With the era of silent comedy in full swing, Francis Amberton knew that he had to find a slapstick star to compete with the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. That star came in the form of Australian performer Harold “Snub” Pollard who, by 1922, had starred in dozens of one- and two-reel comedy shorts, but had yet to headline a feature. Amberton hired director Emil Wingard, who also had experience with comedy shorts, to direct The Cheese Stands Alone. Starring Pollard as a naive, city-dwelling young man who inherits a farm from his deceased great-uncle, the film mostly consisted of comedy vignettes where Pollard’s character got into farm-related mishaps. The most popular of these was a segment involving a runaway tractor that was later adapted to be a single-reel short in its own right. Pollard’s time with Halfpenny Orpheum did not last long, as the following year, shortly after his second marriage, he returned to Australia and began touring theatres there holding speaking engagements about the film industry.
