Well, it’s been a while, but the new issue is done.
At 60 pages, this is the longest one yet, and I’m proud to feature some fantastic guest contributors this time. Syd Chaplin’s biographer Lisa Stein Haven has provided some great insights into our cover star, as well as his more famous little brother… There are also some details on the newly restored Syd feature, Oh! What a Nurse!.
I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to publish an exclusive excerpt from Steve Massa’s new book about Harold Lloyd’s Lonesome Luke films, and the early years of the Hal Roach studios – available soon from Split-Reel. There’s also a very informative Q & A with Steve about the new book.
There are also articles about Jerry Drew, Marion Byron, Monty Banks and a piece about gagman extraordinaire Charles Rogers, by Holly Foskett and Matthew Lydick from A Lot of Fun Writers. Plus, a transcript of an interview with Al St John, film and BluRay reviews and lots more.
I really hope you enjoy this issue. I hope it won’t take as long for #16 to come along! If you’d like to contribute an article, plug a project you’re working on, or take part in a Q & A for the next issue, please do get in touch – either in the comments section here, or by emailing movienightmag [AT] gmail.com
And finally… The magazine is totally free. However if, you do enjoy reading the issues and would like to make a donation to support site running costs, software etc then these would be gratefully received! If you would like to donate, you can buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi. Thanks!
For over twenty years, Roscoe Arbuckle made enormous contributions to screen comedy, in front of and behind the camera. This is a man who not only mentored Buster Keaton, but also gave valuable help to both Charlie and Syd Chaplin in their early careers, as well as many other comedians like Charley Chase and Al St John. Later, he was instrumental in directing films for St John, Lloyd Hamilton, Lupino Lane and many others. As a performer, he inspired a wave of ‘jolly fat man’ performers: Babe Hardy, Hughie Mack, Walter Hiers, ‘The Ton of Fun’.
Yet for all that, Arbuckle often seems slightly taken for granted. His image is so sewn up with Keystone slapstick that his broader achievements in gentle situation comedy, farce and feature length comedies and as a director, are overlooked.
It’s hard to believe that it’s now twenty years since the definitive DVD set, ‘ The Forgotten Films of Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle’. This was the first set to really illuminate Roscoe’s wider achievements, and set a high bar. In the years since then, crowdfunding projects, access to Archives and digital technology have advanced, and the time is ripe to showcase some of the previously unseen and newly restored Arbuckle gems out there.
Among the highlights culled from Archives and private collections around the world are Arbuckle’s first Keystone THE GANGSTERS, THE SEA NYMPHS with Mabel Normand, rarely seen feature CRAZY TO MARRY, the Al St John shorts DYNAMITE DOGGIE and NEVER AGAIN and loads more! Overall, it’s a terrific sampler of silent comedy gold from one of tits finest talents. The Kickstarter campaign runs til Feb 14th and provides your opportunity to help bring these films to new audiences.
Crazy to Marry
Behind the Kickstarter campaign are silent comedy expert and author of ‘Rediscovering Roscoe’, Steve Massa, and producer Crystal Kui, with the new project being distributed through Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions.
Steve and Crystal very kindly offered to talk us through the new project, and some of the highlights it features. Read on for more…
This new Kickstarter release features a wealth of restored and reconstructed films, sourced from a range of archives and private collections. What are some of the logistical challenges in pulling all these disparate sources together?
Crystal Kui: In this Arbuckle release will be 11 shorts plus a feature sourced from seven different archives and two private collectors. Logistically, it will be quite a challenge to keep track of the shipping, scanning and restoration on all these films. We’re very fortunate that all of the participating archives were keen to provide access to their prints and are supportive of our efforts to share these treasures with the public. Thanks to Steve’s enthusiasm and deep knowledge of the films, we have been able to work with the archives on our side. After we draw up contracts with the participating archives, the next step is to coordinate the shipping or scanning of the film prints. A few archives have facilities on site to scan and restore the films, while for others we are able to ship the prints either to the Library of Congress for scanning on the east coast or to USC on the west coast. We have a team of digital restorers and color graders who are archive conscious and work diligently to bring the end result as close as possible to the original viewing experience. Not all films are complete, but we work with the best surviving or only surviving copies. My favorite aspect of working on this project is doing the research to reconstruct the missing parts or titles, finding out whether there was tinting and how it was used, and comparing foreign versions or reissues to the original domestic releases.
Were there any particular technical challenges involved in working with such rare and precious film elements?
