Fun with Barbells
Saturday July 17, 4pm, The Castro, San Francisco
"...if you don't stop following me I'll turn you over to a truant officer!"
A baby-faced boob immigrates to America after The War to search for his pen-pal sweetheart. As the hapless assistant of The Great Zandow a travelling strongman, Paul (Harry Langdon) eventually finds Mary (Pricilla Bonner), the blind daughter of a crusading minister and inadvertently chases the all riff-raff out of town.
Arguably the funniest and most successful feature film of Harry Langdon's meteoric career, The Strong Man was the first of two Langdon features directed by the best known of his handlers, Frank Capra. Taking full advantage of his signature schtick: sleepy exhaustion, diffuse panic and glacially slow reactions, he stumbles through the film in search of Mary. In the hilarious finale when he is forced to go on for his boss (Zandow's enormous tights look like baggy pajamas on Langdon), he incites the already combative dancehall crowd, swings from the rafters and fires everything onstage from the cannon but himself.
Saturday July 17, 4pm, The Castro, San Francisco
"...if you don't stop following me I'll turn you over to a truant officer!"
A baby-faced boob immigrates to America after The War to search for his pen-pal sweetheart. As the hapless assistant of The Great Zandow a travelling strongman, Paul (Harry Langdon) eventually finds Mary (Pricilla Bonner), the blind daughter of a crusading minister and inadvertently chases the all riff-raff out of town.
Arguably the funniest and most successful feature film of Harry Langdon's meteoric career, The Strong Man was the first of two Langdon features directed by the best known of his handlers, Frank Capra. Taking full advantage of his signature schtick: sleepy exhaustion, diffuse panic and glacially slow reactions, he stumbles through the film in search of Mary. In the hilarious finale when he is forced to go on for his boss (Zandow's enormous tights look like baggy pajamas on Langdon), he incites the already combative dancehall crowd, swings from the rafters and fires everything onstage from the cannon but himself.