He Did and He Didnt

Production

The dark plot, extremely sophisticated for its time, involves a corpulent husband who finds himself consumed with jealousy when his wife's dashingly handsome old schoolmate unexpectedly turns up for dinner. The film was also written and directed by Arbuckle.

Because it was billed as a comedy, the ending attributes the assumptions of the husband, including the murder, to eating bad lobster. After several lighthearted comedies featuring Mabel Normand and Roscoe Arbuckle, this seemed to be an added dimension to film genre in general, in that it attributed serious jealousy fantasies to human nature, but still managed to maintain a cheerful demeanor overall in its approximate 20 minutes. It may be the first "dramedy" in existence.

The film was shot when many early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey, at the beginning of the 20th century.

Cast