1914Thanhouser CompanyOne reelComedy

Getting Rid of Algy

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

“Algy is infatuated with May, a beautiful young woman who is also being courted by Jim Lewis. In order to encourage Algy, May drops her purse. Algy gallantly picks it up and follows May to the theatre where he returns it, much to Jim’s chagrin. May shows her preference so plainly that Jim becomes enraged and enlists the support of his gang. The gang awaits their opportunity and when Algy goes to purchase a trunk with May the gang catches him unawares and thrusts him into the trunk. While they are on their way to get an expressman May returns and orders the trunk in which Algy is jammed, afraid to speak, to be sent to her home. Shortly after the trunk is put on the express wagon, the gang returns and picks out a trunk which the proprietor of the shop has set out in place of the trunk purchased by May. Meanwhile, a woman who has observed the gang at their nefarious work notifies the police, and the constables come, hot-foot to the trunk shop, take up the trail with bloodhounds, and catch the gangsters as they are about to dump the empty trunk into the turbid waters below the High Bridge. Algy, after a disagreeable jolting over the cobblestones in the trunk, is finally released, half-suffocated, from his two-by-four prison and falls limply into the arms of his sweetheart who vows that thereafter she will never lose sight of her Algy.”

Summary from Reel Life · 2 May 1914

What the papers said

2 reviews

“This is a most strenuous comedy drama, especially for Algy. It is a good plot and well handled. The trunk episode is amusing. Some inconsistencies prevail throughout, but it pleases.”

The Moving Picture World · 9 May 1914

“The laughable character, Algy, this time goes the stage-door Johnny route and meets a chorus girl. The scenes in the dressing rooms are very interesting, indeed. And the scheme which the girl invents to be rid of him is also ingenious, the offering is interrupted with frequent laughs. There are a number of very human touches to the play; it …

Read in full · 1 min

“The laughable character, Algy, this time goes the stage-door Johnny route and meets a chorus girl. The scenes in the dressing rooms are very interesting, indeed. And the scheme which the girl invents to be rid of him is also ingenious, the offering is interrupted with frequent laughs. There are a number of very human touches to the play; it is well handled in every department. Just how Algy, a very human sort of Englishman after all, is gotten rid of, and later taken to our heart by the girl is laughably shown for one thousand feet.”

The New York Dramatic Mirror · 13 May 1914

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Cast and crew

Cast
Arthur Bauer as trunk dealer
Cyril Chadwick as Algy, in love with May
Joe Baker as Whitey, a gangster
John Reinhard as Jim, also in love with May
Mignon Anderson as May, an actress

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More about this film

From Volume II: Filmography of Q. David Bowers’ Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, reproduced with permission and unchanged. Read the history of 1914 →

Cite as: Bowers, Q. David. Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, “Getting Rid of Algy”. thanhouser.org/films/getting-rid-of-algy/

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