AllMovie

Though Is Zat So? was playwright/actor James Gleason's Broadway breakthrough, Gleason himself did not appear in the first film version. The stars of this 7-reel silent are George O'Brien as boxer Ed Chick Cowan, Edmund Lowe as Cowan's manager Hap Hurley (the Gleason part) and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as young millionaire G. Clinton Blackburn. Befriending the naïve Blackburn, Cowan and Hurley save the young man from the mercenary machinations of his brother-in-law (Cyril Chadwick). While the stage version relied upon snappy patter for most of its laughs, the screen version concentrates on visual humor (as indeed it had to). As for James Gleason, he would not step before the cameras until the advent of talkies.