Fluttering Hearts

Name: Fluttering Hearts
Director: James Parrott
Genre: Comedy
Released: 1927
Duration: 23 min
Cast: Charley Chase, Martha Sleeper, Oliver Hardy, William Burress, Eugene Pallette

1927 Comedy 23 minutes Directed by James Parrott

About Fluttering Hearts

William Burress wants his daughter, Martha Sleeper, to marry a rich man and shows her a newspaper piece about the self-made millionaire Charley Chase. She reads a linen sale instead and drives off. A motorcycle cop, Eugene Pallette, chases her, wrecks his machine on Charley's golf clubs, and the three of them fight a crowd for sheets in a shop that will sell only one pair to a customer. Burress then hires Charley as a chauffeur and asks him to recover a letter for which Big Bill, Oliver Hardy, is demanding $10,000. At the nightclub Coffee Joe's, Charley gets in with a mannequin, takes the letter from Bill, and Bill shoots the dummy.

Cast & crew

More about Fluttering Hearts

James Parrott directed the Charley Chase series short for Hal Roach. H. M. Walker wrote the titles. Charley Chase is credited with the story. Pathé Exchange released it on 19 June 1927. Filmed 14 February to 1 March 1927, with retakes on 21 March. Copyrighted 18 May 1927. Production number B-20. Richard C. Currier edited. Two reels, 23 minutes, silent with English intertitles.

Themes

A linen sale that beats a marriage plan
A $10,000 letter
A mannequin taken on a date
Charley Chase
Martha Sleeper
Oliver Hardy
Eugene Pallette
blackmail

Making

The linen-store rush was staged as a crowd of women fighting over a one-to-a-customer sale, with Chase, Sleeper, and Pallette coming out in one another's hats.

Preservation

A print survives and is on Wikimedia Commons.

Notes

A newspaper in the opening calls Charley a former bootblack in Baltimore. Chase was from Baltimore.
Where Martha parks, a Piggly Wiggly stands across the road and the Culver Hotel is in the background.
Father and chauffeur stop at the Eastern Costume Company so Burress can dress as a woman. The club sends couples in down a slide.
The print has 33 intertitle cards, plus three advertisement cards.
Kay Deslys plays Big Bill's girl. Charlie Hall is the man under the parked car Martha hits. Edgar Dearing is the doorman.

Scenes

Martha, Charley, and the cop fight through a linen sale limited to one pair of sheets a customer.
Charley hides behind a mannequin in a booth while Big Bill buys the dummy a beer and hands over the letter.
Bill shoots the mannequin in the head, then sees that it is a dummy.