False Alarm

The clown is introduced as an elegant aristocrat complete with monocal and cane. Max is struggling with rolling a cigarette. The clown offers to do it, and pitches a neatly rolled "cig" to Max, who lights it, and carlessly tosses the match, which lands in front of the clown. In a panic, the clown runs to the Fire House and grabs what he thinks is a fire hose, but turns out to be a snake that bits him on the fanny. Max blows out the fire, and the clown stamps out the embers for good measure. He then struts off to the Fire House and starts to settle down for a nap when the alarm rings. The clown mounts an old fashioned boiler fire engine, and rushes to a prison where smoke is streaming from an upper window. Once the convicts are released, the source of the smoke is the pipe of a burly convict. Watching all this, Max accidentally lets the ashes from his cigarette fall behind a desk callendar, which starts a fire. Quickly, he draws a Fire Alarm box, and the clown rushes to the scene, poking a ladder in Max's face. With his back turn, the clown's fanny cathes on fire. Max runs in with a bucket of water and dowses the fire, but the clown is still burning, leaping back into the inkwell, with smoke pouring out. A great and comicallook at how Fire Departments used to be. Unusual and an effective combination of stop motion for the cigarette flying into Max's mouth.