Starring Anita Garvin and Marion Byron.
Featuring Max Davidson, Charlie Hall, and Edgar Kennedy.
Directed by Fred L. Guiol.
Synopsis
"Two girls - working their way to Hollywood"
"Feed 'em and Weep" begins with restaurant owner Max Davidson and head chef Charlie Hall preparing lunch for 100 people - the delegates of the Pants Makers convention. To ensure a swift and speedy dinner, Max has asked the agency to send him two waitresses...
It just so turns out that the two waitresses sent by the agency are Anita Garvin and Marion Byron.
For reasons that we don't know (because a lot of the early minutes of the film are lost), the girls are forced to get out of the car that they have been travelling in, with 10 miles still to go until they reach the railway "restaurant" - I use the term lightly.
Anita and Marion don't want to walk the 10 miles, so Anita suggests that they attempt to look "vampy" in an attempt to hitch a lift.
This fails miserably and the girls get caked in dust! Trying to find a reason why the male motorist didn't stop, Anita puts it down to Marion's face being too scary.
They're left with no choice but to walk. They've barely gone six feet before all five foot and a bit of Peanuts falls on the floor; having tripped over a rock. Anita picks her up, and chides Marion for not looking where she's going...
Only for Anita to fall down a hole!
They finally arrive at the restaurant but have trouble opening the door, until a dog manages to open it for them.
The girls meet Max in the kitchen and Marion ends up putting her hand in a bowl of something gooey.
The train arrives at the station and the people flock right into the restaurant, trampling over Max's body in the process.
The mass rush to tables, shoving past Anita and Marion.
Somehow, in the mad rush to serve the customers their food, Max trips over and gets his head jammed between the door and the door frame. Marion's bumbling inefficiency sees her repeatedly push the door against Mr Davidson's head! Even Anita joins in, giving Max's head a couple of whacks with the door before the hapless chap gets their attention and makes them stop.
Then a full-scale melee ensues - Max, Anita, and Marion all start serving food, but, with catastrophic and hilarious results.
Just after Max has been sent flying over a table, the conductor (Edgar Kennedy) appears and informs people that they only have 15 minutes to eat!
Anita bungles next, dropping food over customers, whilst Marion gets sent over a table and ends up landing face-first in the dish that she is carrying. Max hoists her up by her skirt, ripping it in the process (Marion is unaware of this).
Marion comes out to serve, unsure of why all of the diners laugh at her. She soon finds out that her skirt has fallen down slightly, revealing a part of her underwear.
Marion's attempt at a quick fix fails miserably, as, again, unknown to her, her skirt falls off completely, leaving her to serve in her underwear.
This rouses more laughter and Max flings himself over another table in the process.
Anita and Marion start fighting with each other, which turns into a full-scale food fight involving the diners!
Max attempts to get his revenge on the girls by bringing out some food to throw at them, but Marion trips him up and he lands face-first in the dishes.
It just so turns out that the two waitresses sent by the agency are Anita Garvin and Marion Byron.
For reasons that we don't know (because a lot of the early minutes of the film are lost), the girls are forced to get out of the car that they have been travelling in, with 10 miles still to go until they reach the railway "restaurant" - I use the term lightly.
Anita and Marion don't want to walk the 10 miles, so Anita suggests that they attempt to look "vampy" in an attempt to hitch a lift.
This fails miserably and the girls get caked in dust! Trying to find a reason why the male motorist didn't stop, Anita puts it down to Marion's face being too scary.
They're left with no choice but to walk. They've barely gone six feet before all five foot and a bit of Peanuts falls on the floor; having tripped over a rock. Anita picks her up, and chides Marion for not looking where she's going...
Only for Anita to fall down a hole!
They finally arrive at the restaurant but have trouble opening the door, until a dog manages to open it for them.
The girls meet Max in the kitchen and Marion ends up putting her hand in a bowl of something gooey.
The train arrives at the station and the people flock right into the restaurant, trampling over Max's body in the process.
The mass rush to tables, shoving past Anita and Marion.
Somehow, in the mad rush to serve the customers their food, Max trips over and gets his head jammed between the door and the door frame. Marion's bumbling inefficiency sees her repeatedly push the door against Mr Davidson's head! Even Anita joins in, giving Max's head a couple of whacks with the door before the hapless chap gets their attention and makes them stop.