CK: Several films in our release are sourced from foreign release prints including Crazy to Marry (1921) with Russian titles, The Sea Nymphs (1914) with Danish titles, and Fatty and the Broadway Stars with Norwegian titles. Instead of simply translating the titles into English, we tried to source scripts and censorship records in an attempt to reconstruct the titles as they were written originally in English. This requires a lot of close scrutiny and comparison. In studying the scripts, we also learned that Crazy to Marry had three tinting colors: yellow, blue and amber, which are detailed by reel, and will be recreated digitally by our graders Chris Crouse and Graham Brown, using original tinting samples from the early 1920s. Our regular collaborator, Jesse Pierce, an expert at recreating the intertitles, will design titles that faithfully match the original style of a Paramount feature, Keystone Comedy or Triangle release, for example.
Is therea particular restoration effort on this set that you’re most proud of?
CK: Perhaps ask me this in a year; the real in-depth restoration work is only beginning now that the Kickstarter has met its initial goals. We have a lot of work ahead of us!
Steve, this set comes on the heels of your book, ‘Rediscovering Roscoe’. Championing Arbuckle is clearly a passion project for you. What is it about him and his comedy style that speaks to you?
Steve Massa: I grew up hooked on silent comedy, and although I got a steady diet of Chaplin, Keaton, and Laurel & Hardy there was almost no Arbuckle to be seen. This was probably due to left over stigma from the scandal. My first real look at Roscoe was thanks to film historian William K. Everson. In a 1983 all-Arbuckle evening at New York’s Collective for Living Cinema, Professor Everson showed The Waiter’s Ball (1916), his feature Leap Year (made in 1921), and the comeback sound short Buzzin’ Around (1933). Seeing the comedian from his first full flowering to his last hurrah was an eye opening experience and inspired me to try and get as much of his work seen as possible. Since then I’ve taken every opportunity I could to present his films – at places like The Museum of Modern Art and Library of Congress, on DVD, and in print.
The fact that Arbuckle made feature films is often overlooked. ‘Crazy to Marry’ shows him mixing polite comedy plots with slapstick. Where do you think his comedy style might have headed in the 20s, if fate had not intervened?
SM: Mabel Normand and Roscoe were the first stars of slapstick shorts to move into feature films. Their type of comedy shorts, while loved by audiences, didn’t get much respect in the film industry itself, where they were often treated like poor step-children. To be taken seriously they had to appear in more serious fare and be “legitimized” as feature stars. Roscoe’s first feature was the dramatic western The Round Up (1920). The films that immediately followed, such as The Life of the Party (1920) and Brewster’s Millions (1921), were polite drawing room comedies based on popular stories, novels or plays, and were very plot heavy.
Unfortunately we don’t have access to all of his features, but by the time of Crazy to Marry and Leap Year he moved to farce comedy – which was better suited to his talents and gave him more situations to react to and opportunity to work in more helpings of slapstick. At the time of his banishment from the screen Paramount had very similar properties lined up for his next projects, so it seems likely that he would have stayed in that style.
It’s great to see Arbuckle’s directorial career represented as well. What led you to choose the particular films featured here? ( ‘Dynamite Doggie’, ‘Home cured’, ‘Never Again’, ‘Stupid But Brave’, ‘Honeymoon Trio’)
SM: The particular directorial films chosen for the set were picked for their excellence as well as their rarity and unavailability. In all of them Roscoe uses a very restrained and low-key approach that has the slapstick growing logically out of the situations. He gets very natural performances from the actors, with wonderful close-ups and reaction shots. His early sound short Honeymoon Trio (1931) will be a surprise to many people. It’s Roscoe’s “road film” – a black comic version of Detour (1946) and The Hitch-Hiker (1953), as Al St John and Dorothy Grainger head off on their honeymoon motor trip with Al’s former rival Walter Catlett in tow. Powerless to thwart or even shut up the obnoxious Catlett, Al is symbolically cuckolded as he’s caught in a never-ending honeymoon from hell.
Do you each have a favourite film or gag from the set?
SM: One of my favorite films on the set is The Gangsters (1913). This was Roscoe’s very first film for Mack Sennett, it’s amazing to see how he hit the ground running. Besides being very funny he pulls the focus whenever he’s on screen, and his “Fatty” character is already developed at this early date. When this was made Roscoe was already a well-seasoned performer, having spent a decade touring with various stock companies around the U.S. and Asia. His film experience before this had been very limited – brief sojourns for Selig and Nestor, but he instinctively seemed to understand the intimacy of the movie camera. Understanding it, he used that intimacy extremely well and quickly became an audience favorite around the world.
