Harry Langdon pulls K.P. duty.

Harry Langdon is the forgotten silent movie clown. For a few short years in the mid 1920’s he was nearly as popular as Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd. Today he is remembered only by fans of silent comedy. All Night Long is a two-reel short from producer Mack Sennett made in 1924 just as Langdon’s fame was growing. It was written by future director Frank Capra. Like Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon was a veteran of Vaudeville. He was 40 years old when he entered the movies.

Frank Capra said in an interview that the reason Langdon didn’t have staying power was because, unlike the other three silent era comic giants, he (Langdon) didn’t create his own character. Capra and writer Arthur Ripley came up with his baby-faced man/boy persona whose shtick was being completely guileless and slow on the uptake. Langdon didn’t fully understand his screen character and when his ego grew too large (he would later fire Capra as his writer/director) his pictures suffered. By the time the movies learned to talk Harry Langdon was a washed-up has-been.

The movie begins with Harry waking up in an empty movie theater. He gets caught in the middle of a robbery. He recognizes one of the burglars as his old sergeant from the war in France. In 1924 this was probably a rather common occurrence, two men who had fought in the war together inexplicably meeting up.

The two men begin to reminisce and we cut to a flashback of Langdon as a doughboy peeling potatoes. The sergeant reluctantly invites him to dinner at his French girlfriend’s house. Upon seeing Harry the girl instantly embraces him with a passionate kiss. She is very French. Langdon falls backwards out of an open window and then begins staggering about in slow motion. He quickly falls for Nanette, the very French girl, and finds himself competing with his sergeant. Dinner is suddenly interrupted by an air raid and Nanette winds up in Harry’s arms. The sergeant chases him outside.

Next the two men talk about the front lines. Harry and the sergeant are in the trenches. What follows is a series of not very funny slapstick bits. Harry inadvertently rescues a Colonel and gets promoted to Lieutenant; whereupon he returns to Nanette’s farmhouse. Cut back to the theater where the sergeant tells Harry, “You got the girl and I got the guard house.” They begin to fight and dynamite explodes. The final scene is Harry and the sergeant, covered in bandages, being pushed in an oversized baby carriage by Nanette, now Harry’s wife. They are accompanied by their three children. A parade of veterans goes by and the men salute.

Harry Langdon died from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 60 in 1944. The all but forgotten star was still toiling in cheap two reel shorts at the time of his death.
 

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