Volume II: Filmography

BASEBALL AND BLOOMERS

a.k.a. BASEBALL IN BLOOMERS

January 6, 1911 (Friday)

Length: 1,000 feet

Character: Comedy

Cast: William Garwood, Marguerite Snow

Notes: 1. This film was referred to as Baseball in Bloomers in The New York Dramatic Mirror and in certain mentions in The Billboard, The Moving Picture News, Photoplay, and elsewhere. 2. The plot synopses printed in Moving Picture World, The Moving Picture News, and The Billboard identified the college men as being from Harvard, while The New York Dramatic Mirror noted they were from Cornell! 3. This film is the first in which Marguerite Snow played (refer to Marguerite Snow's biography for further information).

ADVERTISEMENT, The Moving Picture World, December 31, 1910:

"The best college comedy of the month, and we'll make more like it if it pleases you. Please you it will! We felt that settled as soon as we saw the first print. The main advertising stunt to be worked with this picture, as we see it, is the college end of it. Remember, the picture deals with a bunch of bright college boys and a bunch of brighter college girls...."

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture World, January 7, 1911:

"Miss Street's Seminary for Girls has a very ambitious class of pupils. The young athletes, not content with basketball and tennis, aspire to shine in the great American game, and organize a baseball club. They are so satisfied with themselves that they finally send a challenge to Adair College, which has a crowd of husky young athletes in a club that thinks it amounts to something. When the challenge is received, the boys are first angry, then amused. They decide to accept it, to have fun with the girls. The young women, after some practice, realize that their team, while it may be pretty to look at, is of little real use on the diamond. And the prospect makes them weep.

"Fortunately for the girls, Jack, the brother of the president, arrives from Harvard. His chum, Jim, is with him. These two young men are baseball stars themselves, and when they are told of the predicament of the girls, they goodnaturedly offer to help them out. The university men disguise themselves as girls, act as battery for the young women, and the college boys, who had looked for a laughable victory, are mowed down, inning after inning, because of the work of pitcher Jack and catcher Jim. The other members of the 'girl' team have nothing to do except look pretty. When the boy athletes have retired from the field vanquished, the girls reward their battery with one kiss - only one - from each of the other seven players."

REVIEW, The Billboard, January 21, 1911:

"Thanhouser producers have again placed a picture of originality on the market in Baseball and Bloomers. It is a farce pure and simple, but it offers many laughable situations. The acting is generally good, but in a few instances scenes were overacted."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, January 11, 1911: This review is reprinted in the narrative section of the present work.

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