The Saphead

Scion of a Wall Street warlock, who reads a book and acts the sport to win a modern girl, admitting at the last, “I’m good!”

Question of his making a living. Keaton in for Fairbanks (The Lamb, dir. Christy Cabanne) as Bertram Van Alstyne, Bertie. Question of an old flame, Henrietta, and a mine of that name in Arizona. The title character takes responsibility for the former, and for the latter on the floor of the Stock Exchange.

“All they do here is knock off hats—but I enjoy it—it occupies the mind.”

Werker’s The House of Rothschild has much the same idea.

Pure Keaton in every reel, a masterwork by any name.

The New York Times, with its inevitable floundering at the cinema, found it “just another motion picture mixture of impossible melodrama and labored horseplay” but for Keaton, “a clown, if you please, but an accomplished and peculiar clown, and therefore a gentleman of comedy,” it is to laugh, is it not?

TV Guide echoes this, “not particularly good.”

Tom Milne (Time Out) also, “something of a disappointment.”

Halliwell’s Film Guide, “interesting”.