'Maid to Order' is a low-budget comedy, not especially funny, of interest only because it's a sound film starring Julian Eltinge, who was primarily a stage performer. Eltinge was a female impersonator, probably the most successful of them all. (Unless those rumours are true about a certain actress.) Eltinge began his stage career as a child performer, in girls' roles. As a star performer, he usually played men in stage farces who (for contrived reasons) masqueraded as women. But Eltinge often played genuine women as well. Photographs and reviews of the time indicate that, as a young man, Eltinge was very convincing in his disguises as attractive young ladies. (Female fans often asked Eltinge for fashion and beauty tips.) But by the time Eltinge began his film career, middle age had set in, and his female impersonations began to look somewhat matronly.
Eltinge was approaching fifty when he filmed 'Maid to Order', so his girlish soubrette days were long past. Here, he plays a fictionalised version of himself, now equipped with an interest in police work and detective stories. The police are trying to catch a gang of smugglers who are bringing diamonds into the country concealed in coffee tins. (I guess the cocaine smugglers aren't worth bothering with.) The leader of the gang is a notorious femme fatale who is on her way Stateside to oversee the operation ... until a cable arrives from Scotland Yard, notifying the local police that she's been nabbed. Conveniently, none of the local gangsters know what their henchwoman looks like. So, of course, you can guess what happens next. The police persuade Eltinge to infiltrate the gang by impersonating the she-gangster.
I was more interested in hearing this movie than seeing it, for two reasons. Eltinge, at this point in his life and career, was not very pretty. In 'Maid to Order', he's much more heavy-set than he was in his silent films, and this is especially evident in his neck and his face. Men's and women's faces age differently, and Eltinge looks more male here than in his earlier films. But it was his voice that I wanted to hear, to determine how convincing Eltinge's vocal masquerade was. Based on this movie, it wasn't very good. In his female disguise, Eltinge resorts to the same falsetto range that most male comedians use when doing drag routines. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt by assuming that, in his younger days, Eltinge was more adept at speaking in a female voice. Here, he uses a European accent for his drag scenes: the accent isn't especially convincing, but it helps distract us from the male register of his voice. (This is the same reason why Dustin Hoffman used a Southern accent for his female scenes in 'Tootsie'.) Eltinge should have followed the example of Lon Chaney, who very convincingly impersonated an old woman in 'The Unholy Three'. For that talking film, Chaney created a female voice by speaking quietly and enunciating very precisely ... without resorting to falsetto tactics.
'Maid to Order' has a profoundly contrived set-up: couldn't the cops find a policewoman to decoy the smugglers? Tough guy Al Hill and nervous little George E Stone are good in their roles as two crooks, but this movie is about as plausible as a Three Stooges short ... without being nearly so funny. 'Maid to Order' is crudely shot and badly paced, filmed on a poverty budget. Out of respect for Eltinge's long stage career, I'll rate this dragging drag act 3 points out of 10.
