A Muddy Romance
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About A Muddy Romance
Mabel Normand is to be married. Ford Sterling, the jilted suitor, will not let the wedding proceed. She and the other suitor, Charles Inslee, take a minister out in a boat on a lake to get away from him. Sterling fires from the bank. Keystone cops pile into rescue boats. Sterling, also playing the water engineer in some credits, opens a valve and drains the lake, and the wedding party and the cops are left in the mud.
Cast & crew
More about A Muddy Romance
Mack Sennett directed and produced. Mutual released it on 20 November 1913. The working title was The Lake. Some of the footage was shot at Echo Park in Los Angeles. Mack Swain plays the police captain and the water engineer. Roscoe Arbuckle is one of the cops. Minta Durfee plays Mabel's mother. Charles Avery is listed as the minister. The film was reissued in 1918 by W. H. Productions as Muddled in Mud. Sennett does not appear to act in it. Public domain in the United States.
Themes
Making
Keystone used Echo Park and then emptied the water for the last gag, so the cops and the wedding boat sit in mud.
Preservation
Prints survive in private collections as 16mm and 8mm reductions. Public domain in the United States. A 1918 reissue was titled Muddled in Mud.
Notes
- Also known as Muddled in Mud.
- Silent Era notes pies, a spider, and a telephone among the gags, along with the boats.
- Prints survive as 16mm and 8mm reductions in private collections.
- A Slapstick Encyclopedia listing gives 22 November 1913. Silent Era's release date is 20 November.
- The lake was a real park lake, not a tank on the Keystone lot.
Scenes
- Sterling shoots at the wedding boat from the bank.
- The cops fall out of their own boats.
- The valve opens, the lake empties, and everyone is standing in mud.
