Richard Fleischer took a couple of eight-minute mellerdrammers from the silent-film days—-“Caught By Wireless” and “Eldora, The Fruit Girl”—, sliced them nearly in half, added some hoked-up sound effects and a mocking narrative and, what resulted, of course made no sense plot-wise to those trying to make a Comment on either one of the original shorts, but the RKO Flicker Flashback series was popular for a while, until the novelty wore off. Pete Smith was also doing the same bit in many of his M-G-M shorts. The first one here was from “Caught By Wireless,” where Paddy, in Ireland, was having a hard time scraping together enough money to pay the rent collector, and also keeping the villain from hitting on Paddy’s wife. Paddy tosses him out of the cabin and the rent-collector goes to town and asks the Black-and-Tans to arrest Paddy. Paddy flees to the U. S. A. Later, the rent-collector is exposed as a thief and he too sets sail for the U.S. Paddy has found gainful employment in the land of the free (and home of the brave) and has sent his wife ship-fare money to join him. She is on the same ship as the villain, recognizes him and has the ship’s wireless-telegrapher send a message to New York that the wanted man is aboard. The Ellis Island-landing finds a New York City policeman waiting slap the handcuffs on the thief, and that policeman is none other than Paddy. The second segment finds Eldora in love with a rich-man’s son, but the father isn’t inclined to let his heir marry a fruit peddler. The boy promises to give her up but when Eldora attempts suicide, the father relents and hives his blessings to the young lovers. |
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Ratings: | IMDB: 0.0/10 | |
Released: | May 21, 1948 | |
Runtime: | 9 min | |
Genres: | Comedy Short | |
Cast: | Knox Manning | |
Crew: | Richard Fleischer | |
fl4g0ndry : I've only watched the first episode so far. A threat to national security??? IMHO if the b...