Random Bits: Fourth of July Edition

I came across a few interesting scenes this week.

The torn trousers bit is ratcheted up to a manic level by director Larry Semon for Vitagraph's Rips and Rushes (1917).  The film’s title is accurate labeling as the film devotes most of its running time to rips and rushes.

 
Wait, here’s another rip and further rushes.

It becomes obvious from these clips that the film’s star, Jimmy Aubrey, was a master of excessive mugging.  Perhaps, an even better title for the film would have been Rips, Rushes and Overacting.

 The funhouse mirror scene, which was most memorably performed by Harold Lloyd in Number, Please? (1920) and the Three Stooges in Don't Throw that Knife (1951), turned up in an installment of "The Gumps" series called Oh, What a Day! (1923).

Monty Banks’ Oil's Well (1923) possibly shows the first wedgie scene in motion picture history.

Here are a few magazine pages that caught my attention.

Finally, we have Stan Laurel enacting the "holding up an unconscious woman" bit in The Jitterbugs (1943).

 Happy Fourth of July!