CK: These films are so rare, I won’t have a chance to see the films until the scans have come in from the archives. We received our first film last week, The Sea Nymphs (1914) from the Danish Film Institute, and it was so much fun to watch, with extended scenes shot on Catalina Island.
What do you hope viewers will take away from this set? Is there a particular facet of Arbuckle’s talents you’d like them to have a new appreciation for?
SM: I’d like viewers to get a full picture of what an excellent overall comedy creator Roscoe was. He’s best remembered for his on screen persona, but his work behind the camera gets taken for granted. He was a very sophisticated writer and director – even as early as 1915 his sure hand can be seen in films like That Little Band of Gold, Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916), and He Did and He Didn’t (1916). That’s why after the scandal he was able to transition so easily to just writing and directing. He was already a pro, and turned out excellent shorts with comics such as Al St John, Lloyd Hamilton, Lupino Lane and Johnny Arthur.
So there you have it: a fantastic set rammed full of rarities featuring one of the true comic pioneers. I’m sure you won’t want to miss out on this chance to rediscover Roscoe! Here’s the link to the Kickstarter, and the full planned contents:
The Gangsters(1913) – 10 min, Museum of Modern Art Roscoe had been making sporadic appearances for Selig and Nestor since 1909. The Gangsters is his very first film for Keystone, where he shares the picture with Fred Mace and becomes an overnight Mack Sennett star.
A Noise From the Deep (1913) – 10 min, Museum of Modern Art The earliest surviving film of Roscoe with his frequent co-star Mabel Normand. It is also considered to have the first use of a thrown Keystone pie.
An Incompetent Hero (1914) – 12 min, Library of Congress Roscoe is a victim of circumstances in this rarely seen comedy, which also highlights Edgar Kennedy, Minta Durfee, Al St John, and Roscoe’s tight rope walking skills.
The Sea Nymphs (1914) – 25 min, Restored by the Danish Film Institute Mabel, Roscoe and a seal have fun in the surf at Catalina, in a new scan made from the only known surviving print.
Crazy to Marry (1921) – 40 min, Restored by Cinematek (Brussels) This was the sixth of Roscoe’s starring features, and was only in theatres for about a week before being yanked out of distribution and vanishing. This rare survivor illustrates how Roscoe was taking polite comedy plots and working in more and more of his signature physical gags and slapstick.
Bonus: New reconstruction of Fatty and the Broadway Stars (1916) – 7 mins, Nationalbiblioteket (Oslo) & Private collection / Restored by theUSC HMH Foundation Moving Image Archive Only a few 35mm and 9.5mm chunks are all that’s known to exist today of this short. The Triangle Film Corp. had hired famous stage stars like Weber & Fields and William Collier to give prestige to their films, and used Roscoe to introduce some of these stage personalities to movie audiences.
Disc Two
Never Again (1924) – 12 min, Lobster/Blackhawk Roscoe here reworks the plots of Fatty at San Diego (1913) and A Reckless Romeo (1917) for his nephew Al St John. Scanned from the only surviving print.
Stupid but Brave (1924) – 21 min, Private collection / Restored by the USC HMH Foundation Moving Image Archive Having been banned from the screen, Roscoe focused on writing and directing, creating excellent comedies with Ned Sparks, Poodles Hanneford and Al St John.
Dynamite Doggie (1925) – 24 min, Lobster/Blackhawk Al St John co-stars with Pete the Pup in this rarity that reworks material from Love (1919) and Sherlock Jr. (1924), as well as early films that featured Roscoe’s dog Luke.
Home Cured (1926) – 10 min, Library of Congress Roscoe launched the series of Tuxedo Comedies for Educational Pictures which starred the fairly new screen comic Johnny Arthur. Scanned from the only known 35mm material, Johnny is a hypochondriac whose wife has had enough.
Honeymoon Trio (1931) – 12 min, Library of Congress This early sound short is Roscoe’s “road film,” a black comic version of Detour (1946) or The Hitchhiker (1953) that details Al St John on a never-ending honeymoon from hell.
Bonus: Video essay on Roscoe Arbuckle’s life and career.
Huge thanks to Steve and Crystal for giving their time to answer my questions, and for their efforts in making this project happen. I’m really excited for this set!
To coincide with a showing of the very rare Roscoe Arbuckle short CAMPING OUT on The Silent Comedy Watch Party, here’s a run-down of the overlooked shorts Arbuckle made in 1918 & 1919… the ones that don’t feature Buster Keaton in the cast!
