As In a Looking Glass

SUMMARY
Opens on a split stage set of two rooms with a door and wall between them. In the living or dining room on the left of the frame, an elderly, bearded man sits at a table, reading the newspaper. In the bedroom on the right, a boy in a suit with short pants attaches a long string to the end of a dresser drawer, with the other end hanging from a hole in the wall to the other room. As the boy works and watches, a woman dressed in a long-sleeved white blouse, striped skirt to the knee, and dark stockings enters the main room with a pitcher, which she sets on the table in front of the gentleman and then exits. The boy finishes with the drawer, replacing it in the bureau, and then quietly enters the other room unnoticed. He feeds more of the string through the hole in the wall, attaches the loop at the end of it to a leg of his grandfather's chair, and retreats to the door to watch. The woman enters the bedroom and powders her face and fixes her hair in the mirror above the dresser. She tries to open the top drawer--the one the boy has rigged--but it appears stuck. After struggling with it, she succeeds in yanking it open, falling backwards in the process. As the drawer opens, the attached string pulls over the man and the chair. When the man sees the boy jumping with delight at the door, he chases his grandson out of the room.

From Biograph bulletin no. 8: How Tommy Got a Pull on His Grandpa. 65 feet. This is a companion picture to "Tommy's Ringing Good Joke." Tommy ties a cord to his Grandfather's chair and fastens it to a bureau in the next room. The maid attempts to open the drawer and upsets the old gentleman, with disastrous results.

CREATED/PUBLISHED
United States: American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 1903.

NOTES
Copyright: American Mutoscope & Biograph Co.; 29May1903; H32297.

AFI catalog considers "As in a looking glass" and "How Tommy got a pull on his grandpa" as two separate films with similar plots, noting that the former is catalog no. 907 and the latter no. 2369. However, no information on a film no. 907 could be found in the Biograph picture catalogue, Nov. 1902 [MI] or Biograph photo catalogs [MI], and the frames pictured in Biograph photo catalog v. 5 from "How Tommy got a pull on his grandpa" are identical to frames in the film deposited for copyright under the title "As in a looking glass."

Camera, F.S. Armitage.

Filmed May 21, 1903, in the Biograph New York City studio.

SUBJECTS
Practical jokes--Drama.
Boys--United States--Conduct of life--Drama.
Falls (Accidents)--United States--Drama.
Grandfathers--United States--Drama.
Silent films.
Comedies.
Vaudeville.
Shorts.

RELATED NAMES
Armitage, F. S., camera.
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.
Paper Print Collection (Library of Congress)

DIGITAL ID
(m) varsmp http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r...)