Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Feed ’em and Weep (1928)

This funny silent Hal Roach comedy, directed by Fred L. Guiol, features Anita Garvin, Marion Byron, Max Davidson, Edgar Kennedy, Charlie Hall and Frank Alexander.

Anita and Marion are hitching their way to Hollywood to replace Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson, but are temporarily engaged as waitresses by restaurant owner Max. As a train pulls into the station, the girls and Max must try to serve a large crowd of frenzied, demanding lunch diners. Dumbbell Marion and know-it-all Anita create their own brand of havoc . . . to the predictable distress of Max — “Oy!”

Surviving in incomplete form, the film was reconstructed in 2010 by Filmmuseum München under the supervision of Stefan Drössler from an incomplete 35mm duplicate negative and an incomplete 16mm reduction positive.

— Carl Bennett

This PAL DVD edition has been produced by Filmmuseum München under the supervision of Stefan Drössler. The surviving footage of Feed ’em and Weep (about 65 percent of the film’s original length) has been transferred from a very-good but incomplete 35mm print and a very-good but incomplete 16mm reduction print. Missing footage has been implied by still production photographs, and missing intertitles have been replaced with new expository and dialogue intertitles (presumably from the original cutting continuity held by the University of Southern California). The results as represented in this home video edition are very-good and complete enough to give viewers a good sense of the original film’s structure.

The film is presented with an entertaining improvised music score by Günter A. Buchwald performed on piano and violin. The 1930s films in the collection are presented with their original soundtracks.

Currently, this is the only available home video edition of Feed ’em and Weep and we highly recommend this DVD collection, but . . . North American collectors will need a PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

This Region 0 PAL DVD edition is available directly from . . .