The Villain
About The Villain
Billy West, playing a confidence man, arrives in the lumber town of Squashville and sees the doctor's daughter by the river. Learning the doctor is the richest man in town, he courts her with stories of the city and calls in a confederate, Florence, and two crooks. Budd, the village suitor, gets in the way. Billy takes the place of a man shot in a gambling fight, gets into the doctor's house, and talks the daughter into an elopement. The doctor reaches the church in time to stop the marriage and drags her home.
Cast & crew
More about The Villain
Arvid E. Gillstrom directed. Louis Burstein produced. Herman Obrock Jr. photographed. Ben H. Cohen edited. A King-Bee two-reeler released on a states-rights basis on 15 July 1917. Billy West plays a top-hatted heavy in the manner of Chaplin's early Keystone villains.
Themes
Making
West's Chaplin impersonation here is the villainous early Keystone figure, not the tramp, and Hardy is cast as the girl.
Look
Herman Obrock Jr. photographed the two-reeler.
Preservation
A print survives. A copy is on the Internet Archive.
Notes
- Oliver Hardy plays Nell, the doctor's daughter, in women's clothes. Lord Heath also calls the daughter Babe, matching Silent Era's cast line.
- Florence McLaughlin plays Florence, Billy's confederate. Bud Ross plays Nell's sweetheart, the village boob. Ethelyn Gibson, Leo White, and Joe Cohen are also in the cast.
- Moving Picture World supplied the Squashville synopsis used above.
- The short spoofs old melodrama, a habit of Ford Sterling's Keystone comedies, which the top-hatted Chaplin character was itself echoing.
- An Internet Archive copy is filed as silent-the-villain.
Scenes
- Billy watches the doctor's daughter come out of the river and follows her into the garden.
- The doctor stops the church wedding and takes his daughter home.
Influenced by
- Chaplin's early Keystone villain parts, including Mabel at the Wheel, and Ford Sterling's melodrama spoofs
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-the-villain)