Roscoe Arbuckle’s series of shorts made for the Comique film corporation and released through Paramount in 1917-20, are among his best-known work. Certainly, they are the best represented on DVD. This is almost entirely due to the Keaton factor – the presence of a young Buster in most of the films. This bias is confirmed by the obscurity of the films in which Buster does not appear, made during his military service in 1918-19.
You won’t find these films on any of the Arbuckle-Keaton DVD sets!
When Keaton was drafted, the Comique series continued with Arbuckle and his regular foil, Al St John. While the popularity of Keaton has ensured that all but one of the Arbuckle-Keatons are now accounted for, the survival rate drops much further for the shorts made in his absence. Only a couple are known to exist, and only one has been restored and released. Details of many of the films are sparse, with a couple remaining mysteries.
Ever since critics first took an interest in Keaton, Arbuckle has always been in his shadow. At worst, the lazy critical opinion is that Arbuckle’s style was crude and unsophisticated, and that the only merit in the films came from Keaton’s input. Silent comedy aficianados know better, of course; nevertheless, an unfortunate legacy of this view is the lack of interest in this bunch of films. Along with their unavailability, this remains in stark contrast to those that came on either side of them.
Let’s take a look at this neglected group of films, hopefully waiting to be rediscovered. Here they are, in order of release:
THE SHERIFF (24th November 1918)
In late 1917, the Arbuckle company had moved to California from the East Coast, partly enticed by the better backgrounds on offer. The desert settings of the west were seen to good advantage in the first film after moving, OUT WEST, and Arbuckle reused the theme in this short. Arbuckle plays a Sheriff enamoured of the movie heroics of Douglas Fairbanks and William S Hart. After falling asleep and dreaming a dramatic rescue in a Mexican town where He gets the chance to try a real heroic rescue, when his schoolteacher girlfriend Betty is kidnapped by bandit Al. THE SHERIFF is possibly the most intriguing of all these films, and sounds like it was an amusing little gem. Arbuckle surely got good comic contrast from impersonating Fairbanks and Hart, and THE SHERIFF is perhaps similar to the clever, cliché spoofing Arbuckle-Keaton short MOONSHINE. While OUT WEST had been an exercise in comic savagery, reviews of the time commented that THE SHERIFF was rather more subtle and sophisticated. Here’s a review from Motion Picture News of November 23, 1918:
THE SHERIFF is better by far than anything contributed to the Arbuckle Paramount program. For one thing, it is free from vulgarity & sloppiness. The classic kick shines by its absence. For another, the situations have been developed logically, producing maximum fun out of minimum action.
One of the common misconceptions about Arbuckle is that any sophistication in his films came from Keaton’s input. While there’s no denying that Keaton had big creative input into the films, Arbuckle, rather like Charley Chase, liked to play with different styles and could happily jump from wild gags and slapstick to gentle situation comedy. Some of his earlier Sennett films, made with Mabel Normand, like HE DID AND HE DIDN’T, show a gentle and sophisticated side to Roscoe before Keaton ever appeared on the scene.
Nevertheless, Arbuckle definitely felt the loss of Keaton in his supporting cast, and hired another diminutive comic to take his place: Mario Bianchi (the future Monty Banks). His leading lady in this film is also notable; Betty Compson would become a star in features, her career getting a boost the following year when she appeared with Lon Chaney in THE MIRACLE MAN.
Incidentally, spoofing William S Hart came up again in Keaton’s later short THE FROZEN NORTH. It was an idea contributed by a writer who remained uncredited… Roscoe Arbuckle! In the short, Keaton made a mockery of Hart’s tendency to always have a scene where he cried in his films. Roscoe apparently did the same in THE SHERIFF.
SCRAPS OF PAPER (aka A SCRAP OF PAPER – Autumn 1918)
part of the regular series but made at the same time, this is Arbuckle’s equivalent of Chaplin’s THE BOND. Like that film, it is a propaganda effort designed to promote the Canadian War Bond fundraising effort. As well as each making a promotional film, Chaplin and Arbuckle made public appearances together to promote the loan drive, and newsreel footage of one of these events still exists. Like THE BOND, SCRAPS OF PAPER features our hero coming face to face with the Kaiser (Glen Cavender) and the ‘clown quince’ (Al St John). After mocking the goose-step marching of the Kaiser’s soldiers (one of whom is Monty Banks), Arbuckle tells him that there’s one thing he hasn’t considered, and unleashes a snowstorm of Liberty Bonds which engulf the Germans. Roscoe addresses the audience directly (via intertitle) telling them to do their bit and invest in the Liberty Loan Drive. Not much of a comedy, but an effective piece of propaganda and an interesting historical curio.
