Hypnotized
Cast & Crew
Mack Sennett
Ernest Torrence
Charlie Murray
Wallace Ford
Maria Alba
Marjorie Beebe
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
In Hoboken, New Jersey, circus elephant trainer Bill Bogard is in love with gypsy violinist Princess Mitzie, but is unable to declare his love because he is poor and she is wealthy. Mitzie, attracted to Bill, is furious when she thinks he is snubbing her. When Bill learns that he has won the grand prize of the Grand National Steeplechase derby sweepstakes, held in Aintree, England, he turns flips and cartwheels and promises to give ten percent to his friend, Egbert Jackson, a black porter. Egbert, however, has placed Bill's ticket stub for safekeeping in the pouch of a boxing kangaroo. After the stub is retrieved, Bill kisses Mitzie, who slaps him and breaks a violin over his head. When he continues, she knocks him out. Frantic that she may have killed the man she loves, Mitzie kisses him, but she is then angered when he revives and she thinks he is fooling with her. However, he convinces her that he is sincere, and they plan a wedding ceremony to go with her farewell performance, as she and her band are returning to Hungary. Bill, however, does not show up for the wedding. The attending audience becomes angry, as does circus owner Charles O'Brien, who had secured a $50,000 bond from Mitzie's father in exchange for finding her a husband. While returning to Europe on the S.S. Austrilich , Mitzie becomes distraught. Unknown to Mitzie, Bill and Egbert have been kidnapped by hypnotist Professor Horace S. Limberly, who has the ability perform his powers on "chumps," and has brought the two onboard the ship to assist him in his act. Bill and Egbert come out of their trance while they are out at sea, and the shock of their location is minimized by the discovery that Mitzie and Egbert's girl friend Pearl, a black maid, are onboard. When Limberly learns that Bill has won $500,000, he hypnotizes him and Egbert again and robs Bill. After O'Brien gets them out of the trance, they learn that a suicide note has been left by Limberly saying that he will jump overboard. At the captain's table, when a Russian nobleman's beard catches fire, the captain spritzes him, causing his beard and wig to fall off to reveal that he is really Limberly. He threatens to blow up the ship and throws an object that the others think is a grenade. Egbert catches it and tosses it to the captain, and it gets lodged in a chandelier, then falls into Egbert's pants and out his leg before it is discovered to be an avocado. Egbert upsets Pearl, who throws a knife at him and hits him over the head with a bowling pin. He unwittingly hides in a box to be used in a lion act and finds Limberly already in the box. The box is rolled onto the stage, and after it falls apart during the act, the lion bites Egbert in the pants, while Limberly tries to pull the lion away by the tail. Limberly bites the lion's tail, and the lion knocks Egbert down and lies on him, whereupon Egbert bites the lion's tail and they wrestle. Meanwhile, Mitzie has caught Bill in a compromising position with a woman clad only in a slip. When he kisses Mitzie, she curses him in Hungarian and slaps him. After he kicks her, she threatens him with a knife, but when he only laughs at her, she begins to cry. Egbert suggests to Limberly that he hypnotize the lion, but the professor says that the lion does not look like a chump. He succeeds, though only momentarily, before the lion breaks the spell and chases them through the crowd, causing pandemonium. The passengers scramble for lifeboats, and Mitzie refuses Bill's pleas that she get into one. O'Brien and Limberly disguise themselves as women to escape in a lifeboat, but they are found out. Soon sanity is restored, as the professor ends up washing dishes on the ship, Pearl revives Egbert, who almost drowns in the ship's swimming pool, and the captain marries Mitzie and Bill.
