A Tango Tragedy


A Tango Tragedy is a lost 1914 American silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company and starring Billy [Bowers |Billy Bowers], Frances Ne Moyer, and James Hodges. Also among the cast was Oliver Hardy, who had a small role as a man at the dance.

Plot

Pat Muldoon disapproves of dancing, and threatens to kill any man who asks his daughter Nora to dance. Undeterred, Dick Kelly invites Nora to a dance, and Pat comes for him with a shotgun. Dick tricks Pat into shooting at a dummy and pretends to be dead. Dressed as a ghost, he commands Pat to dance. The terrified Pat obeys, and discovers that he quite likes dancing with a charming widow. When he sees Dick without his ghost makeup, he wants to fight again, but then the music starts, and faced with the choice between a fight and a tango, Pat chooses the tango, while Dick dances off with Nora.

Cast

A Tango Tragedy was filmed in Jacksonville, Florida, at the Jacksonville unit of the Lubin Manufacturing Company, under the supervision of Arthur Hotaling. It was a short split-reel comedy, lasting approximately 5–6 minutes, and sharing a single reel of film with a second, unrelated film, in this case the cartoon Circus Time in Toyland by Stewart C. Whitman. The films were released by the General Film Company on May 30, 1914.
A Tango Tragedy is among several Lubin split-reel comedies made in the spring of 1914 that include the earliest screen appearances of Oliver Hardy. In most of these films he was an uncredited extra playing one of a group of cops or cowboys, or, as here, a man at the dance. Although the film itself does not survive, Hardy can be seen looking over James Hodges's shoulder in a promotional still printed in The Lubin Bulletin, the studio's advertising newsletter.