Accidents Will Happen is a 1922 American short film by one William H. Watson and starring Neely Edwards and Bert Roach.

Image courtesy: Universal, August 1922

The comic one-act film follows the methods and mishaps of an Insurance Agent, Henk who is tasked with selling an insurance policy to a stubborn client named Morgan.

If he succeeds, he will be allowed to marry the daughter of the Insurance Company’s boss.

After some mishaps and struggles, he succeeds.

But when Henk arrives to ask for the daughter’s hand, he finds out that all of the insurance company’s policyholders have had an accident and claimed their money.

The boss is now bankrupt, and refuses to give his daughter away!

Unfortunately, we seem to have lost the original English version of the film, and only the Dutch version survives.

This movie is evidence that insurance was a popular entertainment theme 100 years ago and continues to be so.