Stan Laurel | Chasing the Chaser / 1925

getting her man

by Douglas Messerli

 

Stan Laurel, James Parrot, and Rob Wagner (screenplay), Stan Laurel (director) Chasing the Chaser / 1925

       

Two women, a wife (Marjorie White) and her busybody neighbor appear at the office of an attractive female detective (Frederick Kovert) who, when they ask to see her boss, pulls off her wig to reveal she is in drag—a surprise I’m certain to most of the audience of Stan Laurel’s short 10-minute film, Chasing the Chaser (1925).

    We’ve seen the husband for ourselves on a simple walk down the street where he is tempted, time and again, by the sight of the feminine form, following first one and then another. A nursemaid he finally follows to a drugstore (Fay Wray of King Kong fame) hands him the baby to care for while she enters the establishment. The baby inevitably creates chaos for the unsuspecting womanizer.

     The secret to discover the affairs of the husband, the detective assures the wife and her neighbor, is to hire a woman to test him out.

      The detective, pretending to be a new housekeeper puts the woman’s husband Gilroy (James Finlayson) through torture as she serves drinks, sits on his lap, and eventually gets him to make the move she is seeking so that she might blow the whistle calling forth the wife of nosey friend.

     Serving him a drink, dancing a tango, and finally pulling him down onto the floor with her, the detective gets her man.

      The husband, caught in the trap, is tossed out of the house by his wife, but at the last moment, realizing the tricks the detective has played on him—including his sudden perception that the maid was not after all a female—he suddenly comes to his USA patriarchal senses, pulling out a gun (as every red-hearted American citizen automatically does) pushes the detective out the door, while shooting at her through the now closed door in which her dress has been caught. The detective finally rips out of her skirt and runs off in her panties, her hips swaying as her heels hit the sidewalk.

      Sending the neighbor woman off as well, Gilroy turns to his wife, she making clear how sorry she is for having suspected him, but still pleading with him not to lay eyes on another woman again. He promises, as out the front window he catches a glimpse of another beautiful young girl.

     Finlayson, as always, is a joy to behold in his clumsy and ineffectual attempts at chasing and courting the female gender. But the real star of this early silent work is Frederick Kovert (sometimes known as Ko Vert), a true sex fiend determined to get her man—and her paycheck.

 

Los Angeles, June 27, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2022).