Synopsis
On the SS Belgania, returning from France, the Captain is giving a dinner celebrating an engagement between Gertie Darling (Prevost) and Algy Brooks (Pangborn). Friends of the couple include Jimmy and Barbara Felton (Myers and Ridgeway), and Barry Scott (Henderson). After dinner, Algy, Jimmy and Barry vie for which if them will carry Gertie’s forgotten evening bag to her. Algy takes the bag. As he gives it to Gertie, it falls onto deck. A clipping falls out and Gertie, grabbing bag and clipping from Algy, falls into her cabin. Gertie shows Barbara the clipping. It has the headline: “Jeweled Garter Sensation of Paris”. The photo of the garter shows that two pictures are attached to it, Ken Warwick, a well known attorney, and Gertie. Gertie does not want Algy to find out about the garter. Ken gave it to her when they were engaged briefly, and Gertie intends to give it to Ken once she returns to New York.
In his apartment, Ken (Ray) is entertaining his fiancee, Teddy (Rand), and her Aunt. He gives Teddy an expensive pin as a gift. She is delighted declaring that the best thing about an engagement is the expensive gifts. Ken lies to Teddy, telling her that he never gave expensive jewelry to any other woman. Teddy and her aunt leave. Ken tells the butler/valet, Jenkins, that he gave Gertie a garter with his picture on it. He thought it was a bracelet when he bought it. Gertie arrives to return the garter. As Gertie is removing the garter from her leg, Teddy comes back. Ken lies again, saying that Gertie is a client. Algy comes in and sees Ken and Gertie. Gertie tells Algy that Ken is her lawyer. Gertie and Algy leave, Gertie still has the garter.
At the “Dixieland” nightclub, Gertie, Algy, Jimmy and Barbara are enjoying the entertainment. Ken enters carrying a briefcase in which he hopes to hide the garter. Barry with Teddy and her aunt arrive separately. Teddy is angry when she sees Ken. Ken says that Gertie is the client he has come to see. Ken dances with Gertie, but she will not take off the garter for fear Algy would see it,. Algy dances with Teddy. Barry invites everybody to a weekend house party.
At Barry’s house party, Jimmy upsets Barbara by hanging around Gertie’s door. Ken arrives, still trying to get the garter. With Algy and Jimmy hanging around in the hall, Ken cannot get to Gertie’s room. Ken climbs out his window intending to climb to Gertie’s room. Hs rips his pants but goes on to Gertie’s room. Gertie wants to kiss him, backing away, he falls over a table. Jimmy hears the noise and enters to help Gertie. Ken hides in the closet. Gertie is leaving with Jimmy when he sees Barbara and Algy coming and runs back into Gerte’s room. Jimmy hides in the closet. Fortunately the closet has two sections, and a man is hiding in each of them. Gertie lets in Algy who has their marriage license. Ken comes out without his pants, sees Algy and retreats back into the closet. Gertie has put the garter into Ken’s pants. Ken, pants-less, runs out of Gertie’s room; Teddy sees him and faints. Ken runs downstairs and hides inside a large clock. Barbara sees Jimmy in Gertie’s room and is angered. She shuts the bedroom door in Jimmy’s face. Ken comes out of the clock and demands Jenkins’ pants. They are short and tight. The aunt and Gertie see Jenkins and faint. Jenkins puts on Ken’s torn pants.
Jenkins runs off to the barn and hides in the hayloft. The garter drops out of the pants. Gertie and Ken climb into the hayloft after Jenkins and the garter. Gertie falls out of the hayloft into the water trough and gets all wet. She takes off her wet dress. Ken tells her to hide in the wagon. Algy and Teddy come into the barn and find the wet dress. Barbara comes to the barn and finds the dress. Algy sneezes. Barbara thinks that Jimmy is in the barn with Gertie. The aunt and Barry have the garter and show it to everybody. They find Ken and Gertie in the wagon pretending to be taking a buggy ride. Teddy throws over Ken. Algy throws over Gertie. Teddy and Algy leave together. Gertie tells Ken that she accepted Algy as a way to be near Ken. Gertie and Ken, reunited, kiss.
