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1916FalstaffOne reelComedy

Advertisementers

Also released as Running Rival Restaurants

No copy you can watch online. No print is known to survive. What follows is what does: the release, the cast, the story, and what the trade press said at the time.

The story

“The proprietors of two restaurants thought they were rivals. Neither did any business until Oscar and Conrad became advertising experts. Conrad became a sandwich man, while Oscar posed as a ‘passerby,’ who went into raptures over the bill of fare. A maiden who made flapjacks in public won away the fickle crowd. Conrad met and fell in love with her. The girl gave a farewell demonstration. Oscar told him he had put ‘gunpowder in her baking powder.’ The flapjacks blew up, and the patrons were somewhat ‘battered.’ Conrad and the girl went to a minister’s, while Oscar repented of his crime.”

Summary from Reel Life · 3 June 1916

What the papers said

1 review

“A nonsense number, with a knockabout finish. Two rival restaurants employ sign carriers and a girl to bake pancakes in the window. Oscar and the girl fall in love and disrupt the rivalry, or rather bring it to a head. This has numerous amusing moments and is pleasingly presented.”

The Moving Picture World · 17 June 1916

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Cast and crew

Cast
Billy Moran
Conrad:” Claude Cooper as Oscar
Frank E. McNish as Conrad
George T. Welsh as restaurant owner
James Murray as restaurant owner
Louise Emerald Bates as the maiden
Oscar

Every name opens that person's page, with each film they appear in and which of them you can watch.

Watch instead

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Matched by cast, director and kind
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A frame from Silas Marner43:26
1916 · Same castSilas Marner
A frame from Toodles, Tom and Trouble12:49
1915 · Same genreToodles, Tom and Trouble

More about this film

Bowers’ notes
  1. The title was listed erroneously as Advertisements in the title of a review in The Moving Picture World, June 17, 1916. 2. This film was produced during the first week of May 1916. 2. An incident in the filming of this picture is related under the biographical listing for Billy Moran.

ARTICLE by Tracey Hollingsworth, “Flivers From Film Folk” column, The Florida Metropolis, May 1, 1916:

“Director Claude Cooper and his company of funmakers are hard at work on a comedy entitled Running Rival Restaurants. George Welsh and James Murray are the restaurant proprietors and Cooper and McNish as Oscar and McNish [sic] are business builders and undertake the job of building up the business of Welch’s restaurant. Louise Emerald Bates perfects an agreement with Murray to build up business in his restaurant. There is a great deal of lively action in the comedy which promises to be a winner.”

ARTICLE by Tracey Hollingsworth, “Flivers From Film Folk” column, The Florida Metropolis, May 2, 1916:

“That Thanhouser ‘Marathon Restaurant’ created quite a stir out on Main Street. Several ex-waiters applied to Cooper and McNish for positions, and could not understand why their services were not needed.”

From Volume II: Filmography of Q. David Bowers’ Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, reproduced with permission and unchanged. Read the history of 1916 →

Cite as: Bowers, Q. David. Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, “Advertisementers”. thanhouser.org/films/advertisementers/

Where a print is held

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