917 || status of film unknown

 

In this difficult to find film, Louise Fazenda is a working girl whose kitchen is in utter chaos when a guest with a cat (a lady performed in drag by Anthony O’Sullivan) allows her animal to consume the bird in a cuckoo clock and the mistress’ baby paints its face with jam. The girl is fired.

  

    Her next job is in a restaurant where she cooks up her powder puff among the eggs and biscuits. The chef (Glen Cavender) orders her to lighten them up, so she blows them up like balloons until they have the consistency of rubber balls, she being bounced out of the job as well.

      In her next position as the housekeeper to a wealthy family; when the family goes away on vacation she throws a party for her friends, and they turn the house topsy-turvy.

      Ben Turpin plays the working girl’s lover, Ralph.

 

(scenario based on descriptions of IMDb and elsewhere)

 

Los Angeles, July 11, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2022).