Tramp, Tramp, Tramp

Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (released March 1926) is a rare loan-out by MGM of Joan so early in her career. Indeed, it's one of only 3 non-MGM films during her time at the studio. The other two: Rain (1932, UA) and They All Kissed the Bride (1942, Columbia).

Tramp3 is a First National release that stars Harry Langdon, one of those comedians that people seem to either like or don't. He is from the vaudeville school of slapstick comedy. I’ll be honest, his childish mugging for the camera is not to my taste.

Stephanie has done a great job synopsizing the film in her review, so I’ll just add that, in my opinion, a major fault in the film is that we're expected to believe that beautiful, sophisticated, socialite Joan somehow falls in love with this bumbling, backwoods simpleton. I'm all for Hollywood magic, but that's too much of a stretch for me!

Langdon is a rube whose wheelchair-bound father is going to lose his shoe store if they don't come up with cash quickly. Langdon enters a walking race to win a $25,000 prize. The daughter of the shoe company sponsoring the race is Betty Burton AKA Joan Crawford. Harry has a huge crush on Joan---who can blame him!---because she's the poster child, literally, for Burton Shoe Co., and is plastered on billboards from coast to coast. Not surprisingly, Harry wins the race and the prize. Surprisingly, this oaf also wins the heart of lovely Betty by movie's end.

The movie is all Langdon. Apart from him, no one gets much to do, JC included. Alex Francis, who was in the early Joan film The Circle (1925), plays Harry's dad. Tom Murray, who plays the pompous world champion walker Nick Kargas, is best known for playing a villain in Chaplin's Gold Rush (1925).

Per IMDB, this was the first film that Langdon produced on his own. Previously, Langdon worked for Mack Sennett. Langdon seems like he’d be more funny in limited doses, and more suited to a Sennett two-reeler. The movie also has future director Frank Capra as a writer.

Like many of her earliest films, Joan has limited screen time. The one good scene is the one that has the most Joanie time. It's an interchange between Harry and Joan about 12 minutes in: he realizes the girl of his dreams is standing next to him. Per Frank Capra's autobiography, in this scene they mostly shot Joan from behind because she was cracking up at Langdon's antics. Girl’s got a weird sense of humor!

Joan---who was so critical of her work---later told interviewer Lawrence J. Quirk (Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography): "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp was a wistful comedy but the picture belonged to Harry Langdon. I was playing not second fiddle, not third fiddle, but more like fifth fiddle to Harry’s comic stunts." One interesting tidbit I gleaned from the littlebitsofclassics Word Press site was that Joan thought she was filmed to better effect here than in her MGM films. Maybe this “look” and her performance is what convinced MGM that JC might be a marketable star, and thus groomed for bigger roles with their top leading men like Chaney, Novarro, and Gilbert.

1926 was a pivotal year in the great diva's career, I would argue THE pivotal year. You get the feeling that lending her out to First National suggested that MGM did not yet know what they had in Joan or what to do with her. They must have thought enough of her rookie season since they picked up her option. But, after 11 appearances in 1925, mostly in bit parts, she had only 4 in 1926. One of these---The Boob---was shot in 1925 and not released until May 1926. In Bardelys the Magnificent (Sept. 1926), Joan has a fleeting part as a court gossip. Her other film of 1926 is Paris, released in May, which is effectively lost, save for a 13-second clip on YouTube, but from available reviews, promotional materials, etc., seems to have been a very significant role for Joan. In 1927, she's the female lead in Winners of the Wilderness. Then, Taxi Dancer, her first top billing. From there, more or less, only star and leading-lady roles for most of her MGM career.

From what I’ve read, Tramp3 was a minor hit upon its release, and The Boob, which had been shelved, was released to capitalize on Joan’s growing popularity. So, perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, Tramp3 is, to paraphrase Churchill, not the beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning of the great story known as Joan Crawford’s movie career.

In Joan's fifth credited film, a Silent, she's on loan-out from MGM to First National to play the love interest ("Betty Burton") to silent comic Harry Langdon, who here appears in his first feature-length film after having worked in Mack Sennett shorts since 1923.

Langdon plays "Harry Logan," the son of a local shoemaker who now can't make ends meet because the giant corporation Burton Shoes has been wiping out competition with their successful billboard ad campaign featuring Burton's daughter Betty. (We get our first glimpses of Joan as a face advertising Burton's product, both on display in the Burton Shoes office and on the billboard directly across from Harry's Pa's shoe shop that Harry can't quit ogling.)

Pa will lose his shop altogether if he can't come up with rent. Potential rescue comes in the odd form of Burton Shoes having a cross-country walkathon publicizing the product that pays $25,000 to the winner. On the day the race begins, Harry stands around pondering how to save his pa's shop (while simultaneously ogling the Betty billboard); the real Betty appears and convinces him to join the race. After diddling and dawdling and professing his love, he's off on his big mission!

