Eddie Barry wants to keep wife Betty Compson happy, and she wants him to be a race car driver, so he hires a driver to impersonate himself on the track; but there is an accident and he has to go to the hospital and convince the doctor to have him bandaged. He persuades him to do so by offering to donate $2000 to the hospital -- this made me blink: not at the thought of bribing a doctor with money, but at how cheap it was; or perhaps it simply indicates how far the dollar has fallen in ninety years. When Betty shows up at the hospital, she quickly discovers the deception and is angered by it, but forgives her husband when she is shown how badly injured the actual driver was. It might have been her husband. Finish.
Most of the humor comes from the men literally slapping their thighs in joy at the thought of the deception and the ending device, which comes off as rather abrupt.
What I find interesting about this movie is that it looks like it was a Biograph shot about five years earlier by Griffith. Its compositions are standard Biograph compositions, even to the defining right wall. I can't find any reference to who the cameraman was, but director Christie had been making movies for eight years at this point, for Nestor, which was the first production company with permanent facilities in greater Los Angeles. The overwhelming influence of Griffith at this point cannot be appreciated by a modern audience -- it's as if, after James Cameron made TITANIC, no one ever made a movie for less than $300,000,000 ever again.
Most of the humor comes from the men literally slapping their thighs in joy at the thought of the deception and the ending device, which comes off as rather abrupt.
What I find interesting about this movie is that it looks like it was a Biograph shot about five years earlier by Griffith. Its compositions are standard Biograph compositions, even to the defining right wall. I can't find any reference to who the cameraman was, but director Christie had been making movies for eight years at this point, for Nestor, which was the first production company with permanent facilities in greater Los Angeles. The overwhelming influence of Griffith at this point cannot be appreciated by a modern audience -- it's as if, after James Cameron made TITANIC, no one ever made a movie for less than $300,000,000 ever again.
