Kill or Cure
About Kill or Cure
A door-to-door salesman (Stan Laurel) tries to sell Professor I.O. Dine's Knox-All. The label claims the bottle works on coughs, colds, toothache, furniture polish, after-shave, fleas, baldness, grease spots, machine oil, and hair bleach. Customers shove him off, including an aggressive woman and a deaf man. A sheriff and a car owner join the trouble his samples start.
Cast & crew
More about Kill or Cure
Scott Pembroke directed the short for Hal Roach. Katherine Grant plays a maid with a birdcage, Noah Young a car owner, Eddie Baker the sheriff, and Mark Jones Speedy Sam. Released 15 July 1923.
Themes
Background
Released in July 1923, during national Prohibition, when a bottle sold as medicine could also be read as a drink.
Making
Roach's unit built the reel around one prop, the Knox-All bottle, and a salesman who will not stop pitching it.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
Prints survive. A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Wikipedia notes that prints survive.
- Helen Gilmore plays an aggressive non-customer, George Rowe a deaf man, and Sammy Brooks a short non-customer.
- The bottle's label lists coughs, colds, toothache, furniture polish, flea killer, baldness, and machine oil as uses for the same mixture.
Scenes
- Laurel reads off the impossible list of uses printed on the Knox-All bottle.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons
