Surrealism as Situation Comedy

Traditionally cited as one of Charley Chase's classic short subjects from the twenties, His Wooden Wedding sits uneasily among the first rank of the comedian's silent comedies. Although the short was released early in Chase's starring career -- the comedy was produced in 1925, the year his films graduated to two reels -- Chase and director Leo McCarey had already developed the style the series would continue to refine for the remainder of the silent era. His Wooden Wedding, however, would stretch Chase and McCarey's situation comedy formula to its breaking point.

Whereas weddings often provide the happy ending in classical comedies, this film opens with a wedding and goes downhill from there. Charley is set to marry Katherine Grant, but from the beginning of the film something is askew. The course the comedy will take is foreshadowed by the first inter-title, which opens the film "fifteen minutes before the trap is to be sprung", noting that the wedding is taking place on Friday the 13th. The remarkably economic set up of this two-reeler, in fact, provides the film with some of its finest moments. Comic and slightly ominous, the film's first few minutes are among the best in Chase's oeuvre.

Charley's impending (and then delayed) marriage to Katherine Grant, the jealous rival, the "wooden" leg, the ring -- all which will propel the situation comedy -- are introduced within the first minute or so of the short. In the realm of complex situation comedy, there is no room for backstory or explanation or, at times, rationality (especially in this film; more on that later). Everything is set up quickly, beautifully. Charley is content for precisely one shot before the rival slips him a note, perhaps the most notorious message in silent comedy: "BEWARE! The girl you are about to marry has a wooden leg. A Friend." Everything immediately starts to fall apart; even the plot begins to conspire against Charley, conforming to the rival's false message. Katherine sprains her ankle just before the wedding, and she is seen limping into the chapel, to Charley's horror. As the bride and groom kneel down during the ceremony, the rival secretly places a cane in between them, and Charley's suspicions are confirmed when he gets a splinter from the "leg". He panics -- "Stop!" Charley exclaims, "I've been engaged to a girl with a wooden leg -- I must break it off," and the groom runs out of the chapel. Later, in a last-ditch effort to explain himself to Katherine, Charley does not realize that he is actually conversing with a mannequin, which further confirms his false suspicions when its leg falls off.

To escape it all, the runaway groom leaves Katherine a note stating that he is going on a voyage to the South Seas and tells his rival that Katherine can keep the ring he gave her, the famous Dhulip Diamond. The rival, intent on stealing the ring, tells Katherine that Charley wants it back, and then places the ring in a hat; he does not realize that the hat is not his own but Charley's. Charley, so distraught that he finishes off an entire bottle of liquor, sets off to the dock, taking the hat with the ring in it. The bride's father discovers the rival's note and learns of the hoax; meanwhile, the rival follows Charley, intent on stealing back the ring.

Once Charley becomes inebriated, the film essentially splits off from the original thrust of the plot (the triad of Charley / The Rival / Katherine). The sea voyage separates Charley from Katherine, and the comedy begins to focus entirely on the ring, as the rival follows Charley in his efforts to steal it. As Charley and his devious friend are on their way to the dock, the rival repeatedly knocks off Charley's hat in an effort to steal the ring that Charley does not realize is in its lining. The drunken Charley mistakes this for a game and knocks off the hat of his rival -- and that of an innocent bystander -- in his inebriated state. It is hard not to link all this hat business to two routines that would figure prominently in numerous Laurel & Hardy films of the late '20s: the hat switching routine (which in the Chase film sets the secondary plot -- the rival's pursuit of the ring -- into motion) and the reciprocal destruction motif (the hat knocking sequence). Neither is developed to any great extent in His Wooden Wedding, but the spirit is there. Considering McCarey's later involvement in Laurel & Hardy's silent comedies, these routines may have originated, consciously or not, in this Chase two-reeler.

