CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Help! Help! Hydrophobia!

1913 film by Henry Lehrman

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ3129965 ↗
Source-derived summary

Help! Help! Hydrophobia! is a 1913 American short comedy film starring Fatty Arbuckle.

The film is also known as The Chemist.

Plot

The Professor resents Jim Brown courting his daughter. Jim accidentally feeds the dog a milk culture the Professor has been experimenting on, and the Professor believes that the dog is infected with deadly germs. Everyone runs away from the dog.

Cast

The cast includes:

Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle: Jim Brown

Beatrice Van: Professor's Daughter

Nick Cogley: Professor

Reception

The film was said to be "exceedingly funny".

See also

List of American films of 1913

Fatty Arbuckle filmography

References

External links

Help!

Editorial summary

“Help! Help! Hydrophobia!” enters the record as 1913 film by Henry Lehrman. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Help, Hydrophobia and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1913—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1913-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Help, Hydrophobia and film.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Help! Help! Hydrophobia!” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Help, Hydrophobia and film provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3129965. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1913.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Help! Help! Hydrophobia!”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Help! Help! Hydrophobia! primary sources, Help! Help! Hydrophobia! archive and Help research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Help! Help! Hydrophobia!”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Help! Help! Hydrophobia!” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.