Behind the Footlights (1916)

• 65%
• 1916
• Bobby Burns
• Walter Stull
• Bobby Burns
• Walter Stull
• Ethel Marie Burton

Pokes, the property man at the Vim theater, incurs the hostility of Prof. Jabbs the wonderful Escape King on the opening day of the performance. Jabbs is very fond of posing in the lobby of every theater where he is featured as the star act. Here he meets Ethel, Poke's sweetheart, and invites her into the theater to watch his act. Pokes sees his fickle sweetheart in the front row flirting with Jabbs and in his rage he resolves to get even with his lordly rival. Discovering that the secret of Jabbs' escape from the padlocked barrel, consists in a false bottom. Pokes maliciously nails up the bottom securely. Jabbs does not discover the trick until after he has been securely locked into the barrel by Pokes in full sight of the audience who become alarmed. Pokes with fiendish glee packs dynamite into the barrel on top of the almost suffocated Jabbs and after lighting the fuse rolls the barrel out of the theater. Then seizing Ethel, who of all the audience has remained in the theater, the arch villain rushes her to the office of a Justice of the Peace. Just as the marriage ceremony is about to commence, Jabbs who has been hurled high in the air by the force of the explosion, falls into the same office, and throwing Pokes out through the window, proceeds to marry the now-willing Ethel himself.