Eventually, Charley discovers the ring, and realizes the intentions of his "friend"...before the ring drops down the dress of a homely passenger, played by Gale Henry. The sequence in which Charley tries to recover the ring is the longest sustained set-piece of the short. Charley invites Ms. Henry onto the dance floor, where he encourages her to dance more and more energetically, causing the ring to eventually pop out of her dress following a succession of other items (her watch, powder puff, etc.) It is a brilliant scene, totally dependent on the physicality of Chase and Henry's performances. Chase often showcased dancing in his silent comedies -- notably in Bad Boy (1925) and Be Your Age (1926) -- calling attention to the performance-centered nature of these routines and highlighting both the skill and eccentricities of his own dancing style. Here, the sequence is necessitated by the plot, with Charley's revved-up Charleston inspiring Gale Henry's vigorous dance moves, which he hopes will dislodge the diamond ring from her dress. The attention in this sequence is often on Henry, focusing on her lanky, Olive Oyl-like frame, while Charley is "directing" her dance or performing some frenetic jumps himself which she then imitates. The performance aspect of this scene is accentuated by the crowd that forms around the couple, watching their every move. The sequence ends abruptly with a subversion of the expected finale of such a scene -- instead of a "topper" that brings the sequence to a riotous conclusion, the ring is finally recovered and Charley, who was so physically involved in the dance moments earlier (having performed a perfect cartwheel out of nowhere), brings the proceedings to a halt by promptly leaving the dance floor, stumbling out of the room. The plot (the recovery of the ring) ends this comic turn, and the way the narrative so unexpectedly terminates this comedic set-piece becomes comic itself, as does the strange incongruity between the dancing Charley, the performer -- skillful and remarkably agile -- and the wobbly and inebriated Charley at this stage of the narrative who reemerges at the dance routine's conclusion.

With the ring back in his possession, Charley discovers Katherine's accompanying lovelorn note, and attempts to commit suicide by jumping overboard, anchor in hand. The rival, still intent on getting the ring, jumps into the water after Charley. The two are brought back on board by the ship's crew, and Charley has a change of heart, seizing control of the ship so as to return to Katherine. Unbeknownst to Charley, Katherine is on her father's yacht, sailing towards the ship. Spotting her, Charley jumps into the water again, and swims to the yacht, again followed by the rival. On board, Charley informs Katherine and her father where the "wooden legged note" came from, and Katherine gives the rival a bare-legged kick into the water, finally putting the rumor to rest. The film ends happily, with Charley and Katherine reunited, but not before Charley playfully knocks her father's hat into the ocean.

Like the majority of Chase's silent shorts, this two-reeler has a logic of its own that dictates the shape the comedy will take. Inanimate objects are at the center-stage of the film. The (imagined) wooden leg, the ring, notes, hats...these objects form the impetus of the narrative and the gags and are constantly misplaced, misdirected, and redirected throughout the film. As effective as it is as a situation comedy, the comic logic of this film stretches credulity to its limit, perhaps more than any other Chase silent, certainly when compared to the other classic two-reelers produced by the comedian during this era, like the more polished Mighty Like a Moose (1926) or Limousine Love (1928). His Wooden Wedding, while a solid situation comedy with all the markings of Chase's signature style, is less tightly-plotted than the films frequently cited as its peers. As pure situation comedy, at least two other shorts from the same year surpass it entirely. Innocent Husbands and The Caretaker's Daughter are both smoother, more meticulously constructed comedies than His Wooden Wedding, and yet somehow neither has achieved the same stellar reputation. While plot construction may be irrelevant when discussing the films of many of Chase's contemporaries, Chase's mastery of comic structure makes this a significant issue. In terms of structure, His Wooden Wedding, while far from being on shaky ground, is significantly looser than many of his other farces.

