Shootin' and Tootin' All Night Long

November 11, 2014 4:18 AM

Douglas Fairbanks was more than the Thief of Bagdad. In 1916, he was Coke Ennyday, a detective with a taste for drugs.

Although known today primarily for his athletic performances in silent films like The Mark of Zorro, Fairbanks played in comedies early in his career. "The Mystery of the Leaping Fish" has him wearing a hypodermic bandolier and dipping into a massive tin marked "COCAINE" on his desk.

This bizarre Sherlock Holmes parody was released 98 years ago. Notably, Alma Rubens, who appears along with Fairbanks and Bessie Love, became addicted to narcotics and died early, as did several others in the film community (Wallace Reid, Barbara La Marr and others).

posted by kinnakeet (17 comments total)

That's outrageous(ly) good!
posted by rmmcclay at 4:26 AM on November 11, 2014

This is one of those weird-ass bits of old Hollywood that you could only hear about through gossipy books like Hollywood Babylon without ever having a hope of seeing personally, even if you lived in a major city, unless you were in the rare group of strange movie fans who were both avid about the form and eager to appreciate movies high and low, warts and all, AND knew the right people who collected strange films. And you were free the one night they'd ever have access to a copy.

Now we have YouTube.
posted by ardgedee at 4:26 AM on November 11, 2014 [14 favorites]

PS Make sure you watch to the very end!
posted by kinnakeet at 4:34 AM on November 11, 2014

Thank god the Hayes Office put a stop to all that! Hollywood remains a bastion of upstanding and right-thinking Americans to this day thanks to the morals of the film industry!
posted by briank at 4:38 AM on November 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

Before we had Youtube, we had Night Flight, which, for a time, ran this in power rotation.
posted by Kinbote at 4:39 AM on November 11, 2014 [5 favorites]

It's hard to believe that'll be a century old ennyday now!
posted by fairmettle at 4:48 AM on November 11, 2014

Ha, this reminds me of the early Chaplin short East Street (1917), where he sits on a stray coke needle and it gives him the super strength he needs to fight off the bad guys; prefiguring that cocaine=Popeye's spinach scene in Wolf of Wall Street by almost 100 years.
posted by dgaicun at 4:52 AM on November 11, 2014 [5 favorites]

I forgot that Chaplin repeated the same gag 20 years later in Modern Times (1936), which was well into the censorship era.
posted by dgaicun at 5:12 AM on November 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Cocaine to the rescue!

Those leaping fish look like tons of fun, but I don't know if anyone would want the job description of "fish blower" these days.
posted by xingcat at 5:18 AM on November 11, 2014

Won fish, do fish, read fish, blew fish.
posted by zamboni at 5:27 AM on November 11, 2014 [6 favorites]

Cocaine to the rescue!

That was Season 1. In Season 2 it looks like it's going to be Heroin. And you didn't think things could go downhill!
posted by The Bellman at 6:40 AM on November 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

How did he do such terrific stunts... with such little nostrils!
posted by Cookiebastard at 7:04 AM on November 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

Cocaine was the best drug I ever started and the best drug I ever quit.
posted by vapidave at 7:06 AM on November 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

All our dreams have melted down
We are hiding in the bushes
From dead men
Doing Douglas Fairbanks' stunts
All our stories burnt
Our films lost in the rushes
We can't paint any pictures
As the moon had all our brushes
Extracting wasps from stings in flight
Who killed Mr. Moonlight?
posted by cjorgensen at 11:55 AM on November 11, 2014

Also quite notable: Written by Tod Browning, director of Freaks and the Bela Lugosi Dracula.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 4:45 PM on November 11, 2014

Others on the Cracked list:
Maniac
Un Chien Andalou
Häxan
Eyes Without A Face (trailer)
posted by unliteral at 9:11 PM on November 11, 2014

I loved that our gal the fish blower (which, what?) was no shrinking violet and in fact kicked the bejabbers out of the kidnapper trying to menace her.

(Oh, uh. Sorry. Spoilers.)
posted by Lexica at 7:49 PM on November 12, 2014