Discussion
The film is based on a farce of the same name that played on Broadway for four months in 1921. The film, and presumably the play, organized around Ken’s attempts to retrieve an intimate object, the garter, attempt to be energetic and slightly risque. Laughter results from misunderstandings and suggestive interactions among the characters. Gertie is the center of interest to four men with two other young women also interacting with the men and with Gertie. The main characters change partners at the finish. In a very theatrical sturcturing the film is organized into four scenes, each with its own setting.
More silly and slow than sharp and sexy, the film misses the opportunity for the series of risque events suggested by the basic premise. A garter is a relatively intimate item. Ken wants the garter, and Gertie wants to give it to him. A series of interruptions of Gertie’s attempts to take the garter off her shapely leg should be at the center of the action. The film has only one short scene where Gertie is interrupted taking it off. Ken running around in his underwear could also be used for suggestive farce. Perhaps the producers were too prudish to show the sexy events suggested by the scenario. The director, E. Mason Hopper, did not, or perhaps was incapable of, focusing the action and moving it along. The ending in the wagon with Gertie and Ken sitting tamely apart misses the final opportunity to utilize the comic possibilities of Gertie still attempting to remove the garter.
In her teens, Marie Prevost had been a Mack Sennett bathing beauty, performing in a bathing costume in comedy short subjects. After leaving Sennett, Prevost made feature length comedies and a few dramas. Getting Gertie's Garter is one of a series of mildly risque comedies she made in the late 1920s. Most of these films co-starred Harrison Ford; only Gertie co-stars Charles Ray
Prevost’s cuteness and coquettishness are apparent, but her comic opportunities are subdued. As a Sennett alumna, she had experience with unrestrained slapstick, and she takes a couple of unladylike pratfalls, but less restraint in her performance would have been welcome.
Prevost’s career continued in comedy into the talkies. Her outstanding dramatic role was in Cecil B. DeMille's Golden Girl (1928). Her stardom declined after 1930, and in 1936 she signed a stock contract with Warner Bros Studios. She had gained weight, and in a effort to regain her figure, she went on a rigid diet. In January 1937, Prevost was found dead in bed, presumably a fatal result of the strict diet.
Charles Ray plays his character rather broadly. He is lively, but shallow and unemotional. In the 1910s Ray, playing innocent country boys, had been a major star. His acting was praised by film critics. He opened a studio and produced his own films. The failure of his supersized production of The Courtshp of Miles Standish (1923) cost him his independence, his fortune, and the remnants of his stardom. By 1926, Ray was an experienced comedian playing in support of leading actresses. The sublety attributed to him by early film critics had mostly disappeared from his acting.
Director E. Mason Hopper had begun his career in 1911 with the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company. During the 1910s and 1920s, he worked for Lasky Features, Triangle Film Co, Goldwyn Pictures, and Christie Film Co. He directed over 50 silent features including most of Marie Prevost’s starring comedies of the late 1920s. Mason’s career continued for only a few years into the 1930s, mostly with the poverty row studio Mayfair, for which he made ten very low budget films. His final credit, Hong Kong Nights (1935) was made for Walter Futter Productions.
The supporting cast of Getting Gertie’s Garter includes several notable actors:
After many years on stage, Franklin Pangborn began his film career in 1926. He appeared in a dozen silent films, of which Getting Gertie’s Garter is the third. During the talkies, Pangborn was usually cast as a fastidious, fussy, and easily irritated gentleman. This querulous, easily exasperated persona is already well developed by 1926.
From the age of 20, Sally Rand had a film career as a light comedian, appearing in about two dozen silent films. Her film career declined after 1929. In 1933, she developed an exotic burlesque act involving her graceful manipulation of two large peacock feather fans. The act was an immediate hit, and Rand was a major attraction at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. She continued the fan act for more than thirty years.
During the 1910s, Harry Myers acted in and directed dozens of short films. After 1920 Myers dropped directing and concentrated on his career as a supporting actor, often playing straying husbands. Myers best known role is as an eccentic millionaire in Charlie Chaplin’s silent classic City Lights (1931). During the talkies, Myers declined into bit parts.
Dell Henderson had a forty-year film career. From 1908 to 1929, he directed and/or acted in hundreds of short films. He had supporting parts in eight feature films from 1924 to 1928. From 1928 to 1959 Henderson had over 160 bit parts, mostly uncredited.
Further Reading