Hands Up! | |
Director: | Clarence G. Badger |
Producer: | Jesse L. Lasky Adolph Zukor |
Story: | Reggie Morris |
Starring: | Raymond Griffith Virginia Lee Corbin Charles K. French Marian Nixon |
Cinematography: | H. Kinley Martin |
Distributor: | Paramount Pictures |
Runtime: | 70 minutes |
Country: | United States |
Language: | Silent (English intertitles) |
Hands Up! is a 1926 American silent comedy film directed by Clarence Badger, co-written by Monte Brice and Lloyd Corrigan, and starring Raymond Griffith, one of the great silent movie comedians. The film features fictional incidents involving actual historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Brigham Young, and Sitting Bull.
As described in a film magazine review, during the Civil War, Jack, an officer and spy for Confederate States Army, attempts to secure a Union gold mine that had been discovered by Allan Pinkerton for Abraham Lincoln, and keep a load of gold from reaching the Union Army. He tries to blow up the mine but exposes a richer vein of gold. He is caught and about to be hanged when he is saved by two daughters of the mine owner. Jack grabs two guns and successfully holds up the gang when word arrives that the war has been declared over. Jack then follows Brigham Young's example and starts for Salt Lake City so that he can marry both daughters. Along the way, while engaging in lovemaking with the young women, the stage coach is shot full of arrows, which he describes as "bee stings."
In 2005, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[1] [2]