Post No Bills (1923) User Reviews (7)

Bill me now

[hte-trasme · 7/10 · 22 January 2010]

James "Paul" Parrott was the brother of the great two-reel comedian of the 20s and 30s Charles "Charlie Chase" Parrott, and he's best remembered as a prolific and skilled director at Hal Roach for his brother, Laurel and Hardy, and others. However, before Charley did had a starring series at Hal Roach, Paul Parrott did. This is one of the films, and my first.

It's a very slight little one-reeler, but quite funny. Paul Parrott actually has quite a funny screen character that comes across well will his placid, clever, and self-satisfied laziness. He plays a partner in a movie theatre, and I got a good laugh from his tactic of pulling the fire alarm so his friends from the firehouse could get him to work on time. Much of the film consists of Parott posting ads for the theatre in amusing ways, which works nicely with the character built in -- we can believe that he nails them into glass not just because he's dumb but because he doesn't care what happens once he can say he's posted it.

He even finds a funny twist on the old comedy chestnut of the slip on the banana peel to get bills posted onto passers-by's posteriors. I wouldn't have minded if Paul Parrott had kept up his career on screen, based on this evidence.

Meet me at the Bijou Theater

[JohnSeal · 5/10 · 11 October 2008]

Paul Parrott plays an obsessive-compulsive bill poster in this thoroughly average Hal Roach comedy from 1923. Hired to help publicize a new Gloria Snootful picture, Paul goes bonkers with glue and paper and ends up attaching promotional material to any surface within his reach, including the rear ends of a number of people, though his attempt to nail a poster to a glass window is somewhat less successful. There's only so much you can do with this material, but the sight of George Rowe with a marriage license glued to his behind is quite amusing, and it's always fun to see the diminutive Sammy Brooks in anything.

Low-brow but very funny

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 9 November 2008]

James Parrott is also known as "Paul Parrott" and those in the know may remember him as the director of many of Laurel and Hardy's best films (such as the Oscar-winning MUSIC BOX as well as HELPMATES and PARDON US). However, before directing Stan and Ollie, his brother Charley Chase, the Little Rascals and others, he was a silent comedian himself--having appeared in well over a hundred films!

This and another Parrott short (SHIVER AND SHAKE) are part of a new DVD set entitled "American Slapstick". However, unlike SHIVER AND SHAKE, POST NO BILLS is very funny and well worth seeing. The film begins with a very selfish and lazy Parrott calling in a false alarm to the fire company just so he can hitch a ride! Then, when he arrives at work, his nasty boss informs him that the people who were supposed to post bills around town advertising the theater couldn't make it and Parrott was expected to do it instead...or else! This sequence with the boss is the poorest in the film as it had LOTS of low-brow and unnecessary slapstick--people getting kicked in the butt repeatedly for no reason. This was comedy gold around 1915, but by 1923, it was already rather passé.

Despite this problem, the rest of the film was great. Seeing the lazy and rather amoral Parrott posting bills EVERYWHERE and in the most clever ways was funny. Not only did he post them on fences and walls (where they usually went) but he posted them secretly on people's butts, on cars and countless other silly places. I particularly liked the banana and the shoeshine gags--they were pretty clever.

Overall, a funny comedy short but one that is, I admit, rather low-brow and silly.

Butt Where's the Laughs?

[JoeytheBrit · 5/10 · 31 July 2009]

Post No Bills is a slapstick comedy with very few laughs and a worrying fondness for showing people being kicked in the derriere. Honestly, there's barely thirty seconds go by without some poor soul being punted in the rear for no real reason. That sort of thing is funny to six-year-olds the world over I suppose, but after the second or third occurrence it barely raises a smile.

Paul Parrott, who would later become James Parrott, the director of a number of Laurel & Hardy films before destroying himself with booze and drugs, takes the lead role here as a worker at a run-down cinema given the task of posting bills when the usual guy doesn't turn up. He posts them everywhere, but mostly on - you guessed it - people's behinds. There are a few half-decent ideas, but more often than not, they're stretched way too far.

Mild fun-- but fun!

[AnnieLola · 7/10 · 15 March 2015]

As the partner in a movie house, Parrot seems to be a hopelessly irresponsible bungler, but is ever-resourceful in avoiding effort. The 'Gloria Snootful' poster is good for a chuckle, as Gloria Swanson's overdressed De Mille society outings were ripe for sending up. When the theater's press agent (George Rowe) takes a day off to get married (with subplot of hastily obtaining the marriage license), Parrot is assigned the task of posting showbills; "Be intelligent!" his partner implores (though he MUST know it's a lost cause).

Parrot proceeds to determinedly post anywhere but where it would logically serve its intended purpose, and he seems to be a complete moron-- but an inventive one. There are predictable gags, of course, but quite unexpected ones as well. There's also the fun of watching a real southern California setting as it was over ninety years ago. Which town IS that?

The press agent's marriage license quest is a pretty good little comedy in its own right, and intersects amusingly with the bill posting. We're not really told specifically that the anxious groom IS the press agent, but it's after the news about his day off that we cut to the modest wedding scene, with his realization that a license is needed. That can be a bit confusing on first viewing, especially if the film is being run at sound speed (as it is on YouTube and the source DVD), since one has little time to ponder these points before the action has gone elsewhere.

In the days of silent comedy, there seems to have been a belief that a kick in the pants was funny, and thus if one kick in the pants was funny, more would be even funnier. Uh-huh. Mercifully, here the pants- kicking is finished early on, and most of "Post No Bills" is perfectly enjoyable. So just put your brain in neutral, and it's a pretty good ride!

The Bill Is On The Duck

[boblipton · 5/10 · 10 May 2020]

Paul Parrott is told by his partner in the theater to go post some bills advertising the day's show, but this time, show some intelligence. Which he proceeds to do without any intelligence.

It's a rather primitive comedy for Hal Roach's studio by this time, being a series of variations on a single gag, as Parrott applies little posters everywhere he can, usually where he should not. It's only a single reel in length, but by the end he had exhausted every unlikely spot, and was still going.

Parrott was the younger brother of the far more famous Charley Chase. Look alikes -- in some of Chase's starring shorts, he uses his brother when he has to be in two places at once -- Parrott also wrote and directed under his real name of James Parrot. He eventually went wholly behind the camera. He directed the Oscar-winning THE MUSIC BOX and died in 1939 at age 41.

Post No Bills was a very funny Paul Parrott short

[tavm · 9/10 · 30 January 2019]

Before directing Laurel & Hardy in shorts, James Parrott, Charley Chase's brother, starred In his own films as Paul Parrott. Here he is as a movie theatre worker assigned to post flyers for the latest movie wherever he goes. And he posts them in the most inappropriate places! I'll stop there and just say Post No Bills was very funny, indeed!