The Mystery of the Leaping Fish
About The Mystery of the Leaping Fish
Coke Ennyday, a scientific detective played by Douglas Fairbanks, divides the day into sleep, eat, dope, and drinks. He takes cocaine to get going and injects it into people he wants to stop. The police ask him to trace opium hidden in leaping fish. He tastes the drug. Along the way he gets a fish-blower, played by Bessie Love, out of a blackmail. Tod Browning wrote the story. Anita Loos wrote the titles. John Emerson is the director named on Wikipedia. The catalog also credits Christy Cabanne.
Cast & crew
More about The Mystery of the Leaping Fish
Triangle Film Corporation released the short. John Leezer photographed it. Alma Rubens, Tom Wilson, and George Hall are billed. A complete 35mm print survives and is in the public domain in the United States. Existing listings time it at 25 minutes. Wikidata does not print a length.
Themes
Making
Browning’s story and Loos’s titles turn a Holmes parody into a detective who keeps his cocaine on the desk and uses it on other people.
Look
John Leezer shot Fairbanks at the detective’s desk and with the fish props.
Preservation
A complete 35mm print survives and is in the public domain in the United States.
Notes
- The name Coke Ennyday is the Sherlock Holmes joke. The film treats the drugs as gags.
- Love’s character blows up the leaping-fish props.
- An Internet Archive copy is filed as MysteryOfTheLeapingFish_348.
- A Commons file uses the 1916 title.
Scenes
- Ennyday’s day is marked sleep, eat, dope, and drinks.
- He injects an opponent to stop him.
- He tastes the opium that was hidden in the fish.
Influenced by
- Sherlock Holmes fiction, as a parody
Also available
- Internet Archive (MysteryOfTheLeapingFish_348)
- Wikimedia Commons (The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916).webm)
