A Tango Tragedy

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

A Tango Tragedy is a 1914 American silent comedy short made by Lubin Manufacturing Company. It stars Billy Bowers, Frances Ne Moyer, and James Hodges, with Oliver Hardy in a small role as a man at the dance. The film is considered lost.

Plot in simple terms:
Pat Muldoon hates dancing and warns that any man who asks his daughter Nora to dance will be killed. Dick Kelly ignores him and invites Nora to a dance. Pat confronts Dick with a shotgun, but Dick tricks him into shooting a dummy and pretends to be dead. Dressed as a ghost, Dick orders Pat to dance. Pat is terrified at first, but he ends up liking dancing with a charming widow. When he sees Dick without the ghost makeup and wants to fight, the music begins, and Pat chooses the tango over the fight, while Dick dances off with Nora.

Production details:
The film was shot in Jacksonville, Florida, at Lubin’s Jacksonville studio under the supervision of Arthur Hotaling. It was a short split-reel comedy, about 5–6 minutes long, sharing a reel with Circus Time in Toyland, a cartoon by Stewart C. Whitman. It was released on May 30, 1914, by the General Film Company.

Oliver Hardy appearance:
A Tango Tragedy is among Lubin’s early split-reel comedies that feature some of Hardy’s first screen appearances. He is usually an uncredited extra, such as a cop, a cowboy, or a man at the dance. The film itself does not survive, but a promotional still shows Hardy looking over Hodges’s shoulder in The Lubin Bulletin, the studio’s advertising newsletter.