IT CAME FROM THE BOTTOM SHELF!

If modern audiences are familiar at all with Reginald Denny, it is due to his late career work as a character actor playing bemusedly oblivious Englishmen, such as Sir Harry Percival in Cat Ballou (1965) and Commodore Schmidlapp in Batman: The Movie (1966).  That’s certainly all I knew of him.  However, the British amateur boxing champion turned actor had a long and rich career prior to the Sixties.  During the silent era and into the early talkies, Reginald Denny was a popular leading man in light romantic and situational comedies (the type of films in which Cary Grant would later star).  Universal has recently restored three of Denny’s silent features as part of a major project to save their silent catalog, and the movies have been preserved through new 4K digital scans.  Kino Lorber has gathered those films in the 2-Disc Blu-ray set, the Reginald Denny Collection, displaying the result of that restoration work.

As a fan of silent comedy and never having seen any of Reginald Denny’s silent films, I was curious to check out this new release.  I found all of the films enjoyable, and Reginald Denny makes a very likable leading man.  He is a believable romantic lead, and he also handles the comedic beats of the story with natural ease.  He isn’t a laugh-out-loud comic presence, such as Chaplin, Keaton, or Lloyd, but these films are also not the type of knockabout, slapstick comedies that audiences associate with the 1920s.  Instead, the movies are light comedies of three familiar varieties.  The Reckless Age (1924) is a romantic comedy, Skinner’s Dress Suit (1926) is a domestic/office comedy, and What Happened to Jones (also 1926) is a classic farce.

Let’s look at each film individually:

The Reckless Age (1924)

USA/B&W-76m./Dir: Harry Pollard/Wr: Rex Taylor (based on the novel Love Insurance by Earl Derr Biggers)/Cast: Reginald Denny, Ruth Dwyer, William Austin, John Steppling, May Wallace, Tom McGuire, Fred Malatesta

While I was completely unfamiliar with the silent work of Reginald Denny prior to viewing the new Bu-ray set, I found the plot of the first film in the collection very familiar, as the same source material was later reworked for the 1940 film One Night in the Tropics, in which the comedy team of Abbott & Costello made their film debut as supporting players.  Overall, the material works better in this silent (as apart from Abbott & Costello’s supporting scenes, One Night in the Tropics is a dud).

In The Reckless Age, a destitute British nobleman (William Austin) takes out an $100,000 insurance policy in case his impending marriage to an heiress (a very charming Ruth Dwyer) falls apart.  To avoid a potential payout, the insurance company assigns their top man (Reginald Denny) to accompany the nobleman to Florida to make sure the nuptials go off as planned.  Of course, Denny’s character falls for Ruth Dwyer’s heiress and vice versa.  It’s a romantic comedy, after all.

While The Reckless Age is probably the least funny of the films in the collection, it is still a nice vehicle for Denny.  It not only shows off his considerable charms as a leading man; it also gives him an opportunity to show off some of his boxing skills.

A warning — There are a couple of scenes in The Reckless Age involving a black cab driver, and the character is played by a white actor in blackface.  While it was not unusual for the time, it is disconcerting today, and may spoil the enjoyment of the film for some viewers.  It’s a shame that the producers didn’t hire a black actor for the part (and there are other black actors in the film), as the character is likable and not the racist caricature that one would expect.

Skinner’s Dress Suit (1926)

USA/B&W-76m./Dir: William A. Seiter/Wr: Rex Taylor & Walter Anthony (based on a story by Henry Inving Dodge)/Cast: Reginald Denny, Laura La Plante, Ben Hendricks Jr., E.J. Ratcliffe, Arthur Lake, Hedda Hopper, Lionel Braham, Frona Hale, William H. Strauss

The second film is a bit of an improvement on the first.  Denny plays Mr. Skinner, a cashier in small company.  Despite the fact that he is a fairly low-level employee, his wife, Honey (Laura La Plante) insists that he demand a raise.  When Skinner asks his boss, the response is an emphatic “NO!”  Still, Skinner tells Honey that he was given a $10 per week increase on his salary.  Honey immediately starts spending the phantom cash on furniture and the tuxedo of the title.  However, while the family bank book quickly dwindles, the luxurious purchases help to bring about a happy result.

