Volume II: Filmography

AMBITIOUS AWKWARD ANDY

(Falstaff)

March 9, 1916 (Thursday)

Length: 1 reel (1,012 feet)

Character: Comedy

Director: William A. Howell

Assistant director: William Sullivan

Scenario: Lloyd F. Lonergan

Cameraman: George K. Hollister

Cast: Walter Hiers (Andy), Riley Chamberlin (his employer)

Location: Jacksonville, Florida

Note: The filming of this subject was completed the week of January 17, 1916.

SYNOPSIS, Reel Life, March 4, 1916:

"When Andy's employer was asked why he permitted the awkward Negro to remain upon the payroll, he blandly replied: 'I more than save his salary, for now, instead of going to the theatre, I have free vaudeville in the daytime.' Andy was an expert in doing things for the wrong way. Hence when he received an ill-spelled letter from Andy, announcing that he had secured a job as Pullman porter, and intended 'to save my tips and some day come back and be your partner,' the employer mentally decided that sleeping car passengers would be an extra hazardous risk for some time to come. It developed that Andy had become ambitious. A book agent had induced him to purchase an interesting volume called A Knowledge of All Trades, and Andy figured that by careful study he might rise in the world. He did not know that the work was supposed to be a humorous publication, and took all the jokes seriously. Hence when he was working as a porter, he blacked all the shoes, even the white ones, and at dawn started to close the upper berths without any consideration for the feelings of the passengers sleeping in them. Then he left the train, hurriedly, between stations, for one of the first passengers had a gun. Later Andy secured positions as a chauffeur and as an expert dynamite blaster, but trouble still followed him, and he came back to his old job, which he won back after fighting the new incumbent. He finished by dragging his rival before his employer, and saying with great earnestness, 'This gemmun is eager to resign, for he knows you wants me back.' Andy came back."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, March 18, 1916:

"This, a clean, amusing comedy, in which Andy, a colored office attendant, ambitious to better his position, tries all sorts of vocations with usually disastrous effects. His last offense before returning to his former job is the accidental exploding of several sticks of dynamite. Very funny."

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