13 Washington Square

Aristocratic Alice Joyce very much disapproves of son George J. Lewis marrying grocer's daughter Helen Foster. She plans to take him to Europe, but he slips the leash to get a wedding license. She pursues, but the reporters are outside her house. She goes briefly to her cousin's boarding house, where criminal Jean Hersholt thinks they are crooks like him. When Miss Joyce gets back home with maid Zasu Pitts, the house is cluttered not only with Lewis and Miss Foster, preparing for their elopement, but Hersholt, there to rob the place and thinking Misses Joyce and Pitts likewise intentioned.

It's an ordinary situation comedy from 1928, which means it is expertly shot and played. Miss Pitts is hilarious, not only with her comic pantomime, but the malapropism-laden dialogue that appears in the titles is bafflingly absurd. Hersholt is also excellent, quite able to portray intelligence, menace, and even kindness without a voice. Miss Joyce is slightly miscast; she looks to young to be Lewis' mother, but she's always so pleasant to look at that I can't complain. Finally, Miss Foster doesn't have much to do but look adorable, which she does. Helen Jerome Eddy, Julia Swayne Gordon, Jack McDonald, and Jerry Gamble complete the listed cast in small roles.

It's certainly not a great movie, but for what it purports to be, a silent farce, it does it very well, and does it in only 66 minutes. If it is rather ordinary for 1928, that merely indicates what standards the last year of full silent movie production in Hollywood set.