Tillie's Punctured Romance (lost circus comedy film; 1928)

Title card.

Status: Lost

Tillie's Punctured Romance is a lost 1928 film about a girl (played by Louise Fazenda) who runs away and joins a circus led by an unscrupulous Ringmaster (played by W.C. Fields) who wishes to assume ownership of th circus from the actual owner (played by Chester Conklin).

Synopsis

Tillie. a plain but outspoken girl, runs away from home after her father punctures her romance and joins a circus, in which she discovers that the Ringmaster is planning to kill the circus's owner and assume ownership himself, using the circus's cannon. He fails, and the circus goes over to wartime Europe to entertain the troops there. Once in Europe, the entire circus ends up being drafted into the German army as privates, and end up ruining the attack plan of the German officer who recruited them.

Notes

Babe London, a popular actress of the time, portrayed the Strongwoman in this film. Due to the fact it shares the same title as the found 1914 Charlie Chaplin film, there is a good deal of confusion on its survival, the reviews on IMDB are for that film. Silentera.com says a Print exists, but all of the other sources say it is lost. Perhaps this film is sitting in an archive, but as far as we know it is probably lost.

External Links

• Wikipedia page on Tillie's Punctured Romance.
• IMDb page on Tillie's Punctured Romance.
• Silentera listing on Tillie's Punctured Romance.

Reference

• W.C. Fields: His Life and Films (book by Ronald J. Fields, the Great Man's grandson), pages 30-31 approx.