The Mack Sennett production Yankee Doodle in Berlin (1919) represents the lighter side of the hate-the-Hun propaganda films which proliferated after America's April 1917 entry into World War I. Representative titles in this cycle included The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin (1917) and To Hell With the Kaiser (1918). Of particular note today are the films featuring Erich Von Stroheim as various sadistic Prussian officers: The Unbeliever (1918), The Hun Within (1918), The Heart of Humanity (1918), and D. W. Griffith's Hearts of the World (1918). Indeed, Yankee Doodle in Berlin's subplot of a Belgian girl mistreated by a German officer would have been recognized by audiences at the time as a playful spoof on Griffith's film, which was easily the greatest box-office success of the previous year. Sennett's film also has great fun depicting the Kaiser and his sons as inept womanizers and the German military as bumbling Keystone Cops.
Yankee Doodle in Berlin was only Sennett's third feature after the groundbreaking Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) and Mickey (1918), Mabel Normand's comeback vehicle; most of his productions were still two-reel shorts. The film was also noteworthy as Sennett's sole feature released through Paramount Pictures. In the summer of 1917 Adolf Zukor, the head of Paramount, sought to incorporate Mack Sennett and his company in order to expand their slate of two-reel comedies to show alongside their features. Sennett managed to secure his release from the troubled Triangle Film Corporation and brought his core Keystone actors and crew with him, though in return he had to sign over the Keystone name to Harry Aitken, the president of Triangle. Sennett's first Paramount comedies were released in the fall of 1917. His partnership with Paramount lasted until 1921, by which time he had already started producing feature films on the side for Associated First National.
During this time Sennett also began including scenes with the so-called "Sennett Bathing Beauties" in his comedies. The Bathing Beauties became one of his most lucrative promotional tools, touring the country in special road show events that accompanied screenings of Sennett's films. Yankee Doodle in Berlin was no exception: not only did the Bathing Beauties appear on stage, but the film's lead actor, the professional female impersonator Bothwell Browne, performed an "Oriental dance" for audiences. A tie-in song entitled Yankee Doodle in Berlin was also sold as sheet music. However, timing was not on the film's side; it had the misfortune of finishing production only a couple months before the November 11 armistice. It wasn't released until March 1919 and ultimately grossed approximately $125,000 - meaning that it turned a profit but not a large one considering its production costs.
Producer: Mack Sennett
Director: Richard Jones
Story: Mack Sennett
Camera: Fred Jackman and J. R. Lockwood
Cast: Bothwell Browne (Captain Bob White), Ford Sterling (The Kaiser), Mal St. Clair (The Crown Prince), Bert Roach (Von Hindenburg), Ben Turpin (A Guardsman), Charles Murray (An Irish Soldier); Marie Prevost (A Belgian Girl), Eva Thatcher (The Kaiserin), Baldy Belmon (Von Tirpitz), Chester Conklin (Officer of Deaths Head Hussars).
BW-58m.
by James Steffen
Sources:
"Bathing girls join film." New York Times, June 30, 1919, p. 14.
DeBauche, Leslie Midkiff. Reel Patriotism: the Movies and World War I. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
Rollins, Peter C. and John E. O'Connor, eds. Hollywood's World War I: Motion Picture Images. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997.
Walker, Brent E. Mack Sennett's Fun Factory. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 2010.
