Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926)
Saturday Afternoon
(Harry Edwards, US 1926, 30 min., 16mm)
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp
(Harry Edwards, US 1926, 62 min., 35mm)
The name of Harry Langdon is not well known outside of archivist and film historian circles. However, he was included as one of the four greatest silent comedians—alongside Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd—in James Agee’s 1949 essay “Comedy’s Greatest Era.” Primarily a star of short films, Langdon’s greatest success may have come in his first feature film, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp. Langdon plays Harry Logan, whose father has been threatened with eviction by his evil landlord, Nick Kargas (Tom Murray). To save his father’s shoe making business, Harry must enter a cross-country walking race against Kargas for the $25,000 prize and the hand of the billboard model (a very young Joan Crawford) he adores.
Preceded by Saturday Afternoon, which finds Langdon as a henpecked husband coerced into a surreptitious double date with his friend and two shop girls, not knowing that the women already have burly boyfriends.
Live piano accompaniment by Dr. Philip C. Carli