Tillies Punctured Romance (1914)

Tillie’s Punctured Romance, the first-ever feature-length comedy, was based on Tillie’s Nightmare, a Broadway play starring Marie Dressler that opened in 1910 and was Broadway’s biggest hit to date. For his history-making feature, Romance director Mack Sennett persuaded Dressler to climb on board. Of course, once the movie got made, it more resembled the Keystone…

Films

The film is based on Dressler's stage play Tillie's Nightmare by A. Baldwin Sloane and Edgar Smith. Tillie's Punctured Romance is notable for being the last ...

Released: 21 December 1914, Keystone Director: Mack Sennett Writer: Mack Sennett Duration: 74 mins (six reels)/85 mins (2003 restoration) With: Marie Dressler, Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Chester Conklin, Mack Swain, The Keystone Kops, Charles Bennett, Charley Chase Story: World-weary city man (Chaplin) meets fresh, innocent country girl (Dressler), and plots to get his hands on…

Other articles where Tillie’s Punctured Romance is discussed: Marie Dressler: …of her first motion picture, Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914). Of historical importance as the first feature-length comedy, this Mack Sennett production hardly showed Dressler at her best by modern standards—her strenuous overacting seemed almost grotesque compared with the subtler performances of costars Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand—but in 1914 it…

This Keystone comedy, Charlie Chaplin's 33rd, is the first feature-length comedy ever made and contributed to making Chaplin and his co-star Marie Dressler major stars. Chaplin plays a con artist (not the Tramp) who talks Tillie, an innocent country lass, into taking her father's savings and running off to the city with him. Once there, he re-establishes his affair with the beautiful Mabel Normand, abandoning Tillie, who must begin working at a restaurant, while Charlie and Mabel spend her father's money for new clothes. Meanwhile, Tillie's millionaire uncle is reported to have died in a mountain-climbing accident. When the opportunistic Charlie learns that Tillie has just inherited three million dollars, he immediately rushes over to propose. She joyfully accepts, but is suspicious when she learns of her inheritance. Later, at a wedding gala at Tillie's new mansion where Normand has begun working as a maid, Charlie sneaks off for a little tete-a-tete with the latter. Trouble erupts when Dressler catches them smooching. Suddenly all the slapstick craziness for which director Mack Sennett is famous erupts as Tillie grabs a pistol and begins chasing Charlie and Mabel, firing randomly. Just as the wayward Charlie is to be strangled to death, the

The world's first feature-length comedy & also Mr. Charles Chaplin's 1st feature. The film is based on Dressler's stage play "Tillie's Nightmare" by A. Baldw...

Directed by Mack Sennett, Charles Bennett. With Charles Chaplin, Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand, Mack Swain. A con man from the city dupes a wealthy country girl into marriage.