Now, this set-up seems at this point to be extremely full of promise: You've got the political ("Big Corporation vs. The Little Guy") as well as the "Romeo and Juliet" angle ("daughter of capitalist yearns for son of small shop owner"). Not to mention the fact that the wicked landlord who wants to close Pa's shop for non-payment of rent is also, improbably, the prime competitor in the walkathon! Unfortunately, all of this interesting psychological backstory is immediately tossed out once the race begins, not to be referred to again.

It is a Langdon feature, after all, so of course the focus should be on Langdon and his shenanigans...It's just that Langdon's not that interesting to watch, nor is the gag-writing for the film particularly clever. (NOTE: Famed director Frank Capra is one of six writers of the film.) Langdon's schtick is that he's a mild-mannered, childlike character who reacts to goings-on in a baby-faced, lackadaisical way... I can't help but compare him to Chaplin and Keaton, also rather childlike, disheveled, ragamuffin characters. The difference between these two and Langdon, though, is that the formers' interplay with and interpretations of their comedic situations seems a lot more engaged and witty and fast-paced---they had an adult sensibility despite their man-child personae. I have no idea who wrote the material for Chaplin and Keaton's early films; maybe Langdon's writers were just not up to snuff, but if that's the case, then he's still the one responsible for making the most out of sub-par material. He doesn't do so in this film. (A side-note, his looks were also kind of distracting to me: His pale baby-face, tiny kohl-rimmed eyes, and red lips made him, to my modern sensibility, the creepy spitting image of talk-show host Sally Jesse Raphael.)

There are the requisite "money" scenes, and Langdon is not uneffective in them, it's just that they run on too long and try to milk too little funny material. First is the hotel scene with Harry and the rival landlord. Harry has pinned up numerous pictures of Betty. The landlord meanly tears them down and demands some sleep before the big race. When Harry tries to "quietly" hammer up another Betty picture, there's the predictable mayhem as Harry loudly falls about and destroys the room. There is one mildly clever bit where a fan falls into Harry's bed and proceeds to stir up the joint, but overall the scene is slow, especially after the landlord gives Harry booze and pills to make him sleep. The viewer expects some major comedic pay-off here, but Langdon just kind of looks into the camera with a "boozy" expression for a few moments...and then goes to sleep. And is late for the Big Race the next day, with little consequence. OK...

The next big scene is during the race, when Harry is caught amid a flock of sheep and is forced to climb a fence for protection. On the other side of the fence, he finds himself dangling over a steep cliff and pulls out nails from the fence to hammer his clothes onto it so he won't fall; the fence gives and he slides down the now-sloping hillside to ultimate safety. The slide down the hill was one of the more fast-paced moments of the film, but... I can't help but think of what Chaplin might have initially done among the huge flock of sheep! The dangling-over-the-cliff thing is a trope of silent films; it's what an actor does in other, less stereotypical, moments that makes him memorable... Langdon goes on to be part of a chain-gang after stealing some fruit while walking: His picking out a tiny hammer to pound on tiny rocks is cute; but then when a big lug accidentally hits him over the head with a sledgehammer, Harry's response is to look befuddled for the first two times, and then to throw a big rock and bonk the guy over the head. Ha-ha.

In the final scene, a cyclone blows into town. Surprise---Harry's umbrella turns inside out! He does get to, more funnily, wear a shower curtain after his clothes have blown away, and rescue Betty (also funnily fanning her in the middle of the windstorm and later throwing a rock after the departing storm in David-and-Goliath fashion; his mid-storm goings-on are also credited with inspiring Buster Keaton's later, better-done scenes in "Steamboat Bill, Jr.").

Post-storm, he wins the race and is united with Betty. As they look into their home, there's Langdon himself as their bonneted baby in an oversized bassinet---gurgling, sneezing, rocking, chewing on balls and stuffed animals...I'll grant that this is funnily weird! But overall, Langdon's sense of comedy seems extremely slow-pokey and uninspired.

Oh, and about Joan...She looks very attractive and smartly turned out in her few appearances. How she's often presented onscreen is interesting to me: This has to be one of the first cinematic cases of a female with a very small part being overtly fetishized. We often see her as others in the film see her: First viewed on a billboard, later seen onscreen by Harry's Pa as he watches newsreels featuring the race at his local theater. It reminded me of a tactic that later filmmakers employed (more skillfully and with greater psychological intent): The Sharon Stone character in Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories" and Jessica Lange in "All That Jazz"---a dream-girl muse, briefly seen but nonetheless propelling the picture...