Series: Clyde Cook

Director: Stan Laurel
Producer: Hal Roach
Titles: H.M. Walker
Photography: Harry W. Gerstad
Editor: Richard C. Currier

Stars: Clyde Cook, Noah Young, James Finlayson
Company: Pathé Exchange
Released: 04 October 1925
Length: 2 reels
Production No.: C-3
Filming dates: June 9-20, 1925; retakes July 6, 1925
Rating: 4/10


Moonlight And Noses

Available on DVD:

Review is from 10 minutes of the film available to me:
A young couple sit on the sofa and listen to a black lady reading their fortunes through the tea leaves in her cup. She tells of graveyards, tombstones and ghosts. Meanwhile Professor Sniff (Finlayson) is an eccentric, bearded man who reads in the newspaper of how the medical world mocks him, saying "the Professor wouldn't know the difference between water on the brain and rain on the roof"! The outraged professor barges into his lounge and demands that his daughter's fiance go to the cemetery and bring him back a body. When he refuses to do so, the young man is booted out of the house and told to stay away from his daughter.
Outside two burglars (Cook and Young) are scheming to get into the house, which they do through a very unsecured window. When inside they work on opening the safe but are caught in the act by the professor. In an unexpected twist he offers them a reprieve and $1,000 if they are willing to go to the cemetery and bring back the body of Hemingway Toots. As the boyfriend throws a note through the girl's window, telling her he is coming to get her so they can elope, the two burglars make their way to the graveyard. Cook gets scared when he hears noises coming from the graveyard (it is the boyfriend hiding in the bushes) but Young insists he carries on digging up the grave. That is until the graveyard keeper comes along and escorts him off the premises. Unfortunately, that is where the footage ends....

Favourite bit
The safe..... which isn't a safe. I must confess it fooled me too!

Trivia
Copyrighted August 20, 1925.
This was the first film in the series.
The DVD from Looser Than Loose has only half of the film.
The painting on the wall which James Finlayson talks to (it is supposedly his father) is also featured in Our Gang's Fast Freight.
I find it odd that for two inept burglars, they knew which cemetery to go to (they were never told which one) AND exactly where the grave was. When you think of how many graves there are in any given cemetery, they just happened to know the exact location of the plot?
The safe in the mirror gag [see "Favourite Bit"] is actually lifted from Stan Laurel's Somewhere In Wrong in which he appeared for Joe Rock earlier that year. Stan directed Moonight And Noses, so he must have thought highly of the gag to bring it to a Hal Roach film. [Brad Filippone]
My opinion
The idea is good and it would be interesting to see the rest of the film, but sadly only half of it exists.

Clyde Cook
Burglar
Noah Young
Burglar
James Finlayson
Professor Sniff
Fay Wray
Miss Sniff
Tyler Brooke
Ashley
Marjorie Whiteis
[?]
Helen Gilmore
[?]
William Gillespie
[?]
Jules Mendel
[?]

UNIDENTIFIED CAST

CREDITS (click image to enlarge) INTERTITLES (click image to enlarge)

POSTERS
(click any image to enlarge)

LOBBY CARDS
(click any image to enlarge)

Acknowledgements:
Brad Filippone (one line in trivia notes)

This page was last updated on: 04 February 2023