Girl in the Limousine (1924)
Directed by Noel Smith / Larry Semon / Noel Mason Smith
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Synopsis by Hans J. Wollstein
In his first feature-length comedy, white-faced Larry Semon starred as a milquetoast who gets involved with a gang of thieves. Through no fault of his own, Larry ends up in the home of his childhood rival (Oliver Hardy), a fact that the lady of the house (Claire Adams) has a terrific time explaining. The "girl" of the title is not a girl at all, but a man in drag used by the thieves to lure potential victims into their car to be robbed. The Girl in the Limousine was adapted from a stage farce by Avery Hopwood and Wilson Cullison. Semon, still wearing the white clown make-up and bib-overalls as in his previous 2-reeler for Vitagraph, produced and co-directed the film, which was financed by producer I.E. Chadwick and released on the First National exchanges. A major critical and box-office disappointment, The Girl in the Limousine began Semon's swift decline, which ended in the comic's premature death from alcoholism and pneumonia in 1928. Playing a childhood pal of Semon's but looking much younger, Oliver Hardy was still a couple of years away from his historical partnership with Stan Laurel.