The Cat's-Paw

Infobox_Film
name = The Cat’s-Paw


imdb_id = 0024961
producer = Harold Lloyd
director = Sam Taylor
writer = Sam Taylor
Clarence Budington Kelland (story)
starring = Harold Lloyd
Una Merkel
George Barbier
music = Alfred Newman
cinematography = Bernard W. Burton
editing = Alan Osbiston
distributor = Fox Film Corporation
released = July 30, 1934
runtime = 102 min.
language = English
country = USA
budget =

"The Cat’s-Paw" is a 1934 film starring Harold Lloyd and directed by Sam Taylor. It was one of the great silent movie comedian’s few sound films.

The Cat’s Paw, a novel by Clarence Budington Kelland, had appeared in the Saturday Evening Post from August 26-September 30, 1933, when Lloyd read it, and decided to buy the rights to it for $25,000.

Plot summary

Ezekiel Cobb, a naive young man raised by missionaries in China, is sent to the United States to seek a wife. He is promptly enlisted by a corrupt political machine, led by the corrupt boss Jake Mayo (George Barbier) to run for mayor as phony “reform” politician. He is expected to be the “cat's paw” of the political machine.

Cobb unexpectedly takes his job seriously. Frequently quoting Chinese poet “Ling Po” (an apparent mispronunciation of Li Po), he embarks on a campaign to clean his town of its corrupt political machine.

Fighting back, the corrupt politicians frame Cobb. He turns the table on them, however, by enlisting the help of his friends in the local Chinese community, who help him kidnap the corrupt politicians and their hoodlum backers. He tells them that since his attempts to use western methods has not worked, he is going to use the methods of the ancient Chinese: either they confess or they will be executed.

They take a man into a back room – everyone says it’s a bluff, but then the man screams in terror and a moment later his decapitated body is brought out with his head set on top of his chest. When the second man is taken to the back room, it is shown that Cobb has enlisted the help of "The Great Chang" a famous chinese magician on his first American tour, and that they are using his tricks to fake the executions.

This tactic works, and Mayo decides to throw his support to Cobb after all. The town is swept of its corruption and Cobb, with the support of local girl Petunia Prat (Una Merkel), abandons plans to return to China and stays in the U.S. to fight corruption in his town. But his new wife insists on him returning to China.

External links

* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024961/ The Cat's-Paw at Internet Movie Database]
* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,747785,00.html "Time Magazine" review (August 27, 1934)]