Sweedie Learns to Swim
About Sweedie Learns to Swim
Sweedie, Wallace Beery's cook, goes to a dry-land swimming class, fights several pupils, and is thrown out. At home she fills the bathtub, then keeps going until the water is knee-deep and the plaster drops on a card game downstairs. The family finds her diving. She holds them off with a club until the police arrive. They chase her out and catch her in the lake.
Cast & crew
More about Sweedie Learns to Swim
Beery directed as well as played Sweedie. Joseph Anthony Roach wrote the scenario. Essanay released the one-reeler on 12 October 1914 through General Film. Ben Turpin plays the police captain, Leo White is Mr. Rich, and Betty Brown is Mrs. Rich. Charlotte Mineau is also in the cast.
Themes
Making
The dry-land class is a studio floor. The finish moves outside: a chase that ends with Sweedie in a real lake.
Preservation
Prints survive at the Library of Congress and UCLA, with 16mm copies in private hands. Public domain in the United States.
Notes
- The plot above is the text Essanay sent out with the film, as copied by Silent Era.
- Turpin's part is the captain of the life savers, not a fellow pupil.
- Prints are at the Library of Congress and the UCLA Film & Television Archive, plus 16mm reduction positives in private collections.
- Essanay released Sweedie the Laundress on 2 November 1914, three weeks after this one, again with Beery.
- Silent Era credits Beery as director of the one-reeler.
Scenes
- Sweedie is thrown out of the dry-land class after a fight.
- Water pours through the ceiling onto the card players.
- She faces the family with a club until the police chase her into the lake.
