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| D. W. Griffith: A Smoked Husband (US 1908). |
US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.
Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: Frank E. Woods. Photog: Billy Bitzer. Cast: John R. Cumpson, Florence Lawrence, Arthur Johnson, Linda Arvidson, Charles Inslee, Mack Sennett, Robert Harron, Harry Solter, George Gebhardt.
Filmed: 26-27.8.1908 (NY Studio; West 12th Street, NYC). Rel: 25.9.1908.
Copy: DCP (4K), 8'22" (from paper print, 470 ft, 16 fps); titles: ENG. Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.
Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / Digital scan, 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition.
43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema – The Biograph Project.
Grand piano: Philip Carli.
Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 11 Oct 2024
Tracey Goessel (GCM Program Note 2024): "It might be argued that this is not the first “Jones” comedy, as Florence Lawrence and John Cumpson are dubbed “Mr. and Mrs. Bibbs” in the Biograph Bulletin. But it is their first comic pairing as spouses, and why split hairs?"
"Florence Lawrence (Photoplay, January 1915, p. 105) recalled the film as an example of how “the ‘Jonesy’ comedies kept up with the fashions of the times, as was evidenced by the ‘sheath’ gown in A Smoked Husband.” Indeed, the prospect of Miss Lawrence’s stunning gams moves not only her husband to horror, but modern audiences to delight."
"As cinema, this little film does little to advance the craft. The trick shot substitution of Cumpson for his dummy stand-in is a mere expedient; not used to meaningful or comic effect as Méliès had been doing years before. And the trope of having the characters besmudged with black coal or white paint was new when the Dead Sea was only sick."
Tom Gunning in his essay on A Smoked Husband in the Griffith Project (1997) stated (in paraphrase) that in retrospect, A Smoked Husband appears as the first in the Jones series, about eight comedies Griffith directed in 1908–1909 – until Florence Lawrence left Biograph. All starred Lawrence and the rotund comedian John Cumpson as a middle class man and wife and involved a series of marital gags and situations, reminiscent of television sitcoms of decades later. The series was extremely successful. When Lawrence left for IMP company, their publicity described her as "known to 1000's as Mrs. Jones". The idea of a series must have come only after the success of this films. Regardless of the name, the characters and situations are identical to those of the later Jones series. – The idea of a middle class comedy set in bourgeois domesticity may have been an innovation. In these films a sense of bourgeois propriety is essential. – However, the film still has strong ties to the earliest and most lasting gags: the literal besmirching of a character. Early Biograph gag films such as A Black Storm (US 1903) consist of little else, and the tradition goes on in the Golden Age with the custard pie. – The discomfort of Bibbs in the chimney once the fire has been lais is conveyed through alternating editing. – The climax of the film is not only marked by the capture of the real burglar and the embarrassment of the husband, but by a somewhat spectacular fall from the roof and a final besmirching gag. – The final fall into the white cement reverses the black face besmirching (which always takes on racial overtones in American comedies) and recalls the primal scene of all besmirching film comedies, the various versions of "The Miller and the Sweep" in which soot and flour intermingle as the characters fight it out. (End of Tom Gunning paraphrase).
AA: It is fascinating to learn that the Jones comedy series was extremely successful, that a middle class comedy series set in bourgeois domesticity was an innovation, and that A Smoked Husband may be the first in a long and popular tradition.
D. W. Griffith had a lovely sense of humour that he expressed in his great films, from romance to tragedy, from historical epic to temperance drama. He had also knew to employ witty screenwriters such as Anita Loos.
But I don't remember a single great comedy by him. A Smoked Husband may be an attempt at a comedy of manners, but it is also a hyperbolic catastrophe farce in the tradition of Georges Méliès, Jean Durand and André Deed. There is a Biograph link from French comedy to Keystone. Griffith is not a great director of a comedy of manners, nor is he a master of the farce. But he paved the way for others.
Nice visual quality in the new restoration. I keep being amazed at the Biograph 1908 discoveries. So many innovations in a short period of time. Amazing grace: I was blind but now can see.
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I saw A Smoked Husband in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 48), mattina 15 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 470 ft / 15 fps / 8 min without intertitles and Antonio Coppola at the piano.
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Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 173, 25 September 1908: "GROUNDLESS JEALOUSY GETS ITS JUST DESERTS. This smoked husband, though little better than a smoked herring, more properly belonging to the crustacean type of piscatory, the lobster, for such he was and no mistake. While our friend Benj. Bibbs was not exactly parsimonious still there were times when he kicked most vigorously against his wife's extravagance. Such an occasion opens our story."
"Milady Bibbs has just had sent home a hat and gown, for which poor Bibbsy has to give up, but when he sees her attired in the duds, he softens, for she certainly does look stunning. All is well until she turns around when, O, horror! It is a sheath gown of a most pronounced type. "You brazen hussy, to appear such!" "
"He could say no more, for he fairly choked with rage, and rushes from the room in a state of turbulent perturbation; but not until he has ruthlessly thrown a floor rug over his shameless wife."
"The maid of the family is in league with a crook, and the pair have plotted to rob the place. To this end the crook has written a note to the maid, telling her to signal when the coast is clear. This note falls into the hands of Bibbs, and as it is simply addressed "Honey" and signed "Lovingly, Tom," his jealous nature at once associates it with his wife."
""Aha! Sheath gown, honey, signal from the window, meet in drawing room, lovingly, Tom. I see it all: You would deceive me, eh? We shall see!" Into the fireplace and up the chimney he goes to hide, intent upon trapping his apparently perfidious spouse and her paramour."
"He is hardly ensconced when the maid, on order of the madam, builds a fire on the hearth, and yon may imagine Bibbs' position is not a pleasant one. To descend is out of the question, and as he ascends he dislodges the soot which covers him from head to foot. The noise induced by his scrambling amid smoke and soot alarms the women folks and several policemen answer their cries, who capture "Lovingly, Tom" 'neath the rose tree in the garden."
"The women insist that the real offender is still in the flue, and a mad rush to the roof brings the coppers there just as poor soot-begrimed Bibbs emerges from the chimney. Chased over the roofs, he in desperation leaps off, coming down on the heads of a couple of Willie boys who are gossiping alongside a mortar box."
"Into the cement tumble the trio, and a sorry sight they present when the police and others arrive. Explanations prove what a colossal fool Bibbs has been, but still it served him right, and his discomfort is the spectators' sport, for the subject is a most hilariously humorous one, with a scream in every foot of length."
—Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 173, 25 September 1908
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