Also looser in this film is Chase's performance, mainly because he spends half the film completely sloshed, having downed an entire bottle of liquor in his sorrow. His lanky, limber performance is reminiscent of his drunk routine in Looking For Sally (which serves to illustrate his tall tale of drunken excess in that film). Charley's inebriated state provides the impetus for the childish hat games he engages in on board the ship -- seeing that his hat, when tossed off the ship, returns to him, he tries to do the same to the Captain's hat, which, of course, falls straight into the water. More subtly, Charley's unsteady balance when drunk ironically echoes Katherine's own limp following her ankle injury, which earlier had confirmed Charley's false suspicions. Chase's performance in His Wooden Wedding is unique in that it features his longest extended drunk routine on film. Coupled with Charley's horror at the prospect of a bride with a wooden leg earlier in the comedy, Chase is closer to being unlikable in this short than usual (save for his later isolated obnoxious turns in The Heckler and Sons of the Desert), yet his characterization in His Wooden Wedding is also one of his most complex. While he often gets into embarrassing or frustrating situations, rarely does Charley go through such inner turmoil during the course of a two-reel comedy.

This anxiety is represented in a celebrated daydream sequence early in the comedy, in which Charley imagines his family nearly ten years into the future, the scene depicting a wooden-legged wife, three wooden-legged kids, and, to top it all, a wooden-legged dog. This peek into Charley's mind comically illustrates his irrational fears. It is one of the most inspired scenes in all of Chase's films, a brilliant blend of black comedy and surreal imagery.

While the daydream sequence is frequently referred to as the surreal moment of the short, the entire film itself, in fact, is as surreal a situation comedy as Chase ever made. Not only is the film's opening, the unsurpassed set-up of the comedy, akin to a comic nightmare, but the conceit of the (nonexistent) wooden leg is, in itself, simultaneously bizarre and comic. Donald Crafton focuses much of his insightful essay "Pie and Chase: Gag, Spectacle, and Narrative in Slapstick Comedy" (anthologized in Classical Hollywood Comedy, edited by Kristine Brunovska Karnick and Henry Jenkins) on His Wooden Wedding, and in discussing the rival's note, he meticulously outlines the absurdity therein: 1. Are there not more plausible lies that can be used to break up a wedding? 2. How could Charley not already know that his bride-to-be has a wooden leg, if she really does? 3. Does a wooden leg really call for the cancellation of a wedding? These questions, however, are somewhat beside the point, as the wooden leg explicitly defies easy rationalization. As a symbol, it may point towards a (perhaps irrational) fear of the unknown, of the uncanny. The wooden leg essentially supports the comedy of the film -- it exists precisely because no one in their right mind would use it in order to break up a wedding; it would never (we would like to think) serve as the catalyst for the abandonment of a wedding ceremony. The wooden leg is central to the film because it defies logic -- and yet, it makes perfect sense within the microcosm of this two-reel comedy.

Narrative plausibility is, in this way, constantly stretched to its limit in His Wooden Wedding. Why does Charley cancel his wedding simply because a note tells him that his bride-to-be has a wooden leg? Ask such questions and the comedy disintegrates before your very eyes. There are moments in some Chase films which force the audience to suspend its disbelief; His Wooden Wedding positively abounds in such moments. The atmosphere of the whole short is the epitome of the realistic surreal -- everything makes sense within the context of the comedy, so much so that the film may seem even stranger in hindsight.

There may be funnier, more highly polished Chase shorts, and even some more deserving of its current status within the Chase catalog, but nevertheless, His Wooden Wedding is extreme Chase -- risky, bizarre, at times dark material. It is therefore not at all surprising that William K. Everson wrote that this film exemplifies the edginess, the "bite" present in the best comedies of the '20s, with its "cruel", though not tasteless, humor. That such a far-fetched, idiosyncratic comedy could go down so easily is a testament to Chase's nonchalant comic genius and his fruitful collaboration with Leo McCarey, for after watching two reels of such ridiculous, sublime, unexplainable comedy, the viewer may feel like Chase and McCarey had been, yes, pulling their leg.

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