
Chaplin, Mabel Normand, and Mack Sennett with a mallet, 1914: three men, one girl, a park, and a weapon that keeps changing hands. Keystone. Chaplin is already playing dirty; Sennett is the boss who put himself in the shot. It is a one-reeler about force as courtship, and the mallet is the only honest character.
Three men, one girl, a park, and a mallet that keeps changing hands. Sennett put himself in the shot. Chaplin plays dirty. Normand absorbs the hits and gives them back, which is the Keystone contract. One reel about who gets to hit whom, and she is not the one standing aside.