Love, Luck and Gasoline (1914)

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John Bunny | Lillian Walker | Wally Van | Charles Wellesley | J. Stuart Blackton (Writer) | Wilfrid North (Director)

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“Love, Luck and Gasoline”

A three-reel Vitagraph comedy now being shown at the Vitagraph Theater, New York.

Reviewed by Louis Reeves Harrison.

Miss Tomboy — Lillian Walker
Her Father — John Bunny
Cutey — Wally Van
Van Alstyne — Charles Wellesley
The Commodore — A famous motor-boat enthusiast and a genuine commodore.

Its natural classification a “marine comedy,” Love, Luck and Gasoline covers a very much more extended area than is indicated by the sprightly acting of Airy-Fairy-Lillian and Wally Van in opposition to the ponderous movements of eloquent John Bunny. It is also supposed to cover the identity of a gentleman so well established in motion picture and yachting circles that not to know him or of him is to argue one’s self unknown. He plays his role fairly well in the small part assigned him, but — the desolating truth might as well be known — he is not a very much better actor than I am.

However, in compensation for this bitter statement, he has a marvelous picture sense that manifested itself delicately in the Italian pastels he made, that turns lovingly to marines, that might seem to be the endowment of an idealist or a mystic, that is in reality very practical and very broad, embracing both minute and magnificent things, as evidenced in those screen visualizations which bear the stamp of his individuality. As revealed in these, he is the fortunate possessor of acute powers of observation, a master of photodramatic technics, a man of practical ability that serves a poetic imagination in enabling him to record upon the screen his ideas of the invisible quite as well as the visible.

Such is the Commodore who will not have his name published in the cast of Love, Luck and Gasoline.

Comprehended within of this marine comedy, occupying a large part of the screen portrayal, are some of the most beautiful views of sailing yachts in action ever shown in the pictured story. The vessels are for the most part of the racing type, fish-hulled, sparred to the skies, carrying vast stretches of white canvas aloft, creatures of swan-like grace when wind and sea are mild, laying over in a stiff breeze until it spills from their sails, righting when it looks as though they would be laid flat, leaping foam crests like a trout ascending a waterfall, the most fascinating of all creations devised by the ingenuity of man.

These beautiful pictures will not only delight those who are not “coastwise,” but they will impress men who have felt what is stated in the first verse of the Bible, “and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” In the rhythmic flow of yacht movement, of sea and sky, of water reflections, of cloud-shine, a selective artistic taste is almost constantly revealed, and there is little or nothing to offend fine sensibilities in this romantic realism. The Commodore is gradually achieving a harmony of matter and manner.

The thread of story involved pictures Lillian in the very natural character of a Tomboy, strongly attached to a manly and athletic fellow she is inclined to “doll,” genial Wally Van. John Bunny objects in the role of stern father. She elopes with her “Cutey” and the chase that ensues involves the use of sailing yachts, steam yachts, motor boats that fly through the water, aeroplanes that fly through the air and that strange hybrid that flies in water, on water and in the air, all genuine and among the swiftest engines devised to annihilate time and space, forerunners of what succeeding generations will use in exploring the universe.

I had the good fortune to see Love, Luck and Gasoline during its first presentation before an ordinary audience, and it seemed to afford both amusement and artistic pleasure to the great mass of people in front.

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Scene from Love, Luck and Gasoline (Vitagraph)

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Collection: Moving Picture World, April 1914