CAMPING OUT (5th January 1919)
CAMPING OUT is a rare survivor from this group of films, existing from two incomplete nitrate sources (one Italian print and one from the Netherlands). A composite print has received a number of screenings (most recently on the Silent Comedy Watch Party) and is held at the EYE film institute. Arbuckle again took advantage of the West Coast climate and locations, filming the short on Catalina Island in November 1918. If THE SHERIFF showcased a more subtle side of Arbuckle, then this film returned to the cruder slapstick milieu of films like THE BUTCHER BOY and THE ROUGH HOUSE. Within the first five minutes alone, there are jokes about vomiting, spitting and seagull droppings!
The basic premise of CAMPING OUT recalls FATTY AT CONEY ISLAND, a tale of Arbuckle playing hookey from his wife, and enjoying the freedom by flirting with other men’s wives. Unable to stomach his wife’s dreadful cooking, he escapes for a while, taking the ferry to Catalina for a camping trip. En route, he (inevitably) meets Al St John, and his pretty wife Alice Lake. In the the ensuing tussle Roscoe throws Al overboard. Fatty and Al’s wife proceed to the campsite, where the grizzled, one-legged camp owner is also played by St John. The highlight of the film follows as Roscoe indulges in some of his trademark food preparation gags. Here he demonstrates novel ways of shaving potatoes, and making doughnuts and mashed potatoes with the aid of St John’s wooden leg! Another highlight is his plan to filch food from grocer Monty Banks.
Inevitably, Roscoe’s chickens come to roost as his wife (armed with guns and knives!), Al and Monty all show up for a slapstick battle royale to round out the short.
Though CAMPING OUT is far from Roscoe’s most sophisticated effort, it’s a ton of fun, and the sunny location shooting around Catalina Island and the streets of Avalon only add to the summery, freewheeling tone of the film. Watch the film as part of the Silent Comedy Watch Party live stream here:
THE PULLMAN PORTER (? unfinished/unreleased film)
THE PULLMAN PORTER is a curiosity, an elusive mystery film. The Arbuckle shorts were popular and well publicised, with Paramount often placing full-page ads in the trade papers for them. For THE SHERIFF, we can piece together lots of information, for instance. But for this film, the trail runs cold. So far, I’ve found no reports of the production, no stills, no reviews… nuthin. Nada. Zilch. But, it does have a cited release date, Feb 16. It does seem strange that an Arbuckle short released at this time would receive next to no coverage in the trades.
There has been confusion between releases in the series before, for instance the earlier short A RECKLESS ROMEO was actually filmed earlier for Keystone, but bought and released by Paramount. There also seemed to be various other reisues of earlier Arbuckle shorts occurring at this time, so could THE PULLMAN PORTER fall into one of these categories? It seems most likely that it a tentative idea, scrapped and replaced during filming.
LOVE (2nd March 1919)
LOVE is a wonderful little short that survives complete. The film was preserved just in time, and issued on Laughsmith Entertainment’s terrific 2005 DVD set THE FORGOTTEN FILMS OF FATTY ARBUCKLE. The short is in the classic rural barnyard slapstick mould, one of Arbuckle’s favourite motifs. However, LOVE is way more sophisticated than the earlier Keystone shorts, Arbuckle had come as a comedian and director since those times. While the knockabout is still rough, it is developed into some terrific, well-developed set pieces . Roscoe makes one of his best entrances, riding on a country road in his “economy model” Ford (a glorified go-kart) and using a pair of bellows to blow away huge boulders in his path. He is courting farmer Frank Hayes’ daughter (Winifred Westover), but Hayes has plans to marry her off to local boy Al St John in return for some land. Among the comic set pieces around the farm yard is a scene where Hayes falls down a well, and Roscoe and Monty Banks try to winch him up; each time something goes wrong, sending Hayes plummeting down the well again and again. Then, we’re into a classic version of the ’broom-bashing’ routine memorably used in THE WAITER’S BALL. (Of course, the routine was originally pinched from The Three Keatons’ vaudeville act, so Buster does have a little influence over this film after all. It would be nice to think its inclusion here was a tribute from Arbuckle to his absent friend). This version is even better, turning into a nice four-handed version with Roscoe, Monty, Frank and Al St John.
Roscoe tries to elope with Winifred, but is foiled when his ladder breaks, catapulting him into the house, and leaving Winifired dangling from a first floor window. (Poor Winifred Westover takes quite a lot of punishment in this short—no wonder it was her only film with Arbuckle!)
