Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Douglas Fairbanks feature Manhattan Madness (1916), directed by Allan Dwan.
Doug plays a wealthy young man who returns to New York from time spent out in Nevada. He goes and visit friends at his club and whoops it up. Over lunch, they get into a friendly dispute: East vs. West. In several illustrated flashbacks he illustrates the virtues of the wide open country, until his bragging about his exploits gets insufferable. His pals bet him $5,000 he’ll get plenty of thrills in New York before he returns to Nevada. He is of course immediately entangled with crooks and kidnappers (a development which turns out to have been an elaborate prank arranged by his friends).
To learn more about comedy film history please check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc
To learn about the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
