Tramp, Tramp, Tramp

“The Sole of the Nation” grinds the old shoemaker under its heel, his son leaves home to somehow win the rent.

Latest promotion, a cross-country footrace with a big purse... The world champion walker is none other than the landlord, our man carries his bags for him to the big race. The girl on all the billboards is the boss’s daughter Betty, “Walk With Me”, she signs our man up for the race and hands him a pair of company shoes like the rest.

Harry Langdon, Joan Crawford, Massachusetts to California.

The sheepfold on a sheer precipice right at the start is a remarkable likeness of Schlesinger’s Far from the Madding Crowd, barking dog and all. “This one’s eatin’ my popcorn!” Chain gang, rock quarry. Escape, “the great American desert.”

The cyclone. “Ah!—At last a breeze.”

Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times saw an overwhelming debt to Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, thought it over and concluded, “this is quite a jolly entertainment.”

Dave Kehr (Chicago Reader), “a genuine, if rarefied, talent.”

The daffy TV Guide review is best left at “amusing and sunny”.

Time Out, “after many strange convolutions...”

Hal Erickson (Rovi), “one of the funniest comedies ever made... well-nigh perfect”.

Halliwell’s Film Guide, “well-staged”.

Matri-Phony

ANCIENT

ERYSIPELAS

In the Reign of the Rash

Emperor Octopus Grabus

Three Little Twirps

To the heights of show business from its lowliest corner.

The Stooges post bills for Herman’s Combined Circus and are paid in ducats, which they scalp.

Under the big top, Curly and Larry are nearly knackered in a horse suit to feed the lions.

Caught, they serve in the Zulu spear-thrower’s act. Curly escapes to the high wire, Larry and Moe offer to catch him, circus prop in hand.