Volume II: Filmography

AT LIBERTY - GOOD PRESS AGENT

December 8, 1912 (Sunday)

Length: 1 reel

Character: Comedy

Cast: Harry Benham (the press agent)

Location: New York City, including some scenes on Broadway

Notes: 1. Around this time, Thanhouser advertised that Sunday was the day for Thanhouser comedies. 2. In The Motion Picture Story Magazine, September 1913, this film was listed erroneously as Wanted - A Good Press Agent.

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture World, December 7, 1912:

"He limped along the Rialto, so badly banged up that a friend felt impelled to ask him if he had been playing a bomb on the Mafia Circuit in the 'Big Time.' 'It is just another case of the man getting the worst of it for making good,' he explained. 'I consented to go out with the Whirling Dervish Company, and I told the governor that he would get something new in the presswork line. That big doll of a star wanted her name in the papers, but there is nothing to her, nothing at all. They won't fall for the old stuff anymore, and I had to be up-to-date. We struck one town where they had a smallpox scare, and they fell for my dope all right. I told them how one of our chorus dames had smallpox, and how the star passed all the night nursing her when all of the others were afraid, kissed her fevered brow and all the rest of the sob stuff. They fell for it like wolves, and that big false alarm got her picture on the front page.

"'Was she grateful? Not a bit of it. She blamed me when the health department sent around and rounded up the company, quarantining them in a vacant house. Look at the ad. Why my story was reprinted all over the United States. They'd have got out in a few weeks, and it saved them from losing money on those rotten killduff one-night stands, yet they 'beefed' awfully. So I showed them how to escape by scaring off the guards by pretending to be ghosts. I led them safely through the town to a freight train, so that they could make a getaway to the next town. Were they thankful? Nothing like it. The leading comedian and props beat me with clubs and kicked me off the train. And that big dub of a star cheered them as they were doing it. So I left the company. Wouldn't care to work with a company like that, for you never are appreciated. Doubt if they will stay out long, for the company is rotten, the printing punk and the bookings are the worst ever. Now I am back again and, say, old man, do you know anyone who wants a press agent, a good press agent?'"

REVIEW, The Morning Telegraph, December 15, 1912: This review is reprinted in the narrative section of the present work.

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, December 21, 1912:

"An enjoyable farce comedy of a press agent who 'can get things in the papers.' He lands a job as a 'live wire' and goes on tour with a new show. He finds at the first week stand that the papers won't take his stuff. There's smallpox in the town and he cooks up a screed about the leading lady that will be locally interesting. The Board of Health quarantines the whole company. It tickled the audience and is likely to be generally popular."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, December 18, 1912:

"We may stop to repeat the title and then be unable to fasten its meaning securely in our minds. It isn't nearly so difficult to catch the humor in the piece itself. The theme is original, it is well played and well directed. Familiar corners of Broadway are used in several of the scenes in the setting for the action. A young reporter, seeking a job, is introduced to a manager requiring a live man who can place his copy with the papers. On the friend's recommendation the reporter is hired and sent out with a road musical company. At the first town they strike, the reporter approaches the editor of the local paper with the story, confident in the belief that he will meet with little trouble - that his story is hot stuff. The editor doesn't see it that way, however, and throws him out of the office when he becomes persistent. In the part, brooding over his lot, the boy reads in the paper of a smallpox epidemic in the neighborhood, and hits upon a scheme. The story he brings back to the paper they print freely. It is one of the leading woman's heroic act in nursing one of the poor chorus girls during an attack of smallpox. That afternoon, at the matinee the whole company is corralled, thrown into the pest house, and quarantined for two weeks. Later, they escape, and find their way back to New York on a freight train. Out of a job again, the young reporter mourns the fact that no one appreciates his ability."

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