Then a full-scale melee ensues - Max, Anita, and Marion all start serving food, but, with catastrophic and hilarious results.
Just after Max has been sent flying over a table, the conductor (Edgar Kennedy) appears and informs people that they only have 15 minutes to eat!
Anita bungles next, dropping food over customers, whilst Marion gets sent over a table and ends up landing face-first in the dish that she is carrying. Max hoists her up by her skirt, ripping it in the process (Marion is unaware of this).
Marion comes out to serve, unsure of why all of the diners laugh at her. She soon finds out that her skirt has fallen down slightly, revealing a part of her underwear.
Marion's attempt at a quick fix fails miserably, as, again, unknown to her, her skirt falls off completely, leaving her to serve in her underwear.
This rouses more laughter and Max flings himself over another table in the process.
Anita and Marion start fighting with each other, which turns into a full-scale food fight involving the diners!
Max attempts to get his revenge on the girls by bringing out some food to throw at them, but Marion trips him up and he lands face-first in the dishes.
Review
"Anita - she knows everything - - Marion - she knows nothing"
It's still a decent short, but lacks much of the originality of "Going Ga-Ga" and "A Pair of Tights".
"Feed 'em and Weep" is a nice starter for the series - you'd feel more comfortable writing that sentence in 1928, not knowing that there were only going to be two other shorts featuring the pair - and it does contain some nice touches which would have stood both Anita Garvin and Marion Byron in good stead to make a durable comedy duo.
Some of these I've mentioned in my previous review of "Going Ga-Ga", but just to run through them again: The height gags make for some good, easy comedy, as does the fact that both Marion and Anita work in very different ways to elicit laughter from the viewer.
Once again, like in "Going Ga-Ga", I find myself laughing more at Marion than Anita, largely due to Marion's penchant for silly faces and amazing ability to do deadpan in the silliest situations. Her moments with Max in this film are very funny indeed.
Anita Garvin's comedy, like Marion's, does involve physical comedy to get a good laugh - just look at how Anita throws herself over a table during the mad rush of diners to get into the restaurant - but she also seems to foreshadow what the Roach studios would expect later on of Thelma Todd, the vampish looking, eye-fluttering sweetie who ends up getting bumped around or in trouble because of a clumsy partner.
It's probably telling that when I think of Hal Roach's women that made up his comedy teams, if you think immediately of ZaSu Pitts, Patsy Kelly, or indeed, Marion Byron, you can conjure up their quirky traits in your head of what "makes" them as slapstick comediennes. When I think of Anita Garvin, it's hard to think of her own individual style and/or quirkiness. Granted, Pitts and Kelly had a lot more films to work with than Anita Garvin, but still, Marion Byron's character is just more likeable than Anita Garvin's in the three films that they made together.
Perhaps the bosses were a bit unsure what to do with Anita Garvin, apart from the height difference providing obvious gags? She is a good actor; that's for sure. She's funny, and has a great way of conveying a variety of passions with her eyes. I like watching her act; it's just that I feel the writers could have done more to make her more of a quirky foil to Marion Byron's character than what they did.
Having said that, I definitely feel that there was enough potential for the Byron and Garvin pairing to acquire a certain longevity as a good comedy pairing at the Hal Roach studios. And, in "Feed 'em and Weep", we can see that the writers were already creating several nice touches that could have become trademark gags had the series continued for longer. One such example is that little Marion Byron carries a handbag that is much bigger than tall Anita Garvin's, which is very small indeed!
This makes it all the stranger as to why the series just stopped after "A Pair of Tights". As I've mentioned already, Anita Garvin did carry on working with the Hal Roach studios, Marion Byron didn't. But could the Garvin/Byron pairing have been panned because Hal Roach had signed Harry Langdon on a big money contract, shortly after "A Pair of Tights" was completed? Byron and Garvin's series may have been unfortunate victims of studio budget cuts.
