Borrowing its central concept from Sennett's 1909 Biograph comedy A Wreath in Time, Ambrose's First Falsehood finds the portly walrus-mustachioed title character hoping to hide his time out with the boys by telling the wife he's taking a train trip. The scheme blows up in his face, however, when his alibi train literally crashes. Laurel and Hardy later borrowed the joke themselves for use in We Faw Down (1928) and Sons of the Desert (1933).
By David Kalat
