The Treasurer's Report (1928) Online

If you haven't seen The Treasurer's Report, a bare outline of its content would suggest that it must surely rank among the most boring movies ever made. The setting is a small business banquet where after-dinner entertainment is under way as the film begins. A lady in an ugly hat is singing badly, accompanied by a pianist, while weary businessmen listen indifferently. She finishes to a smattering of applause. Next, the organization's assistant treasurer is introduced, and we are told that he will now deliver the year's financial report. He is a terribly nervous young man, and a very poor public speaker. He blusters and stammers his way through the report, struggling to rattle off figures and keep his composure; his attempts at humor fall flat, and at a key moment his tie comes untied. Eventually, he finishes on a resoundingly anticlimactic note, and the movie is over.

Sounds awful, right? Actually it's quite funny, because the young man is humorist Robert Benchley, and he is performing a routine he'd been perfecting for years on the musical comedy stage and in vaudeville. Watch carefully, and you'll note just how adeptly he stumbles through his routine, how skillfully he impersonates ineptitude. Benchley was very good at what he did: making a routine such as this one look effortlessly real is what acting is all about. His awkward, forced smile, oddly suggestive of Chaplin, will be painfully familiar to anyone who hates and fears public speaking. For some viewers his performance may stir traumatic memories of classroom recitations, but rest assured, the comic moments help to salve any lingering psychic wounds.

In addition to its value as comedy this film holds a claim as a genuine milestone in movie history. Although The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927, is often and erroneously cited as the first talking film, movie-makers had been experimenting with talkies for years (e.g. Edison's Nursery Favorites, made way back in 1913 but not widely distributed). The Jazz Singer itself was primarily silent with a few musical numbers and one brief dialog sequence. The Treasurer's Report, released in March of 1928, was among the first all-talking commercial short subject intended for general audiences-- or at least, those audiences with access to theaters capable of showing it. The first all-talking feature film The Lights of New York arrived shortly afterward, but Robert Benchley was ahead of the curve, with an unusual short comedy that is still enjoyable today, that is, for those willing to make allowances for its primitive technology.

This short comedy feature is very good for its time, and despite some signs of age it is still funny to watch. It was one of the earliest non-experimental all-sound movies, having been made within a few months of the more famous "The Jazz Singer". Aside from the sound quality showing some of the problems common to the movies of the era, it holds up quite well. Robert Benchley's writing works in any era, and he handles the early sound movie format noticeably better than most performers of the time did.

The setup has Benchley as an assistant treasurer, giving his club's financial report for the year. It goes on to combine some wry humor in the text of the report with lots of other bits that revolve around the speaker's increasing nervousness over his task. Benchley continued to develop his usage of the lecturer format in his short comedies over the years, and his best features seamlessly combined his writing style and his on-screen approach. Even here, he already uses the format effectively, and the timing and pacing are much better than usual for a movie of its time.

As with Benchley's writing, in this feature he does not try for any huge laughs, but instead aims for a running flow of dry wit, which gradually increases the comic effect when it works. This is pretty good for a 1928 sound feature, since it has material and a lead performer that both make effective usage of the then-new capacity for sound in motion pictures.

The wits of the Algonquin Round Table are my comedy gods, but Robert Benchley is the false idol in the pantheon. I've never found Benchley funny, and never understood why so many other people do so. His jokes are painfully obvious to me: in 'How to Be a Detective', when Benchley escorts a criminal to the penitentiary, we can tell from a mile away which one of them is going to walk out the gate whistling, and which one is going to end up in a cell.

It was Benchley, not Groucho Marx, who said the line about getting out of some wet clothes and into a dry martini ... but the line was written by Charles Brackett as dialogue for Benchley in one of his movie roles, so I shan't give Benchley credit for it.

"The Treasurer's Report" has a history more interesting than the film itself. In 1922, a Russian revue with the French title 'Chauve-Souris' appeared on Broadway. The show was so arty-tarty that the Algonquin wits responded with a one-night-only revue of their own, titled 'No Siree' (a pun on 'Chauve-Souris'). Benchley's sole contribution to the evening's entertainment was a monologue in which he played the assistant treasurer of a social club, required on short notice to give a financial report and failing badly. According to legend, Benchley wrote the skit at the last moment, during a cab ride to the 49th Street Theatre. It certainly feels like it.

This short film is a re-enactment of that skit, fleshed out slightly by letting Benchley interact with other people. It's not remotely funny. Benchley, cast as the assistant treasurer, explains that the head treasurer is home with a cold. When a clubman corrects him, Benchley responds: "I guess the joke's on me ... he has pneumonia." Then Benchley plays with his tie until it comes undone. Let me know when it's time to laugh, please.

In private life, Benchley never considered himself a comedian (I'll second that motion), claiming that his real ambition was to write a serious biography of Queen Anne. But he never wrote it. I wish he'd never written this movie, either.