Though there are occasional lapses in taste (like the scene mentioned above) where the slapstick maybe gets a bit too violent, the comedy scenes in the first half of LOVE are some of the best in the whole Comique series. The second half of the short involves Roscoe’s plan to sneak into the house and sneak Winifred away from the wedding. Sneaking soap into the cook’s stew to get her fired, he dresses in drag and takes her place. Suggesting that they stage a rehearsal ceremony with the preacher, Roscoe takes the groom’s place. Once they have said “I do”, Monty pulls strings attached to Roscoe’s dress and wig, revealing his true identity. LOVE contains several of Roscoe’s pet routines, and is a thoroughly enjoyable two reels, brim-full of exuberant gags. As a farewell to the barnyard setting, it was a high note to go out on.
THE BANK CLERK (? Unfinished/unreleased film)
Like THE PULLMAN PORTER, details about THE BANK CLERK are sparse. Initial reports in the trades that Arbuckle had embarked on a film of this title, in which he works as a window cleaner in the bank, but (excuse the pun) climbs the ladder to a career in finance. However, in April 1919, Film Daily reported that filming had to be abandoned due to both weather conditions in L.A., and for Arbuckle to make revisions to the story. It seems that his solution to both inclement weather and an unsatisfying story was to scrap it and head back to the desert to make another Western film. Like THE PULLMAN PORTER, THE BANK CLERK was probably never finished. That the two films were never released is supported by adverts for later reissues of the Comique films, which list all but this pair of titles.
A DESERT HERO ( 15th June 1919)
Arbuckle was obviously very fond of Western settings at this point in his career; this is third film in just over a year to play on the genre. Down the years, this has meant confusion for Arbuckle & Keaton scholars, with the three films (OUT WEST, THE SHERIFF and A DESERT HERO) often being mixed up, especially when they turned up in prints without main titles. As late as the 1970s, A DESERT HERO often found its way into Keaton filmographies, with stills from OUT WEST being attributed to this film instead.
It’s not surprising, as there is a strong overlap between the all three films. In OUT WEST, Alice Lake had a prominent role as a Salvation Army girl; here, Molly Malone takes on a similar part. Arbuckle’s burlesque of William S Hart from THE SHERIFF is also revisited in this short. The long-faced, wiry Hart played solemn tough guys, and Roscoe plays on this for comic effect here. An opening title introduces “a gaunt, thin boned stranger from the desert”, before cutting to the very non-gaunt Roscoe! Arbuckle carried on spoofing Hart through the film, as the press books tell us: “He’s the toughest, hardest, roughest Western cuss that ever lived, in “A Desert Hero”! He eats ’em alive ! Breaks rocks with his teeth he’s so ornery!”
Roscoe reforms when he meets Molly and joins her in the salvation army. Surviving stills show lots of comic business with brass band instruments, before Molly is kidnapped by Al St John and Roscoe has to rescue her. Molly continued with Roscoe for the remainder of the series. Though A DESERT HERO was his last Western short, Arbuckle would return to the genre one last time, for his debut feature THE ROUND UP the following year.
Keaton’s war service in France was over in early 1919, and after a hospital stay, he rejoined Arbuckle in May. The Arbuckle-Keaton partnership returned to the screen for three more shorts, BACK STAGE, THE HAYSEED and THE GARAGE, before Arbuckle moved to features. Many of the Arbuckle-Keaton shorts are deservedly well-regarded, but we shouldn’t neglect the films Roscoe made without Buster. As a comic creator, he was at the top of his game, as evidenced by LOVE. Hopefully one day, THE SHERIFF and A DESERT HERO will be available for us to enjoy again, too.
A version of this article originally appeared in issue 12 of The Lost Laugh magazine, published May 2020. (c) Matthew Ross.
Thanks to Ben Model & Steve Massa from the Silent Comedy Watch Party, and to Elif from the Eye Filmmuseum for making CAMPING OUT available for us to enjoy again!
The new issue of The Lost Laugh Magazine is now available! There are exclusive articles, rare photos, reproduced articles from trade magazines and news and reviews.
Our cover star this time is British silent comedian Walter Forde; in this issue we focus on his early career and short films (including a complete filmography) , with his feature films to follow in the next issue.
Last time we looked at Monty Banks’ starring comedies. Issue 12 continues his story into the sound era, examining his handful of starring films, and his work as a director.
Other articles include:
*some of Roscoe Arbuckle’s most obscure films
*A Q & A with Ben Model, all about The Silent Comedy Watch Party
*Mabel Normand’s missing film ONE HOUR MARRIED.
