Dobs at the Shore is a 1914 American split-reel silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company and starring Frank Griffin, Oliver Hardy, Raymond McKee, and Frances Ne Moyer.The Lubin Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 19 (December 30, 1914), p. 7.Rob Stone, Laurel or Hardy: The Solo Films of Stan Laurel and Oliver "Babe" Hardy (Temecula, CA: Split Reel Books, 1996), pp. 48–50.
Plot This plot summary was published in Moving Picture World for December 5, 1914:
Cast Frank C. Griffin as Jemula Heckla Oliver Hardy as Meggie Heckla (credited as Babe Hardy) Frances Ne Moyer as Helen Martin Raymond McKee as Count Casco Don Ferrando as Bob Fisher
Production and reception Dobs at the Shore was written and directed by Frank C. Griffin and produced by Arthur Hotaling, the general supervisor of the Jacksonville, Florida unit of the Lubin Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia. It was a short split-reel comedy, lasting approximately eight minutes and sharing a single reel of film with He Made His Mark, an unrelated comedy written by Epes W. Sargent. The films were released by the General Film Company on December 8, 1914, and are among a group of short comedies made by the Lubin company in 1914 and early 1915 that include the earliest screen appearances of Oliver Hardy. In this film, as in several other Lubin comedies, Hardy played a female character.
The reviews in the trade papers were generally positive and emphasized the unrestrained slapstick character of the film. Motion Picture News described it as "a wild series of rough and tumble scenes in which slapstick comedy is seen at its height".Motion Picture News, vol. 10, no. 23 (December 12, 1914), p. 48. The New York Dramatic Mirror wrote "Frank C. Griffin must be credited with this very funny slapstick effort.... The plot is inessential as such plots go, but the more negligible the story, in such offerings very often the funnier the result, as is the case here. Suffice to say that after the principals have worked themselves into a fury of throwing and swatting the police are called, and the offering ends by all taking one or more dunkings." Some reviews singled out Hardy's performance for special mention: Moving Picture World called the film "a series of absurdities from start to finish" and "a rough and tumble farce in which about the funniest feature is Babe Hardy, in a female character"; Moving Picture World, vol. 22, no. 13 (December 26, 1914), p. 1840. and the reviewer for The Bioscope wrote "In this seaside comedy, Babe Hardy is endowed with a fine part as the Brobdingnagian better half of Dobs. The latter makes up a dummy, which is left by the side of his sleeping spouse while he flirts with the fair bathing companion of Count Casco. The fun becomes of a very lively order when the gentle wife awakes."
See also List of American films of 1914 Oliver Hardy filmography
References