trying to miss his own wedding
by
Douglas Messerli
Alfred
A. Cohn (screenplay, based on a story by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements),
Leslie Pearce (director) Adam’s Eve / 1929
Even here, where the character calls for
pure heterosexuality, he has drunk himself out of his mind, we suspect, simply
so that he might not have to go through with the marriage or perhaps to simply remove
it entirely from his consciousness.
Enjoying himself thoroughly among the
all-male company, Adam, when reminded by his best friend Jack (Paul Powell)
that it’s time to go home, doesn’t at all wish to leave. In his famed whine he
sounds like a young boy told that it’s time to go home from the circus.
Jack insists, however, planning to take
him to his place and put him to bed, which one suspects would be just fine with
Adam, particularly if Jack crawled into bed with him, as he throws his hands
around Jack’s necks insisting over and over that “You’re my very best friend.”
Adam is so drunk that he uses the famous
phrase of all such plastered idiots: “I drive better after I’ve had a few,” and
insists on driving, which we know immediately won’t end well. He hits a milk
truck and ends up crashing into a fire hydrant, water spraying everyone and the
police surely on their way.
As if to make sure that Adam is jailed
for his wedding, Jack insists he climb the fire escape to enter his window in
order to escape the police, while he will remain in the apartment to confront
them.
The drunken and confused man in tails
climbs until he sees the first open window, not Jack’s penthouse apartment, but
the flat of two chorines who share the place and who have opened to window
simply to determine what is going on with all the noise below and the arrival
of the police.
Most of this short movie is spent with
the standard vaudeville tricks of individuals entering the room at the very
moment where the other inspects the closet or visits the kitchen, the two women
just missing Adam as he, after discovering that individuals of other gender
inhabit the space, hides out like a terrified tortoise. We are certain that he
might spend even more time in the closet were it not that the large closet door
is a revolving one, with a Murphy bed attached.
The problem is that being a nice boy even
when he’s drunk, Adam has called his fiancée June (Frances Lee) to tell her
where he is—even taking time out to find out the apartment number.
June, being a forceful girl—the perfect
woman for a nebbish like Adam—this time encounters Peggy (Geneva Mitchell) on
the other end of the line, and hearing a woman’s voice determines to
immediately come over to check things out, telling Peggy her intentions, much
to the inhabitant’s surprise. Why should a woman wish to visit her at this time
of the night?
In the meantime, Adam continues to
escape being seen. But June, upon her arrival, immediately discovers her man in
a room filled with dropped stockings and lingerie, and, furious about the
situation attempts to get to the bottom of abysmal behavior. The other roommate
in the kitchen, hearing her threats, takes an escape route through the fire
escape and calls the police. But by the time they show up, Adam and June have
been swept back into the closest, and the cops find no one. Overhearing the girl’s
confusion, June finally believes Adam that his entry into the apartment was not
intentional, as the two lovers escape like the rabbit the actor Arthur has oft
been compared to.
In short, Arthur often played just such
roles of terrified Walter Mittys long before James Thurber created such a
figure, and thus escaped being cast only as a sissy or pansy.
Los
Angeles, July 10, 2022
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (July 2022).
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