*New DVDs featuring Lupino Lane, Laurel & Hardy, Charley Chase and Harry Langdon
*Screening notes on some rare films from Hal Roach and Mack Sennett studios.
Click on the link below to open the pdf of the magazine, or right click and ‘save target as’ to download the file:
Fresh from a fantastic weekend in London for Kennington Bioscope’s ‘SILENT LAUGHTER SATURDAY’, the blog is now ready to launch properly. Reviews of films from the weekend to follow, but before we get to that, here’s a brief rundown of some of the greatest forgotten comics you’ll find here. Sure, we’ll be featuring Keaton, Laurel & Hardy etc, too, but these are some of the comics who need a bit more information and appreciation about them on the internet, the core purpose of this site. As time goes on, I’d like to add pages for each of these performers to the site to hopefully become a definitive reference source, but for now, here’s a brief introduction to some of my favourite lost comedians…
DAN LENO
Going right back to the music hall days, it’s impossible to conceive of many of the later British comedians without Dan Leno. His sketches and whimsy were beloved by the Karno comics, and absorbed into their acts. Just look at that bowler-hatted, vacantly grinning face and tell me you don’t see Stan Laurel. Chaplin loved Leno, too. Leno died young at the turn of the century, and has left only scraps of his act, but he left a long shadow in British comedy.
2. MAX LINDER
Just as influential, in his own way, was Frenchman Max Linder. Stage-trained Linder made films from the mid-1900s for Pathé. These films may look primitive, with their cardboard, painted sets, but Linder’s acting is remarkably subtle and sophisticated. As a silk-hatted boulevardier, he maintains this pleasingly low-key style as he is pulled into ridiculously farcical situations, such as being carried through the streets of Paris in his bath!
Chaplin, again, was a huge fan. He became friends with Linder (below), dedicating a photo to him, “To the one and only Max, the Professor. From his disciple, Charles Chaplin.” Linder’s sophisticated, dapper style in the face of eternal embarrassment was also a huge influence on two other great silent comics, Raymond Griffith and Charley Chase.
3. ROSCOE ARBUCKLE
It’s amazing how many of these underappreciated comedians had such an influence on the more enduring names. It was Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, then Mack Sennett’s biggest star, who persuaded the producer not to fire a young, temperamental Chaplin. He’s also said to have provided the original tramp costume’s oversized pants. The eternally generous Arbuckle later had an even more profound impact on the young Buster Keaton,giving him his first screen roles and teaching him the ropes of film-making. On his own account, he made some really charming and funny screen comedies, before his career was unduly and unfairly stopped by a 1921 scandal. To this day, it’s impossible to write a paragraph about him without mentioning it, so I’m just going to shout from the rooftops, “HE WAS INNOCENT!” once more.
4. MABEL NORMAND
The first really popular screen comedienne, Mabel was also a pioneering female director. From the mid 1910s, she was directing her own films at Keystone, later moving into feature films for Goldwyn. She’s great proof that women could be both funny and attractive at the same time, which was a difficult thing to achieve in such a male-dominated industry. Mabel was a wonderfully lively performer, who deserves remembering more for her pioneering work.
5. ALICE HOWELL
Alice Howell took a more clownish approach to her humour. Her round, eternally started kewpie doll face, topped off with a mass of frizzy red hair was instantly amusing, and totally suited the ditzy characters she played on film. However, she was still a true original, almost a forerunner of Lucille Ball. Her films are sadly scarce, but reveal a uniquely funny lady. “Everyone a Howell!” was her strapline.
6. LUPINO LANE
To see one of Lupino Lane’s films is to suspend belief in the laws of physics; he was a phenomenal acrobat who surpasses even Keaton. Tracing his family’s history in entertainment back to 1642, he was a proud inheritor of the pantomime tradition, and could do pretty much anything: acrobatics, dancing, singing, crosstalk routines, juggling. He later added starring in, writing and directing Hollywood comedies to his resumé. These films are great little two reelers, maybe not deep in characterisation, but they make up for it in a whirlwind of gags and acrobatics. Lane’s signature stunts include rising up from the splits, somersaulting down flights of stairs, and running 360 degrees around the inside of a proscenium arch! In later years, he returned to England, where he originated the role of Bill Snibson in ‘ME AND MY GIRL’, along with the famous dance, ‘The Lambeth Walk’. He should be recognised as a national treasure in Britain, but is undeservedly forgotten.
