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1910Thanhouser Company1,000 feetComedy

Leon of the Table D’Hote

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

“Leon is a waiter in a cheap table d’hote restaurant and makes desperate love to the fat French cashier, Rosa. Off on his vacation, Leon decides to pose as a foreign nobleman. At a seaside hotel where he stops, he becomes all the rage. One of the guests at the same hotel is a beautiful young heiress, a Violet Hope, whose designing mother at once conceives the idea of marrying her off to the supposed count. The plan does not meet with Violet’s approval, she is already in love with a native born.

“One day while bathing in the surf, Violet, who is an expert swimmer, comes to the assistance of the bogus count, who has been knocked over by a breaker, and delivers him safely into the hands of the lifeguard. The count at once lays his life and fortune at Violet’s feet, greatly to that young lady’s disgust and her mother’s delight. In the meantime Rosa becomes acquainted with the doings of her absent lover and traces him to the beach. Finding him in the water, and beyond her reach, Rosa also dons a bathing suit and after a chase through the waves, captures Leon and forces him to confess that he has been sailing under false colors. He was led back to the restaurant by the triumphant Rosa, while Violet obtains her mother’s consent to wed the man of her choice.”

Summary from The Moving Picture World · 8 October 1910

What the papers said

2 reviews · 1 advertisement

“A rather attenuated comedy dealing with a waiter who posed as a count at a resort and laid siege to an heiress. But his fat cashier lover appears and frustrates all his schemes, while the heiress weds the man of her choice. The film is too long. Comedy of this character can seldom be carried through an entire reel successfully.”

The Moving Picture World · 15 October 1910

“The Thanhouser players get considerable humor out of this comedy which is quite cleverly constructed and well acted. Leon is a waiter in a table d’hote restaurant. He bids his fat sweetheart, the restaurant cashier, good-bye and goes on his vacation, stopping at a seaside resort where he poses as a foreign count, captivates the ladies, and finds a rich …

Read in full · 1 min

“The Thanhouser players get considerable humor out of this comedy which is quite cleverly constructed and well acted. Leon is a waiter in a table d’hote restaurant. He bids his fat sweetheart, the restaurant cashier, good-bye and goes on his vacation, stopping at a seaside resort where he poses as a foreign count, captivates the ladies, and finds a rich mamma who wants to marry him to her daughter. The engagement gets into the papers, his fat sweetheart in town reads the news and takes the next train to the seaside hotel, where she makes short work of Leon, leading him off by the ear, to the great delight of the rich girl and her American lover. Amusing by-play is worked in, and the film pleases.”

The New York Dramatic Mirror · 12 October 1910

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28 September 1910The New York Dramatic Mirror1 min

“One of the funniest characters that ever frolicked through 1,000 feet of film. You’ll wish it were 2,000 when you see him. He is sublime. His fun is as infectious as the cheap little restaurant where we find him at his true vocation of waiter, as it is in the classy summer resort where, claiming he is a count, he becomes all the rage. His adventures are too numerous to amply describe—be sure you follow them with your eye.”

Have you seen this film, or a print of it?

Prints of films thought lost still turn up in attics, private collections and archives. A record like this one is how the next one gets found.

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Cast and crew

No cast or crew is credited in the surviving sources for this film. Bowers records the title and the release; the names did not come with them.

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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 1910 →

Cite as: Bowers, Q. David. Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, “Leon of the Table D’Hote”. thanhouser.org/films/leon-of-the-table-d-hote/

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