Both Denny and La Plante are quite likable, and the comic situations are fun.  As a bonus, there are some nice Charleston-like dance sequences. Fans of classic film will also recognize Arthur “Dagwood” Lake and Hedda Hopper in supporting roles.

What Happened to Jones? (1926)

USA/B&W-71m./Dir: William A. Seiter/Wr: Melville W. Brown (based on a play by George Broadhurst)/Cast: Reginald Denny, Otis Harlan, Marian Nixon, Emily Fitzroy, Ben Hendricks Jr., Zasu Pitts, Margaret Quimby, Melbourne MacDowell, Frances Raymond, William Austin, Nina Romano, John Elliott

Skinner’s Dress Suit is the best known of the films in this set, having been widely copied on 16mm for the collectors market; and the general critical consensus is that it is also the best of the three films in this collection.  However, I found What Happened to Jones? to be far and away the most entertaining.  The story is pure farce, including multiple disguises, mistaken identity, chases, and even a bit of slapstick.

Reginald Denny is the “Jones” of the title — a young man who is lured into a poker game on the night before his wedding.  When the illegal game of chance is raided by police, Jones and an older friend (Otis Harlan) make their escape through a women’s Turkish Bath.  In order to evade the police, the pair disguise themselves as women, but that is only the beginning of the farcical shenanigans.

What Happened to Jones? is easily the funniest film in the set, and it is a great showcase for Denny and his roly-poly sidekick, Otis Harlan.  Zasu Pitts also garners some good laughs in the second half of the film as a maid who finds a way to profit off of the proceedings.  This Blu-ray set would be worth the purchase for this film alone.

For Fans of: Silent comedy enthusiasts are encouraged to give this collection a look.  I think they’ll love What Happened to Jones?, and they will probably find the earlier two films pleasantly enjoyable.

Video: Kino Lorber has released the new 4K restorations of The Reckless Age, Skinner’s Dress Suit, and What Happened to Jones? as the 2-Disc Blu-ray set, the Reginald Denny Collection, under their Kino Classics imprint.  The first disc holds The Reckless Age, and the other two films share the second disc.  Considering that these films are over 90 years-old, they look excellent.  The Reckless Age, which was derived from a Dutch 35mm print, is the most pristine of the three, looking sharp and clear, with just a few age-related scratches.  Skinner’s Dress Suit is a little more variable in sharpness, as some 16mm elements had to be used to fill in missing footage from a 35mm print, but it still looks good overall.  Finally, What Happened to Jones? falls somewhere in-between.  It appears that 35mm elements were available throughout, but some shots are a little softer or display a bit more damage than others.  Again the overall presentation is quite nice, and color tinting (which is used throughout the film) is quite beautiful.  It is obvious that a lot of care went into restoring these films, and unless better elements show up somewhere (which is unlikely), this is the best the films will ever look.

Each movie has been given a jaunty and effective musical score, which is detailed below with the special features.

Special Features:

• New audio commentaries for all three films by film critic and historian Anthony Slide, which are well worth a listen.  They are just as entertaining as the films themselves.
• Music scores:
  • The Reckless Age music by Jake Monaco
  • What Happened to Jones? music by Anthony Willis
  • Skinner’s Dress Suit music by Leo Birenberg

Streaming: Are you nuts?  These films aren’t available via any streaming services.

More to Explore: Hopefully more of Denny’s silent features will eventually make their way to home video, but for now, we will have to be happy with what we have.  The Warner Archive has also released Stepping Out (1931), one of Denny’s early talkie farces.

Trivia: Reginald Denny had a second career in multiple areas of aviation.  He served in the Royal Air Force in WWI, performed as a stunt pilot, formed a hobby shop that produced and sold model airplanes, and helped develop early military drones.

For More Info: Reginald Denny’s life and career (in both film and aviation) are detailed in Prince of Drones: The Reginald Denny Story by Denny’s granddaughter, Kimberly Pucci.