Overview
The film stars actor Rod La Rocque as Jerry Cleggert, a good-natured descendant of an infamous clan of pirates who resides aboard the rickety ship Jasper B. Cleggert is informed that in order to inherit a large inheritance, he must marry by his twenty-fifth birthday-- otherwise he would relinquish all claims to his impending fortune. Jerry soon meets his ideal would-be bride Agatha Fairhaven and the two immediately fall in love. Complications arise when Jerry's cousin, the dastardly lawyer Reginald Maltravers claims Agatha as his own. The courting couple suffer a series of mishaps on the way to altar; they are waylaid en route by a trio of bandits, escape from a runaway taxi cab, and outrun a mob of unscrupulous state authorities.
Reviews
This is quite an enjoyable romantic comedy romance from James Horne that sees Rod La Rocque (that'd surely be a porn name nowadays) as the eighth generation of the "Cleggett" family, descended from pirates who made their fortune a-robbing and plundering on the high seas. The family's continued success is dependent on the eldest son getting married on his 25th birthday upon the decks of their ship - the now concreted-in "Jasper B". By the time we get to this latest inheritor, we have a handsome young lad who wakes up that fateful day without so much as a girlfriend! The race is on to find true love and stop him being turfed out, penniless... Luckily, he has the services of his wily, long suffering valet "Wiggins" (Jack Ackroyd) at his side - though it is not always quite clear what his agenda is! Anyway, meantime, heiress "Agatha Fairhaven" (the pretty, but otherwise rather bland, Mildred Harris) might just be the woman for him. Can it all be arranged in time? La Rocque is a charismatic, handsome man who shies not from showing off his finely honed torso nor from smiling charmingly at his co-stars and the camera; and there is plenty of slapstick-lite style of comedy complemented by some really quite wittily written inter-titles to keep this entertaining.