Schoolday Love (1922)

• 85%
• 1922
• Comedy
• William Campbell
• Coy Watson Jr.
• Doreen Turner
• Lawrence Licalzi

The juvenile-animal comedy short, "Schoolday Love" introduces a young boy getting in trouble at breakfast with young girl next door seeing this from outside. The boy skips out taking his vehicle to school - a sausage rotating wheel getting the dog as motor to run and propel the car. The girl (Doreen Turner) calls over her trusted dog (Pal) to retrieve a ladder and her sidekick monkey to steady the ladder so that she can mount her four-legged ride (Maude). After attending school, the children decide to play hooky creating a series of fairly unrelated comedy sequences. An unusual baseball game features Pal in the outfield alongside a field of monkey players. A mule umpires third base and a poodle calls balls and strikes using flags in each paw. The game is going along well until one of the monkeys argues a call with the poodle and this ostensibly ends the sequence. The kids venture into more rustic settings. A sequence in the woods comically has John Brown the Bear up close and personal with a hunter (Jack Cooper). The kids encounter the scared hunter and finally end up in a cabin playing essentially cowboy and Indian in which the girl is tied up. A fire breaks out with the boy stuck and the girl tied up. And there's cans of gasoline and other explosive elements. It's up Pal the Wonder Dog and animal friends to mount a successful rescue campaign. Pal unties the girl, the monkey liberates the boy, and the mule ridden by the monkey kicks down the door with their school teacher coming to assist just before the place explodes. The explosion takes the kids down to their underwear and the teacher (Dave Morris) has just charred remains of the clothing. The short ends with the teacher paddling the boy. Dog Pal, the monkey, and the girl sit by wishing there could have been a stronger script.