Rips and Rushes
About Rips and Rushes
In a dance studio, three suitors compete for Girlie. Her father prefers His Lordship. She prefers the handsomest of the beaus. Vases break and trousers rip. She climbs out the window with him.
Cast & crew
More about Rips and Rushes
Larry Semon directed the one-reel knockabout and wrote it with Graham Baker. Greater Vitagraph copyrighted it on 29 January 1917, LP10088, and released it on 5 February 1917 through V-L-S-E. Hughie Mack plays Vernon Rastle. James Aubrey plays His Lordship. Alice Mann plays Girlie. John Costello plays her father. Joe Simberg, also known as Joe Rock, plays the beau she wants. The surviving print runs 14 minutes.
Themes
Making
Semon staged the courtship as a studio wreck: broken vases, ripped pants, then a window exit. The print was copied at 18 frames per second and runs silent, with no music.
Music
Silent. The preserved copy has no music.
Preservation
The Library of Congress holds a 35mm print from a nitrate found at the New Zealand Film Archive. Colorlab completed the work in 2013. The copy runs 14 minutes.
Notes
- Semon does not appear. The National Film Preservation Foundation still ties the pace of the gags to him.
- Aubrey was British and had come to the United States with Fred Karno's troupe, as Chaplin had.
- The Big V Riot Squad is credited: Joe Simberg, Earl Montgomery, Pietro Aramondo, Murray Simberg, and Edward Dunn.
- AFI notes that three of them, not yet identified, appear briefly as policemen in the chase. Simberg is the suitor who is on screen the most.
- Motion Picture News of 22 September 1917 wrongly described a 17 September release starring Semon and a kidnapping plot that is not this film.
- Colorlab finished the preservation in 2013 from a New Zealand Film Archive nitrate, under a Save America's Treasures grant.
Scenes
- Vases go over and trousers rip while the three suitors crowd the dance studio.
- Girlie gets out the window with the beau her father did not choose.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Rips and Rushes (1917).webm)
- National Film Preservation Foundation