I'll rate this pathetic short film 2 out of 10, purely for its historic significance as a very early talkie. And now here's the one and only funny thing that Robert Benchley ever said. One of his MGM short subjects required Benchley to be stranded on some overhead telephone lines. His wife happened to be present on the set while stagehands used a cherry-picker to lift Benchley and put him in the wires. While the camera was setting up the shot, Benchley looked down at his wife and asked her: "Do you remember how good I was at Latin in college?" When she replied in the affirmative, Benchley told her: "Well, look where it got me."

This short subject film is the best demonstration I can think of to make the point that comedy can take many forms. The most common, that most of us laugh at and enjoy, are crazy antics or witty dialog. Situational comedy doesn't have to have either of those to be funny. Then there is comedy like that here, in "The Treasurer's Report." The subject is out of place, ill suited for the task or just plain terrible at what he or she does.

I have to say that I can understand those reviewers who didn't see anything funny here in Robert Benchley's solo performance. Most likely, they never gave a speech or report at a banquet or meeting, spoke in public, took speech classes or speaker training, prepared reports for public gatherings or wrote speeches. But, for those who have done some of these things, this film can't help but tickle the funny bone. I chuckle now, thinking of Benchley's discomfort and fidgeting with his tie. Or, his hemming and hawing over what to say next. Or, his quick switch of topic, failure to finish up on something he started to report, utter lack of concentration, and veering off into the unknown.

The exaggeration of the bad public speech or dinner report is hilarious. The guy doesn't have a single thing right about speaking or giving a report. He's not organized, doesn't have his report prepared, doesn't even have an objective report, on and on. It's almost as if he were called on to tell about something from notes he had taken – but he can't even decipher his own notes.

This is one great piece of comedy in a short form. I'm glad I finally came across it. I realize it's not for everyone. It doesn't have the obvious and usual elements of comedy. But this would be an ideal film to show to any class about to begin a course in speech or public speaking. A parenthetical title might be, "How Not to Speak at a Public Function."

Benchley, as the assistant treasurer here, is a buffoon. He looks okay and doesn't act ludicrously. But he's totally inept at what he's doing. It's a wonderful piece of farce. I think his comedy was the best of the handful of people who were making short films like this for the major studios during the golden years of Hollywood. And, this is one of the best of his that I've seen.

Discussing everything but the state of finances of his club in the absence of the treasurer, Robert Benchley is the epitome of the awkward every man who as my mother would say about such speakers, He gave us a financial analysis of everything but how much money was spent on toilet paper. It's an inconsequential little one reel short from the early sound era that is obviously experimental and practically fails on every level. Certainly, Benchley has the delivery down pat, but the creaky photography and editing make this truly cumbersome to try and make it through. Benchley would do much better way down the road, but he had much better material. Probably only of interest to only students of early film technology, this is one of those shorts that you might just breath a sigh of relief at just being one reel as opposed to two.

With a poll being held on IMDbs Classic Film board for the best titles of 1928,I took a look at a post that a fellow IMDber had made of films from 1928 online,and I spotted a link to a movie featuring the first recording of a long-performed Comedy routine,which led to me getting ready to read the treasurer's report.

The plot:

After the members of a club finish their meal and watch the entertainment,everyone sits down to hear the financial results.With the main treasurer being ill,a junior treasurer has to take his place.As he starts to read the report,the treasurer finds that he does not know anything about what the report is about.

View on the film:

Performing the routine since 1922, Robert Benchley gives a very good performance as the unlucky treasurer,with Benchley balancing the nervousness of the speaker with a clear confidence in his word-play routine.Whilst the audio is surprisingly clear for an early sound movie,director Thomas Chalmers sadly fails to lay out the full setting,with Chalmers sole focus on Benchley leading to the film missing out on reaction shots of the "club" audience,which would have helped to emphasis some of the comedic points in a rather dry report.

Treasurer's Report, The (1928)

** (out of 4)

I'll admit right up front that the work of Robert Benchley has always been hit and miss with me but the majority of misses were films like this one here so keep that in mind. In the film Benchley is asked to give his club's financial report so for the next eight minutes he speaks about it. Benchley would go onto make several films like this at MGM, which pretty much had him asked to make a speech and he ends up making a mess out of it. I've yet to find one that made me laugh and the majority of them have gotten on my nerves within minutes. If you enjoy this type of short from Benchley then I'm sure you'll enjoy this one but needless to say it didn't work for me. The type of humor has Benchley slipping over his choice of words, knocking a water cup over, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and various things like this. I just never found it to be funny and all the fidgeting just got on my nerves when it was suppose to be making me laugh. This Fox short was actually one of their earliest sound films as it was released just four months after THE JAZZ SINGER so I can see this really working back in 1928 but today it's just a lot of dry humor that didn't work with me.