Snub Pollard stars as a seasoned veteran of the unchanging sea… all right, he operates a ferry that takes passengers about twenty feet across a boardwalk but it’s the heart that counts! Or so it seems until the local government discovers that his license is expired.
Home Media Availability: Released on DVD.
Ahoy, Avast and Other Sailor Talk
If your taste in comedy runs toward weird little men, then the silent era is your oyster. There were loud weird men, quiet weird men, athletic weird men, bumbling weird men… more strange fellows than you could shake a stick at. I am not one for rough slapstick but I do like my weird little men and, for my money, Snub Pollard hits just right.
Pollard was part of the Hal Roach studio crew at this point in his career and several studio regulars are listed in the main credits: Charles Parrott (a.k.a. Charley Chase) as director, titles by Beanie Walker, studio tough Noah Young as the main antagonist.
The action opens on a pirate ship, arrr, with a crew of peg-legged, eyepatched buccaneers, including the ship’s pooch… and Snub trying to keep up. He fails morning marching drills and the captain threatens to toss him overboard but Snub attacks with an automatic rifle concealed in his peg leg, fences the captain leg-to-leg, and takes over the ship…
Or so his grandson claims. We switch to the present and Snub is trying to impress his fellow sailors at Coogan’s Cove that his grandfather mopped up piracy single-legged. Snub is the proud captain of the finest steamship in the area… well, the Eczema may not be fancy or large or terribly watertight but it does ferry passengers from one end of the wharf to the other, a whopping forty or fifty feet, for five cents.
Life isn’t easy, Snub has to deal with annoyingly canoodling passengers and drunk bullies, especially Captain T.N.T. McGoozle (Young). He is captain of a yacht taking the Heiress (Marie Mosquini) on her pleasure tour but he would rather booze it up at the bar and annoy Snub. The Heiress fires him on the spot but takes a shine to Snub. McGoozle is furious but then notices that Snub has not paid for his business license since 1891.
Things look bad: Snub has only minutes to pay back everything he owes or he will lose his proud craft and his livelihood but the Heiress has an idea straight out of the Keystone playbook. She and her friends put on their swimsuits and take the ferry across, where the men of the town aren’t. Snub raises his price to fifty cents and offers the local gents a ride. The plan works, Snub earns his money in record time and the Heiress is still gaga for him. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, that was cute! I especially liked the comically tiny little ferry, which is deservedly the main set piece of the picture. Of course, if you have a Hal Roach comedy short directed by Chase and titled by Walker, you’re starting the game with your bases loaded. Between the wacky gags in the cards and the comedic mileage Chase gets out of the Eczema, the film was already pretty funny without Snub.
So, what is it about Pollard? His career first kicked off as a regular foil for Harold Lloyd but then he launched a solo career, where his screen persona blossomed. In The Old Sea Dog, he is a proud sailor with delusions of piratical grandeur, as shown by the prologue, but at his core, he’s kind of a shy fellow who is just trying to get by in a baffling world. Who among us?
Pollard was neither the first nor the last comedian to dip his toes into the surreal, showcase absurd inventions or display a mildly mischievous and befuddled persona, he just did it very well and that’s what matters most.
My first introduction to Pollard’s solo work was the wonderfully strange Sold at Auction (1923), which bent the laws of time and space as our hero attempted to auction the contents of a house (nobody said it had to be the correct house). Pollard is probably most famous for It’s a Gift (1923), in which he zips around Los Angeles in a tiny, bullet-shaped car of his own invention propelled by a giant magnet. Pollard’s chill demeanor and childlike urge to run away from the myriad of problems he causes (including drowning some cops) balances out the warped physics of the picture.
And that’s really the key to a successful Pollard film: he’s usually a happy fellow who doesn’t set out to make trouble but trouble finds him and his ineffectual, underreacting panic contrasts with the absurdity and scientific impossibility of his predicament.
The Old Sea Dog isn’t quite as weird as Pollard’s other hits but it does have the same white magic Hal Roach studio house style combined with Snub’s own ditzy persona and I thoroughly enjoyed the picture. It has the kind of cheery, oddball nautical vibe that I would have hoped to see in a live action Popeye film. (Popeye was introduced in 1929, by the way, and I am not the first one to notice parallels in comedic tone. I’m not saying Popeye was based on The Old Sea Dog, more that a good salt air comedy was in demand at the time and both properties played to the same audience.)
The plot is goofy and low stakes but Pollard and company play that dinky little boat for all it’s worth and manage to put on an entertaining show with it. And (spoiler) the story ends with the Eczema sinking and Pollard and Mosquini going down with the ship, accompanied by an animated S.O.S., so the film returns to its strange beginnings for the grand finale.
What can I say? I was promised a good nautical time on the high (well, high-ish) seas and everyone delivered, so I am a satisfied customer.
Where can I see it?
Alas, Pollard’s comedies are not in high demand these days and the only home media release has been on an Alpha video collection but I can always hope that someone who loves Snub as much as I do will come through with a higher quality collection.
☙❦❧
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Movies Silently 