Directed by: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor
This review contains a Kitty Carnage Warning!
Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!
Synopsis: A small-town young man named Harold (Harold Lloyd) moves to the big city to make his fortune and through a series of misadventures ends up climbing up the side of a skyscraper.
Kitty Cameo: Harold takes a job in a department store and during an especially crazy sale his fabric counter is bombarded by women. One woman is off to the side holding her longhair white cat which is wearing a ribbon. Her henpecked husband stands beside her, holding her purchases.
Wanting to get in on the action, the woman sets the cat in her husband’s arms and hurries off.
The cat immediately jumps down and runs away, much to the horror of the husband.
The reason for this quick gag soon follows as Harold accidentally knocks a white stole off the shoulders of a customer. We see the stole on the ground with the cat’s tail beside it.
Kitty Carnage Warning! Harold reaches for the stole and grabs the tail of the cat instead. In what is an extremely uncomfortable-to-watch gag, he picks the cat up by the tail and hands it to the woman. The woman also holds the cat by the tail, and eventually also the head, before realizing what she is holding and dropping the kitty to the floor.
Harold Lloyd seems to have used cats in his comedy more often than any of the other great silent clowns and this film is definitely a classic but in this instance the rough-handling of the poor cat actor makes this gag one the film could have lived without. The only saving grace is that the gag is extremely short so the cat’s discomfort is at least short-lived.
Final Mewsings: Do NOT pick up your cat by the tail for comedy or any other reason!
Many thanks to Brian H. for reminding us of the cat in this film.
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