This is the entirety (an hour and twenty-one minutes) of a movie that changed my life a little. It was one of a number of features assembled by a man named Robert Youngson who in the late fifties/early sixties liked to prowl through vaults of silent movie comedies, pick out the best scenes and assemble them into compilation films. He was widely criticized for truncating and altering a lot of classic comedy and also for adding in inappropriate (some thought) music and intrusive (everyone thought) narration.
Then again, he was also praised for shining a spotlight on comedians and comedies that were long forgotten and difficult to see anywhere in any form back then. A lot of my love for silent movies and performers like Laurel, Hardy, Keaton, et al came from Channel 9 here in Los Angeles showing Youngson's films over and over and over. Often, it was on a program they had called The Million Dollar Movie and the way it worked may seem counter-intuitive but I guess it worked for a while.
Each week, one movie was designated as "The Million Dollar Movie" and I don't think any of them cost a million dollars to make. Some of them probably haven't grossed that much to this day. That film aired eight times that week…occasionally, nine. They ran it in prime-time Monday through Friday and then twice on Saturday and sometimes once on Sunday. This is the same movie we're talking about.
I recall watching the feature below, When Comedy Was King, multiple times the week it was The Million Dollar Movie; likewise, an earlier Youngson cut-and-paste job called The Golden Age of Comedy. They also ran both at times when they were not The Million Dollar Movie, especially following a baseball game or other sporting event. If the game ran long, a Youngson compilation was easy to chop down.
This is not the best way to see this material but when I was ten years old, it was just about the only way. I especially loved the last sequence here with Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy. It was their 1929 short Big Business, which ran 20 minutes in its original release but for his purposes, Mr. Youngson scissored it down to about ten. It was still funny at ten but better in every way when I finally saw the whole thing.
Then again, some of the clips of the lesser comedians were probably improved by being whittled down to their best moments. Keep that in mind as you watch this if you watch this…