The New Adventures of J. Rufus Wallingford
The New Adventures of J. Rufus Wallingford is a 1915–1916 American silent film serial produced by the Wharton Studio in Ithaca, New York, and starring Burr McIntosh and Max Figman.

Background

Wallingford was the first comedy silent film serial. It followed on the success of the Wharton studio's dramatic serial The Exploits of Elaine, and its sequel The New Exploits of Elaine, both of which had been inspired by the enormous popularity of The Perils of Pauline, produced by William Randolph Hearst in 1914. The new comedy serial was based on the character of J. Rufus Wallingford, the subject of a series of stories by George Randolph Chester, which first appeared in The Cosmopolitan magazine and were subsequently collected in the book Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford: A Cheerful Account of the Rise and Fall of an American Business Buccaneer, published in 1908. The stories had already inspired a stage play by George M. Cohan in 1910, and there were other film adaptations in 1914, 1916, 1921, and 1931. 

Wallingford and his friend and accomplice Horace "Blackie" Daw are amiable con men who travel the country promoting fraudulent financial schemes. In the Wharton serial, they are approached by two orphans, Violet and Fanny Warden, who have been cheated out of their inheritance by a clique of corrupt businessmen. Wallingford and Daw agree to help them, using their talents as swindlers to trick the unscrupulous financiers and recover the money. Although the stories are connected, each film is self-contained and focuses on a different member of the  clique.

Production

The serial was produced by the brothers Theodore and Leopold Wharton and filmed chiefly at the Wharton Studio, located in Renwick Park (now Stewart Park) in Ithaca, New York. Filming began in July 1915, and the finished films were released between October 1915 and February 1916. Fourteen episodes were produced, each two reels long (running time approximately 20 minutes). Most of them are now lost or are preserved only in fragments. The titles of the individual films are:

 The Bungalow Bungle 
 Three Rings and a Goat
 A Rheumatic Joint
 The Master Stroke
 The Lilac Splash
 A Trap for Trapp 
 The Bang Sun Engine
 A Transaction in Summer Boarders
 Detective Blackie
 Apples and Eggbeaters
 A Stony Deal
 Buying a Bank with Bunk
 The Missing Heir
 Lord Southpaugh

Cast

Principal cast (all episodes)

 Burr McIntosh as J. Rufus "Jim" Wallingford
 Max Figman as Horace "Blackie" Daw
 Lolita Robertson as Violet Warden
 Frances White as Fanny Warden

Supporting cast (various episodes)

 Dick Bennard
 Harry Carr
 Joseph Colburn
 Oliver Hardy (credited as O. N. Hardy)
 Malcolm Head
 Harry Mainhall as Benzy Falls Jr. 
 Dana T. Morley as Edward Robinson 
 Allan Murnane as Andre Perigourd 
 Edward O'Connor as Onion Jones 
 Violet Palmer
 Edward Redway as Edward Bang
 Harry Robinson
 F. W. Stewart
 Lawrence Wood

Although  Frederic de Belleville was originally announced for the part of Wallingford, he was replaced before filming began by journalist, photographer, and stage actor Burr McIntosh. The roles of Blackie Daw and Violet Warden were played by husband-and-wife acting team Max Figman and Lolita Robertson. 

Among the supporting cast was young Oliver Hardy, then 23 years old but already an experienced actor who had appeared in more than 60 silent comedies produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company in 1914 and 1915. Hardy was cast in at least four of the first five episodes of Wallingford, and perhaps more, although in most cases his appearance in publicity stills is the only evidence for his participation, since the films themselves do not survive. An exception is episode 5 (The Lilac Splash), in which he plays a burglar caught by Wallingford and Daw and outwitted in a crooked game of poker. He is not known to have appeared in any subsequent episodes, and by the fall of 1915 he had moved on to other work.

Reception

The film adaptation of Chester's popular Wallingford stories was eagerly anticipated. In July 1915, when production began, Motion Picture News wrote that "The big promoter of shady financial schemes is so peculiarly American, his character is so well drawn, and his adventures so startingly original and humorous that the series should make wonderfully attractive pictures." The films were heavily promoted in the trade papers and each episode was reviewed as if it were an independent feature . Critical reception was generally good: in response to the first episode, The Dramatic Mirror wrote that "Max Figman makes a thoroughly delightful Blackie Daw, and Burr McIntosh displays the suave smooth unctuousness of George Randolph Chester's mythical character in a manner so convincing that one almost imagines that he has just stepped from the pages of the book." A few reviewers dissented, however, with Variety noting that the emphasis on financial chicanery would have little appeal to women or children, since "women as a rule who go to the pictures have no head nor inclination for 'business'."

Preservation and home video release

In 2020 a newly restored version of The Lilac Splash, the fifth episode of the serial, was released on Blu-Ray disc by Flicker Alley as part of a collection of solo films of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The restoration, by Lobster Films in association with the U.S. Library of Congress, was based on the only surviving nitrate print of the film, now in the Library of Congress. It is a shortened version of the original two-reeler, consisting chiefly of the first reel, which includes Oliver Hardy's performance as the burglar. The first reel of The Bang Sun Engine, the seventh episode, is also known to survive, together with shorter fragments from other films in the series.

References

Sources
 Catalog of Copyright Entries: Motion Pictures, 1912-1939, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, Copyright Division, 1951.
 Lupack, Barbara Tepa. Silent Serial Sensations: The Wharton Brothers and the Magic of Early Cinema, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2020. 
 Rainey, Buck. Serials and Series: A World Filmography, 1912-1956, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Co., 1999, p. 172.
 Spehr, Paul. C. American film personnel and company credits, 1908-1920, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Co., 1996.
 Stone, Rob. Laurel or Hardy: The Solo Films of Stan Laurel and Oliver "Babe" Hardy, Temecula, Calif.: Split Reel Books, 1996.

See also
 List of American films of 1915
 Oliver Hardy filmography

External links
 First reel of episode 7, The Bang Sun Engine (YouTube)
 Short fragment of episode 12, Buying a Bank with Bunk (YouTube)
 Wharton Studio Museum 

1915 films
1915 short films
1915 comedy films
American silent short films
Silent American comedy films
American black-and-white films
American comedy short films
Films directed by Leopold Wharton
Films directed by Theodore Wharton
1910s American films