HAPPY DAYS-1926-This silent comedy features the comic strip character Winnie Winkle but the main focus of this short is her brother Perry and his rag tag baseball team “The Rinky Dinks” (obviously inspired by “Our Gang”). They play a team of black kids but some of them are obviously whites in black face and some racist type humor is shown. There’s a fat kid too. The funniest part is when a dance instructor tells the gang to follow exactly what he does and then a frog goes down his shirt and he gyrates crazily and the kids copy his every move.
The comic strip Winnie Winkle (also called “The Breadwinner”) was created by Martin Branner (who also wrote this short) and had an incredible run of over 75 years! Star Ethlyn Gibson played Winnie Winkle in around 10 silent productions. Billy Butts is Perry.
Director Arvid E. Gillstrom was originally from Sweden and made over 100 films, most of them silent.
FELIX THE CAT SAVES THE DAY-1922-This is a great example of early animation featuring Pat Sullivan’s feline character. The animation is crude but this was 1922! It uses live action scenes and still photos (and a little racist humor) to tell the tale of how Felix saves a big baseball game after getting his pal Willie thrown in jail. Amazing! Sullivan was also the producer. The un-credited director is Otto Messmer who directed many more silent Felix films that I'd like to see!
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