"Feed 'em and Weep" is also curious in the sense that it is probably the most "Laurel and Hardy" of the three shorts that the girls made together. With Anita's bossiness that often backfires into mishaps mirroring Hardy's, and Marion's clumsiness and silly faces matching Laurel's, it's an interesting connection in a script that also does feel very Laurel and Hardy-esque. If Hal Roach did want to create a female Laurel and Hardy, it seems like he hedged his bets on Byron and Garvin as his women to do the job. By the time Pitts and Todd appear a few years later, Roach seems to have given up trying to create an exact replica of Laurel and Hardy in female form, instead, he looked to cash in on the potential of a female comedy duo with popular actresses.
Ok, so what do I like best about "Feed 'em and Weep"?
Well, I can tell you what I dislike first of all - it's a great shame that the surviving film is incomplete. Even though it is a great shame that some sections of the film are missing, it's by no means as fragmented as some of the films contained on the German Filmmuseum's Max Davidson set, some of which, sadly, are missing huge chunks which does affect your understanding and enjoyment of the film.
It would be nice to know exactly what happens to the girls at the start of the film; why they get out of the car and what happens to them immediately afterwards, and I also get the sense that some of the film right at the end of the short is missing. But all in all, the missing footage does not ruin the cohesion of the film.
So here's what I like best about the film:
Marion trying to pull Anita out of the hole in the road. It's a nice, simple slapstick moment before the real meat of the comedy takes place in the railway restaurant.
I like the moment when the girls try to get into the restaurant but have trouble opening the door. For me, this really smacks me as a fine example of Laurel and Hardy-type comedy, with Marion's upset facial expressions and Anita's firm hand moving Marion out of the way so that she can try (and fail) to open the door herself resembling Laurel and Hardy. Anita's clear "I'll do it," with a hand pressed to the chest is textbook Oliver Hardy. Marion's cute scrunched-up-face-giggle is also on a par with Stan's big smiles in the face of error.
Once they get inside, it's Marion Byron who really comes into her own with regards to quirkiness and comedy. Her deadpan, almost confused expressions are again reminiscent of classic Stan Laurel, and her interactions with Max Davidson are hilarious.
Just take the moment where Anita tries to vamp it up with Max whilst Marion just stares wistfully into the distance with a look of utter blankness all over her face - that's brilliant, and remarkably different from what her character would become in "A Pair of Tights", where she's the energetic flapper that we'd seen in "Steamboat Bill, Jr". Again, I wonder why the sudden change in Marion Byron's character between the second and third films the girls made?
Max Davidson provides some great moments of comedy, whether he's being trampled by hungry diners or getting his head and throat smashed with a door being pushed by Marion and Anita. The sight of Max on the floor as Marion and then Anita shove the door into his face is one of my favourite moments in the whole film. The look on the girls' faces is also brilliant!
And, seeing Max with egg(s) on his face is also one of the highlights of the film - it's made funnier by Marion's cheeky grin!
Anita Garvin is in her element once the catastrophe with serving the food begins, rolling her eyes in frustration, looking nervous, trying not to laugh at Max's exploits, and all of this makes for some good comedy. The slightly unoriginal food fight plot is made better by the interesting dimension that Marion unknowingly serves food with her lower undergarments showing, before losing her skirt completely!
Her way of moving round the room, vainly trying to keep her skirt up (when in fact, of course, it's fallen down a while ago), is hilarious.
The final fight between Marion and Anita also reminds me of moments when Laurel and Hardy would turn on each other and effectively trash a place. Marion delivers a very realistic looking boot to the backside of Anita, whereas Anita really gives Marion a good whack with some food (ouch!)!
If I'm being terribly harsh, it's rather clear that it's obviously not Marion Byron who goes over a table and gets food splattered in her face towards the end of the film: as would be expected, it's a stunt double - possibly a man (?!), it's too hard to tell. Max's body stunt double is more believable though!
Overall, I like "Feed 'em and Weep", but it ranks behind "Going Ga-Ga" and "A Pair of Tights" in terms of enjoyability, in my opinion.
What do you think of "Feed 'em and Weep" and Marion Byron and Anita Garvin in general?
Watch it
"It was your face! It scared him!"
"Feed 'em and Weep" is available on DVD, beautifully restored by the German Filmmuseum as part of their "Female Comedy Teams" set.
Here's the link: Female Comedy Teams DVD
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