User reviews

It's really gratifying to know that the work of Charley Chase is so much more accessible now than it was just a few years ago. Through the VCR era of the 1980s and '90s the vast majority of his movies never found their way into any decent video release, but the DVD era has been a lot kinder to Mr. Chase -- and to his fans. Several of Charley's funniest shorts have turned up in Image Entertainment's "Lost Films of Laurel & Hardy" set, and more recently Kino has put out two well-produced discs devoted entirely to Charley's own starring comedies made for the Hal Roach Studio during his heyday, the mid-1920s. Dog Shy is included on Volume 2 of the Kino series, and is one of the most enjoyable entries, a pleasant situation comedy that builds in momentum as it goes along, cleverly plotted, briskly paced and full of good gags.

Our leading lady (Mildred June) is being pressured by her parents to marry an icky-looking "nobleman." Charley, who has fallen in love with her strictly based on the sound of her telephone voice, comes to her aid by posing as her family's new butler. While playing this role during a house-party he finds The Girl at last; they quickly hit it off and plan to elope, but meanwhile he must perform some rather unpleasant duties such as bathing Madame's dog, known as The Duke. (It's already been established that Charley is one of those people who has problems with dogs.) One of the comic high points comes when Charley misunderstands his employer's instructions and believes he must bathe the OTHER Duke, i.e. the nobleman who is courting his girl. While this guy attempts to relate an anecdote to several party guests Charley interrupts and pantomimes that he must go upstairs and take a bath; the nobleman, naturally enough, is alarmed about just what activity Charley has in mind. Ultimately, the mix-up is straightened out and Charley attempts to bathe the pooch, but gets wetter, if not cleaner, than the dog. The climax involves several occupants of the house all hatching secret, simultaneous plots which become confusingly entangled, and dashing around the household at midnight in much confusion. I was reminded of a line from another Hal Roach comedy made around this time: "Anything might have happened that night -- And it did!"

Dog Shy is a fun two-reeler, and a nice introduction to Charley Chase for those who haven't had the pleasure of his acquaintance before now. In closing, I notice that there seems to be some controversy on this page about just what kind of dog is featured here. The Duke was portrayed -- and winningly, too -- by a pooch named Buddy who appeared in several Roach comedies around this time, including Laurel & Hardy's From Soup to Nuts. Buddy looks to me like a fox terrier mix, but don't quote me on that.

The most famous silent comics tended to be part clown and part acrobat, pulling off hair-raising stunts, pratfalling all over the platform, and generally getting thrown about with little concern for their own safety. Charley Chase was a few years older than the likes of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd, and a good degree less flexible. The more athletic brand of slapstick was not for him. However, far more than his contemporaries, he put comic expression into his face. Never one for subtlety, he revelled in the somewhat old-fashioned styles of broad pantomime, working it in a way that seems fresh and funny.

Chase starred in a series of shorts for the Hal Roach studios, a comedy factory of consistently decent quality. Speedily made, these shorts tended to be rather haphazard in structure, as Dog Shy reveals. The story seems to have two openings, first introducing the situation with the girl, then bringing Charley on the scene, but they don't flow together well and look like they were put together from two separate pictures. The plot is soon woven together, and there is an overarching love story, but logic and consistency don't much of a look in. The first few minutes go to great lengths in establishing that Chase's character is afraid of dogs, but ten minutes later we see him exercising and bathing a dog, his former fear (which provides the very title of the thing) inexplicably vanished.

But coherence isn't really the point of Charley Chase shorts, which tend to be a fast-paced bundle of oddball gags, especially those directed by the great Leo McCarey. McCarey's work is by this point looking increasingly professional, using a lot of long takes and careful arrangements to get the maximum value out of a comic performance. What cuts there are exist mostly for comic timing, especially in the brilliant "howling" finale. The jokes do tend to bounce off one another rather randomly, as no doubt cast and crew were all pitching in their ideas, but their execution has a good degree of cleverness and subtlety. A neat example is Charley's confusion over the "Duke" and his bath. We don't actually see Charley trying to bath the duke. Instead, we get a lengthy build-up to it, setting up our expectations. We later see an indignant duke running down the stairs half-undressed as Charley chases him with a scrubbing brush. The suggestion of what happened is funnier than would have been the actuality.

And then there are the talents of Mr Chase himself. That face of his goes through a massive range of expressions in Dog Shy. Chase was a master of the double-take, and actually had lots of different ways of doing them depending on what kind of shock he has had. Take for example his sudden stop mid-bow when realising he has been asked to bath the duke, and then the different double-take he does when hearing his dog howl answered by a kitten. For a slapstick comedy made so far into the silent era, Dog Shy contains a lot of pantomiming – that is, characters acting out their lines like a kind of improvised sign language, even when they are stood right in front of each other. Chase is however very good at making this sort of thing funny, such as his "Come up for your bath" routine which gets ever more elaborate, combined with an innocently cheerful grin. Chase may have been a little old-fashioned, but he did old-fashioned well.

Even though the synopsis states the dog of the house is a Great Dane, it is NOT. The dog is actually a small/medium mixbreed of some kind, which only went up to the casts' knees! We were disappointed, having spent over six months to track this title down. Still a cute Chase vehicle, though.

Dog Shy (1926)

*** (out of 4)

Charley Chase comedy has him playing a man afraid of dogs. A chance meeting on a phone leads him to the home of a beautiful woman whose parents are forcing her into a marriage with a no good nobleman. Chase, and that charm, must try to work over the girl but more importantly, impress her mom with his dog skills. This is a pretty good comedy that features Chase working well with the dog, known as Buddy. The two man quite a few shorts together and were a pretty good team considering how many laughs they could create. Just take a look at the scene where Chase tries to give him a bath and they both end up in the water. I think the majority of their scenes together are extremely funny and certainly more entertaining than the rest of the film. The entire subplot of the woman not wanting to marry the man is pretty boring and doesn't add too many laughs. One good scene is when Chase thinks he's suppose to give the man a bath.