The Pest
About The Pest
Jimmy Smith goes door to door selling a book about Napoleon. He pitches a man at a pair of iron gates. An older man arrives, talks to the customer in sign language, and they leave together. Smith then reads the sign: he has been selling in front of a Deaf and Dumb Institute. He tries the same signs on a woman coming out of the gates. She can hear, and she tells him so. A published summary of the short also has him meet a young woman who will be put out of her house unless she marries the landlord, and has him promise to raise the money.
Cast & crew
More about The Pest
Broncho Billy Anderson directed and produced. Irving G. Ries photographed it. Metro Pictures released it in 1922. Stan Laurel plays Jimmy Smith. Mae Dahlberg, Glen Cavender, and Vera Reynolds are in the cast.
Themes
Making
Laurel was still a solo comic in 1922, several years before the Hal Roach pairing with Oliver Hardy. Anderson's unit built the short around a salesman who misreads every person he meets.
Look
Irving G. Ries shot the short, including the gate in front of the institute.
Notes
- The institute gag depends on Smith not reading the sign until the customer has gone.
- Mae Dahlberg, billed in some listings as Mae Laurel, appears with him.
- Anderson, still known as Broncho Billy, was producing Laurel's one- and two-reel comedies in 1922.
- Metro distributed the short.
- The Napoleon book is the prop he cannot sell.
Scenes
- Smith sells Napoleon to a man who answers only in signs.
- He looks up and sees the institute sign.
- A woman who is not deaf answers his signs out loud.