7. CHARLEY BOWERS
The films of Charley Bowers are as jaw-dropping as Lupino Lane’s, but for different reasons. Bowers isn’t an astounding performer, but he was an incredibly talented animator and gagman. In two series of comedies in the late 1920s, he mixed his wild, incredibly realistic stop motion animation into live action films starring himself. The results are incredible, a world where pussy willow trees sprout living cats, mice fire guns, cars hatch from eggs and the figures inside paintings come to life. Beloved by surrealists like André Breton, Bowers was just way ahead of his time, and returned to obscurity before being rediscovered in recent years.
8. HARRY LANGDON
Langdon is usually cited as one of the “big 4” names of silent comedy, with Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd, but he’s far, far less well remembered than those performers. Part of the reaon, I think, is that he is very much an offbeat, reactionary performer, a minimalist in reaction to the overblown chaos of Mack Sennett madness. Now that we’re less familiar with this, it’s harder to place Langdon’s curious, quiet style. He played an overgrown baby of indeterminate age, his performances marked by long silences and the tiniest flinches in facial expression. He was proclaimed as the next Chaplin in his day, but crashed and burned through a combination of factors. He’s kind of a marmite performer, an acid test for your appreciation of silent comedy. Those who ‘get’ him revere him. Among them were Chaplin, Keaton and Stan Laurel. That must count for something.
9. LLOYD HAMILTON
You might recognise the photo above from our header image. Lloyd Hamilton (on the left) is another comedian’s comedian, a reactionary type who has a similarly ‘marmite’ appeal to Harry Langdon. Playing a curious overgrown Mama’s Boy type, he walked with a prissy waddle and treated everything with disdain. A typical Hamilton film has little story, but is simply a string of disasters to showcase his fine reactionary comedy. However, he’s hamstrung (pardon the pun) by the lack of most of his best films, and the fractured and scattered nature of what remains. But, as Mack Sennett said, “[Lloyd Hamilton] had comic motion. He’d do nothing but walk across the screen and make you laugh.”
10. CHARLEY CHASE
I simply adore Charley Chase. Debonair, charming and a multi-talented gagman, director and story-constructionist, he had a knack for creating beautiful little farce comedies that escalate to heights of absurdity yet remain completely believable throughout. For example, ‘MIGHTY LIKE A MOOSE’, in which he and his wife have plastic surgery without telling each other, meet on the street, and then embark on an affair. It’s a totally ridiculous story, yet made believable and human by the warmth and skill of Chase and his team. Chase continued doing some great, charming work in the talkies, making short films at Hal Roach studios that need to be seen more widely.
11. WALTER FORDE
Walter Forde was once billed as ‘Britain’s only comedian!”. That’s rather stretching it, but he was the only comedian making film comedy shorts and features in Britain for most of the silent era. Forde’s work in this area continues to be undervalued, but is slowly being re-evaluated. He played a likeable chap, “two parts Chaplin, three parts Harold Lloyd,” as one reviewer put it, and directed his films himself. A shy man, he gave up performing in 1930, and instead became a renowned director of both comedies and dramas.
12. WILL HAY
Taking Walter Forde’s place as premier comic of British films in the sound era was Will Hay. Hay’s music hall character was an incompetent ignorant schoolmaster who was barely a step ahead of his pupils. This enabled him to follow a rich line of comedy, transferable in films to any position of seedy authority: ship’s captain, shyster lawyer, policeman, or stationmaster in his all-time classic ‘OH, MR PORTER!’. Hay’s films are acknowledged as classics, but as a performer he needs some more love. he’s another superb reactionary comedian, a master of pauses, sniffs and shady glances to sell material that looks feeble on paper. He’s also one who stands up very well today, as British bureaucracy and incompetence hasn’t gone anywhere in the 65 years since his passing…
13 CLARK & McCULLOUGH
We close with a wonderfully vibrant act who flourished in sound comedies. Clark and McCullough were successful on Broadway before making a great little series of sound two-reel shorts for RKO in the early 1930s. They are often considered Marx Brothers rip-offs (partly due to Bobby Clark’s painted-on glasses), yet turned out a brand of humour uniquely their own, rich in movement, dialogue, pantomime and farce.
As I leave off here for now, I’m already thinking of the other comics I haven’t included here today… Raymond Griffith, Jack Hulbert, Stanley Lupino, Snub Pollard, Thelma Todd… Rest assured, they’ll all have their place here. I hope you’ll bookmark this site and keep dropping by from time to time to share these great performers with me. Next up, some highlights from ‘SILENT LAUGHTER SATURDAY’, featuring some of the names above.
The Lost Laugh 