A Truthful Liar

Hampton Del Ruth: A Truthful Liar (US 1924). With Richard Pennell, Will Rogers. Photo: AMPAS – Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles.

(US 1924) regia/dir: Hampton Del Ruth. scen: Hal E. Roach. did/titles: H. M. [Harley Marquis] Walker. photog: Robert Doran. mont/ed: T. [Thomas] J. Crizer. cast: Will Rogers (Alfalfa Doolittle), Richard Pennell (il re/the King), Beth Darlington (Mary Doolittle), Madge Hunt (Agatha Doolittle), Jack Cooper (il principe/the Prince), Jack Ackroyd (lacché/flunkie), Joseph “Baldy” Belmont, Helen Dale, Jules Mendel, Marie Mosquini, Mollie Thompson, Ouida Wildman, Noah Young. prod: Hal E. Roach. dist: Pathécomedy. uscita/rel: 16.8.1924. copia/copy: DCP, 20'32"; did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: Lobster Films, Paris.
    Grand piano: Stephen Horne.

    Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Ruritania 2, 12 Oct 2023

Amy Sargeant, Jay Weissberg (GCM 2023): 

“Roses are red,

 Violets are blue,

 I’m against royalty,

 How about you?”

" This delightful short film was the third of a trio produced by Hal Roach in which star vaudevillian Will Rogers played the down-to-earth character Alfalfa Doolittle, sometime senator and unlikely diplomat. It opens with Doolittle reporting his adventures as the unwilling Ambassador to Cornucopia to a credulous hometown crowd, represented, among other characters, by a freckled boy in dungarees with his cap askew (a Jackie Coogan type) and a girl in gingham (a Mary Pickford type). "

" Stereotypically American, Doolittle casts himself as a lassoing cowboy, dispensing with the silk knickerbockers and frock coat required by Cornucopian protocol and shocking his snobbish wife by getting undiplomatically familiar with the King, who’s more than happy to find someone with whom he can escape the stuffiness of court (and his Queen). Rogers also played Senator Doolittle that same summer in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1924. "

"As demonstrated in last year’s Ruritania program, mythical Balkan kingdoms were ripe for parody, with Hal Roach and Mack Sennett particularly delighting in sending up the steady stream of royal dramas flooding the market. A Truthful Liar fits into the frequently reworked theme of a plucky American teaching palace denizens to loosen up, of which James Cruze’s Hawthorne of the USA (1919) is a prime example. In the Rogers short, there’s also a shaggily bearded anarchist named Ivan, dressed in a belted Tolstoyan blouse, sending up the whole revolutionary terror aspect of many of these films, but what’s especially notable here is the way A Truthful Liar is awash in mixed signals regarding the actual locale. While the country is called Cornucopia and the palace lackeys wear buffoonishly Ruritanian garb, the guards are dressed as very British Beefeaters, and even more unexpected, the King is almost a dead ringer for George V. Despite the country’s name being mentioned several times, advertisements as well as articles in both trade journals and newspapers clearly say the film is set in Great Britain, proving how Ruritanian trappings had become eye-winking window dressing by 1924. "

" In a nice example of life imitating art, a few months after the film was released Rogers met Edward, Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor) in New York, and the two reportedly got on so well that they renewed their acquaintance when the actor travelled to London. Rogers would continue to gently send up Americans abroad in later films, specifically the underrated They Had to See Paris (Frank Borzage, 1929) and So This is London (John G. Blystone, 1930), and while neither have a Ruritanian provenance, there are echoes of themes we’ve seen connected with the genre, especially in the way his presumed lack of sophistication ends up charming the more worldly Europeans. As Ann Austin wrote about Rogers and A Truthful Liar in Screenland (11.1924), “This comedy makes us feel what in our hearts we firmly believe – that Americans have it all over royalty, and that if you know how to approach ‘em, the royalty guys are human underneath.” "

" Truthful Liar is ripe with 1920s slang and topical humor which may be less understandable to modern audiences, so it helps to remember that Prohibition was very much in force in the U.S. when the film was made. One gag perhaps needing explanation is at a cornerstone-laying ceremony when the Ambassador sees two thickly bearded men popping boiled sweets in their mouths and says to his wife, “The Smiths are here.” Smith Brothers’ Cough Drops, already over 70 years old in 1924, were instantly recognizable by the old-fashioned double portrait of their bewhiskered originators, and the joke would have caused laughter in most cinemas of the time. " – Amy Sargeant, Jay Weissberg

AA: The democratic American in royal / imperial Europe is a favourite humoristic clash-of-civilizations concept from Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court to The Prince and the Showgirl. In the 1940s, Bing Crosby filmed back to back The Emperor Waltz (D: Billy Wilder) and the Mark Twain story (D: Tay Garnett).

Will Rogers is in great form in this Hal Roach comedy.