Director
Mack Sennett
Cast
Ernest Torrence
Charlie Murray
Wallace Ford
Maria Alba
Marjorie Beebe
Herman Bing
Alexander Carr
Matt Mchugh
Luis Alberni
Henry Schultz
Mitchell Harris
Nona Mozelle
Hattie Mcdaniel
Jackie, A Lion
Henry East
Monica Bannister
Tepe Monaco
Joan Dix
Elsie Taylor
Alice Adair
Dixie Russell
Jean Lacy
Genee Boutell
Leta Howard
Estelle Essex
Alice Stombs
Anne Nagel
Eileen Taylor
Marion Weldon
Lorena Carr
Dorothy Stewart
Betty Collins
Madeline Carpenter
Pat Wing
Veleda Duncan
Teddy Mangean
Fred Warren
Walter Lawrence
Jack De Wees
George Ashforth
Al Mazzola
Charles Bimbo
Barney Hellum
Johnny Kacier
Larry Judd
Hubert Diltz
Rex Robinson
Junior Fuller
Bob Haines
Ed Wolf
Jack Murphy
Ernie Alexander
Neil Clyde
Joe Bordeaux
Ted Stroback
Spec O'donnell
Francis Lyon
Roy Wade
Johnny Wilson
Ray Bensfield
Earle Davey
George Abdul
Irene Thompson
Betty Collins
Myrtle Buckley
Betty Chisney
Lorena Carr
Geraldine Barton
Crew
Felix Adler
Dave Anderson
John W. Boyle
Jed Buell
Eddie Cohen
Bill Cooley
Arden Cripe
Glen De Vol
Hubert Diltz
Cliff Forester
Lew Foster
Chuck Geisler
Tom Geraghty
Al Giebler
Billy Gilbert
Harvey Gillette
John Grey
Bernie Grossman
Paul Guerin
E. W. Hammons
William Hornbeck
Henry Johnson
Roy Johnson
Melvin Koontz
Ethel La Blanche
George Lewin
Francis Lyon
Harry Mccoy
Jeff Moffitt
Frank Moran
Jack O'donnell
Ralph Oberg
Arthur Ripley
Earle Rodney
Margaret Schuman
Mack Sennett
George Sherman
Babe Stafford
E. C. Sullivan
George Unholz
D. J. Vecsei
John A. Waldron
Edward Ward
Gene Yarbrough
Karl Zint
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The working title of this film was Little Gypsy. The opening credits introduce the film as "Hypnotized with Moran & Mack (The Two Black Crows)." George Moran and Charles Mack, two black-faced white comedians, became famous nationally in 1927 when they performed their "Two Black Crows" routine on a record. According to the Variety obituary for Mack, who died in an automboile accident in 1934, the recording broke sales records and established a vogue for dialogue records. The team, which had been established in 1917 in vaudeville and burlesque, soon became headliners in the Ziegfeld Follies, The Passing Show, George White's Scandals and Earl Carroll's Vanities and made two films for Paramount, Why Bring That Up? in 1929 and Anybody's War. The Variety obituary for Moran, who died in 1949, stated, "Although their deliveries were in caricature vein, it never brought criticism and they presumably had as many Negro fans as whites." In this film, Moran appears only in the beginning. In early drafts of the script in the Mack Sennett Collection at the AMPAS Library, there is no role for Moran, and Mack plays a character called "Henry Jackson," a name that by the final film was separated into "Egbert Jackson," Mack's role, and "Henry Johnson," Moran's brief role.
This was Mack Sennett's last feature-length film and his first since 1930. The pressbook in the copyright descriptions states that Sennett had made only eight features. According to information in the Sennett Collection, W. C. Fields was originally considered for the role of "Professor Limberly." Gene Towne is listed along with the three writers who received screen credit for adaptation and dialogue in an early mockup of screen credits in the Sennett Collection, but he is not listed in subsequent information nor included in a list of twelve writers (other than Sennett) in the pressbook. It is not known if Towne contributed anything to the final film. The film includes a sequence in which animated mice dance in the ship's stateroom; according to the Sennett Collection, Gus Meins was involved in the production of this sequence. According to the pressbook, actor Charlie Murray was in Sennett's original Keystone comedy company. Marjorie Beebe performs her role in blackface. According to news items, the film was originally intended as a fifteen-reel road show production. Although advertisements bill the film as being eight reels in length, copyright records list only seven reels. According to the pressbook, the S.S. Emma Alexander was chartered from Los Angeles to Ensenada, Mexico, for filming the ocean cruise sequences. New York Times remarked concerning the scenes with the lion in the latter part of the film, "This animal submits to more literal tail-twisting than has any other lion in motion pictures. It seems miraculous that several of the players are not clawed and bitten, for this jungle beast is treated in a way that would cause any dog to use its teeth." Variety rated the film as "among the very worst since the entrance of sound."
