Chaplin's second film for Essanay, A NIGHT OUT, was the first of five films shot in and around the company's Niles studio in northern California (approximately 35 miles southeast of San Francisco, and now a district of Fremont, California). The plot is a variation of the teaming of Chaplin and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in the Keystone film, The Rounders (1914). This time he is paired to excellent effect with Ben Turpin.

Chaplin and Turpin are drunks about town, starting at a café and ending in a risqué hotel room mix-up with a pretty girl, similar to the situation in the Keystone comedy Caught in the Rain (1914), yet this time with Edna Purviance, in her first film with Chaplin.