Weary Willie's Rags is a 1914 American split-reel silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company and featuring Harry Lorraine, Ben Walker, and Oliver Hardy.The Lubin Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 19 (December 30, 1914), p. 12.Rob Stone, Laurel or Hardy: The Solo Films of Stan Laurel and Oliver "Babe" Hardy (Temecula, CA: Split Reel Books, 1996), pp. 51–52.
Plot This plot summary was published in the Lubin Bulletin in December 1914, and also appeared in the copyright application for the film, now in the Library of Congress:"Weary Willie's Rags. Motion picture copyright descriptions collection. Class L, 1912-1977", CIL 3918, Library of Congress.
Cast Harry Lorraine as Henry Paff Ben Walker as William Ragson Oliver Hardy as the hotel clerk
Production and reception Weary Willie's Rages was written John A. Murphy 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 It Cured Hubby, an unrelated comedy written by William B. Courtny and featuring Mabel Paige, C. W. Ritchie, James Levering, and Eva Bell. The films were released by the General Film Company on December 15, 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. Hardy can be seen in a still reproduced in the Lubin studio's promotional bulletin, although his name does not appear in the cast list.
Reviews of the film in the trade papers emphasized the familiarity of the plot. Motion Picture News described it as "a split reel comedy based on the familiar situation of a tramp changing clothes with a prosperous citizen", with no other comment.Motion Picture News, vol. 10, no. 24 (December 19, 1914), p. 83. The New York Dramatic Mirror wrote: "J. A. Murphy, author of this farce, has used a favorite situation in which a tramp steals the clothes of a prosperous man and then impersonates the owner of the garments, while the victim is forced to appear as a tramp. The idea could hardly be expected to inspire anything very novel in the way of comedy action, but Harry Lorraine and Ben Walker do their best to be funny."
See also List of American films of 1914 Filmography of Oliver Hardy
References