PRESERVED FILMS

Run ’Em Ragged (1920)
Distribution Company: Pathé. Production Company: Rolin. Producer: Hal Roach. Director: Alfred Goulding. Cast: Snub Pollard, Marie Mosquini (woman in the canoe), George Rowe (father with baby), Ernie Morrison. Transfer Note: Copied at 18 frames per second from a 35mm print preserved by the Library of Congress from source material provided by the New Zealand Film Archive. Running Time: 14 minutes (silent, no music).

Run ’Em Ragged stars comedian Snub Pollard (1889–1962), known in trade paper ads as “that funny little fellow with the large mustache.” Born in Melbourne, Australia, as Harold Fraser, he took the name Pollard upon joining Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company and toured with the Australian vaudevillians in America. He went into movies through the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company and did a stint with Mack Sennett’s Keystone Cops before landing the role of Harold Lloyd’s sidekick at the Rolin Film Company in 1915. He continued as a reliable foil when Lloyd moved over to his “glasses” character and a more realistic comic style.

“It isn’t so surprising that Lloyd is going over so big in his new work,” commented Lloyd’s producer Hal Roach in 1918. “I firmly believe the vogue of screen comedians who depend largely upon grotesque make-up…is going out.” Nevertheless when Lloyd was sidelined by an accident in 1919, Roach turned to Pollard, whose make-up—whiteface, arched eyebrows, and oversize, upside-down Kaiser Wilhelm mustache—harked back to his Keystone roots. Over the next five years Pollard headlined in a series of one and two-reel comedies for what became in 1920 the Hal E. Roach Studios.

Run ’Em Ragged, Pollard’s 39th starring vehicle, uses familiar Mack Sennett slapstick—over-the-top make-up, ethnic humor, and a Keystone Cops–style chase across Los Angeles’s Hollenbeck Park. But there is more here than knockabout. Sophisticated sight gags test the limits of the characters’ perception, making expert use of such props as a seemingly bottomless rowboat. Studio stalwarts, including the African American child actor Ernie “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison, future star of the Our Gang series, add to the fun.

Pollard’s character proved less memorable than his make-up. Unable to develop the newer comic style exemplified by Lloyd, he left the studio shortly after It’s a Gift (1923)—his now famous short about an eccentric inventor and his magnet-propelled car—and faded into lower-budget shorts and bit roles. Roach weathered his departure, as well as Lloyd’s, and in 1927 hit pay dirt by pairing Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

About the Preservation
Run ’Em Ragged was preserved under the direction of the Library of Congress from a nitrate print discovered in 2010 at the New Zealand Film Archive. The work was funded through the support of a Save America’s Treasures Grant secured by the NFPF.

More Information and Viewing
Pollard’s supporting work for Harold Lloyd can be seen in Kino Lorber’s two-volume DVD The Harold Lloyd Collection. In 1921 Charley Chase started directing Pollard; three of their collaborations are included in Becoming Charley Chase (VCI). Pollard’s starring shorts are on such DVDs as American Slapstick, Vol. 2 (Facets/All Day Entertainment), Snub Pollard: Showtime (Alpha Entertainment), and the Snub and Marie series (Looser than Loose Publishing). For more on Rolin Comedies, see A History of Hal Roach Studios by Richard Lewis Ward (Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 2005).