The Bakery

Name: The Bakery
Director: Norman Taurog
Genre: Crime, Comedy, Action
Released: 1921
Cast: Larry Semon, Oliver Hardy, Frank Alexander, Norma Nichols, William Hauber

1921 Crime Comedy 2 reels Directed by Norman Taurog

About The Bakery

Larry (Larry Semon), a bakery clerk, turns a day's work into a string of accidents and at one point dumps the owner (Frank Alexander) into a vat of cake batter. The job is about to go. The foreman (Oliver Hardy, billed as Babe Hardy) is setting up a robbery. Larry stops the robbery and keeps his place. Norma Nichols plays the owner's daughter.

Cast & crew

More about The Bakery

Larry Semon and Norman Taurog directed and wrote it. Semon and Albert E. Smith produced. Vitagraph released the two-reeler on 20 June 1921.

Themes

A clerk who wrecks the shop
Batter as the gag
A robbery stopped from inside the bakery
bakery
cake batter
foreman
robbery
Larry Semon
Oliver Hardy

Making

Semon starred, co-wrote, co-directed, and co-produced, with Taurog sharing the writing and direction, the pairing they used on several Vitagraph shorts.

Music

Silent, with English intertitles.

Preservation

A copy is on Wikimedia Commons as The Bakery (1921).webm.

Notes

Oliver Hardy is credited as Babe Hardy and plays the foreman.
Frank Alexander, Semon's regular heavy, is the bakery owner.
Eva Thatcher plays a customer. William Hauber is a rival worker. Jack Duffy appears uncredited as an elderly shop owner.
Albert E. Smith, Vitagraph's head, shares the producer credit with Semon.
A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.

Scenes

Larry knocks the bakery owner into a vat of cake batter.
He breaks up the robbery the foreman has planned.

Also available

Wikimedia Commons (The Bakery (1921).webm)