Sidney Drew's Wedding Nightmare in Miss Stickie-Moufie Kiss (1915)
One of nine fascinating shorts in Unknown
Video's Nickelodia 3 disc. Sidney Drew seeks solace of sea drowning over continued marriage to
"human fly paper" of a Mrs., her part enacted by real-life partner
and wife, standard-billed "Mrs. Sidney Drew." Miss Sticky-Moufie-Kiss
sounds funny, but actually isn't, being tragi-comedy made by men who'd
obviously wed in haste to repent at leisure. The set-up and suicide ending (!)
unravels in a reel, Sid the soldier home from trenches whose intended does a
regress to baby talk and manner. This all came under heading of
"genteel" comedy as practiced by Vitagraph inopposition to pie-toss
at Sennett. Folks laughed less at their stuff, but Vita won plaudits of
stuff-shirt critics and commentators who thought slapstick was getting out of
hand. John Bunny had been the company's first humor brand till death cleared
for the Drews and a replacement series.
Moving Picture World thought Miss
Sticky-Moufie-Kiss was OK, but noted that "a greater variety of situations
would have improved the play." That reference to a "play" was
perhaps spill-off from Sidney Drew's being a theatre name and fount of
prestige, him among other things, a Barrymore relation. Toward added names of
weight, MPW noted illustrator James Montgomery Flagg as creative contributor,
his titles design, and maybe contribution to text of same, being a lure to
those who knew his art from popular magazines. Sidney Drew was a subtle and
accomplished farceur, his look of mortification a bridge across the
near-century that's passed since this short was made. "Is salt water
sweet?," he asks his new wife before wading out to blue-tint oblivion in
evening attire.Such ancient reels as Miss Sticky-Moufie-Kiss seldom chickened
out ... More of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew at Greenbriar Archives HERE.
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