Bangville Police also made history, since the eponymous peace officers are the Keystone Cops, making their debut in this "farce comedy" of 1913 directed by Henry Lehrman. Mabel Normand plays a sweet farm girl whose greatest wish is for a new calf to be born. Overhearing a couple of strangers talking in the barn, she fears the worst and phones for the police. Like many heroines in films by D.W. Griffith, with whom Normand worked earlier in her career, the girl hunkers down behind a barricade and waits for help to arrive, but unlike a typical Griffith hero, the cops ride to the rescue in a broken-down jalopy that just barely works. Confusions notwithstanding, the ending is happy for everyone, including the new calf that indeed gets born. Normand is highly appealing as the girl, even though the cops have the film's most flamboyant moments.
Director: Henry Lehrman
Producer: Mack Sennett
With: Mabel Normand (Della), Fred Mace (sheriff), Nick Cogley (Father), Dot Farley (Mother), Charles Avery (cop), Rube Miller (cop), Edgar Kennedy (cop), Jack Leonard (cop), Fred Happ (cop), Raymond Hatton (farmhand)
BW-8m.
By David Sterritt
