Two Knights of Vaudeville
About Two Knights of Vaudeville
A well-off man drops his theater tickets. Two men and a woman pick them up and walk into a vaudeville house. They gape at a contortionist and a soprano, then jump onto the stage during the juggling act and are thrown out. They restage the show for the neighbors. The audience pelts them with flour, and the short ends with the two men tangled in a drum.
Cast & crew
More about Two Knights of Vaudeville
Luther Pollard produced this one-reel comedy with an African American cast. Silent Era credits Ebony Film Corporation as the producer; Fritzi Kramer, writing on Movies Silently, says the Historical Feature Film Company made it and Ebony distributed it. Greater FBO later rereleased it. The director is not credited.
Themes
Background
Ebony was working in Chicago while the Great Migration was filling South Side theaters. The company advertised that it used Black performers rather than blackface.
Making
Kramer notes dialect title cards and says the leads mug for the camera the way stage comics did. The copycat show at the end, she writes, is not part of the usual version of this ticket-and-heckler plot.
Reviews
Fritzi Kramer, on Movies Silently in 2017, called the pace fast and the story stale, and wrote that the comedy uses coarse racial tropes. She compared the stage-wrecking to Chaplin's A Night in the Show (1915).
Music
It is a silent short.
Preservation
The Library of Congress holds a 35mm positive of the Greater FBO rerelease. Silent Era lists the film as surviving, and it is public domain in the United States.
Notes
- Jimmy Marshall, Frank Montgomery, and Florence McClain lead the cast. Bert Murphy is also billed. Montgomery and McClain were married.
- Silent Era's cast list names the acts: Mademoiselle Azora the contortionist and Clyde Courtney the juggler, plus a card changer and the doormen.
- It was made in Chicago, not in New York or Los Angeles. Ebony was a white-owned company selling Black-cast slapstick.
- Pollard's brother Fritz Pollard later became the first African American head coach in the NFL.
- The picture is black and white, 35mm, about 1.33:1. Wikipedia times a print at 10 minutes 36 seconds.
- It is in the public domain in the United States.
Scenes
- The trio scoops up the dropped tickets and dresses for the house, one of them with a green-onion boutonniere.
- They dive onto the stage during the juggling.
- Neighbors shower the homemade show with flour, and the two men finish inside a drum frame.
Also available
- Pioneers of African-American Cinema (Kino Lorber, DVD and Blu-ray)
- Criterion Channel, in the Pioneers of African American Cinema collection