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The House of Terrible Scandals
(1917) United States of America
B&W : Two reels
Directed by [?] Henry Lehrman?
Cast: Henry Lehrman, Billie Ritchie, Dot Farley, Gertrude Selby, Bert Roach, Sid Smith (Sidney Smith)
Fox Film Corporation production; distributed by Fox Film Corporation [Sunshine Comedies]. / Produced by Henry Lehrman. Executive producer, William Fox. Assistant director, David Kirkland. Cinematography by William C. McGann. Presented by William Fox. / Released 19 March 1917. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.
Comedy.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? Henry Lehrman and Billie Ritchie, as the result of a gay night, are visited by a joint nightmare which shows them the horrors of their present life. First, a cat knocked a birdcage down upon them and then chased a mouse into the yawning face of Henry. Then both Henry and Billie sought to take a bath at the same time in the one bath their hotel boasted. Then Billie found himself on the end of a ladder, balanced over a railing eighteen stories above the street. All of a sudden, the bath overflowed and washed everything in the hotel out into the street. Then the two woke up just in time to attend a reception given in honor of the young woman Billie was to wed. Just to queer the affair, Henry held a lighted match in front of Billie’s mouth and the breath therefrom, being inflammable because of the previous night’s indulgence in firewater, burst into flame. At the luncheon table Henry sat next to a lady who ate her soup aloud. He put a carnation in his ear as a sort of silencer, but the lady removed it. Then he placed before her a copy of the song, “I Hear You Calling Me,” and she ate in time with the music, while he marked time with a fork. Finally, he captured the end of a piece of spaghetti which was being inhaled by one of the diners and inserted it in the noisy soup. In a flash the soup disappeared up the spaghetti tube and the noise was stopped. Then the house caught fire and Henry rushed out to summon aid. He found a hose lying loose in the street and carried it into the burning building, proceeding to play its contents on the flames. The hose was connected with the traveling equipment of a gasoline vendor and what Henry thought was water was gasoline, so that didn’t help put out the fire very much. The fire and police departments were called and they ran over each other trying to get to the fire. The fire department finally got there, but the police department fell through the street into a sewer. Everybody was rescued. The building was burned to the ground, a runaway locomotive crashed through a string of box cars and that’s about all.
Survival status: Print exists in the Eye Film Instituut Nederland film archive.
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 6 January 2025.
References: Website-IMDb : with additional information provided by Steve Massa.
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