Capra partisans have pointed to the commercial failure of Langdon's final three pictures for First National - Three's a Crowd, The Chaser, and Heart Trouble - to bolster their claims that firing their man was a fatal mistake and that Langdon couldn't direct. Both points could certainly be argued, and the controversy is unlikely ever to be settled. What seems clear from the two surviving silent features directed by Langdon (Heart Trouble is widely considered a lost film) is that if Ripley was inclined toward the dark and grim, Langdon's artistic vision made a good match. Three's a Crowd is a black comedy in which Harry, desperate for a family of his own, loses all. In The Chaser, he spends most of his time in drag, and his best gags revolve around suicide. This wasn't what the public wanted to see in 1927-28, and the reviews were scathing. It's been suggested that Heart Trouble may have marked the beginnings of a comeback, but too late - First National chose not to renew Langdon's contract.
Review of The Chaser
