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Clip description
Mo (Roy Rene) takes the young Miriam ('Baby’ Pamela Bevan) home, but doesn’t expect the great house, or the cool reception he gets from the Burnett family’s stuck-up friends. Mo retreats, feeling foolish and humiliated. Margot Burnett (Lorraine Smith) rescues him and tells him about the reward.
Curator’s notes
Pathos and sentimentality were a common tool for some silent-era comedians. Strike Me Lucky is partly a film about the effects of the Depression – and the way it ground people down, robbing them of their self-respect. Throughout the film, Mo shows that he’s one of those people, identifying himself with the vast majority of the audience. This scene is interesting for the way it manipulates audience sympathy towards the ‘dirty Jew’, making us feel what it is like to be instantly labelled because of the way the character looks. It’s a ‘Shylock’ kind of scene – ‘Am I not a man?’.
