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Mabel Normand was one of the comedy greats of early film. In an era when women are deemed 'not funny enough' it seems film history has forgotten her contributions. Her films debuted the Keystone Cops, Charlie Chaplin's tramp and the pie in the face gag. She co-starred with both Chaplin and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in a series of shorts. She was a star in the first Keystone Comedy as well as the first feature film comedy. She was the only comedian to work with Charles Chaplin , Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Mack Sennett, D.W. Griffith, Harold Lloyd, Mary Pickford, Hal Roach, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Fred Mace, Fred Sterling and John Bunny (she and Buster Keaton never had a chance to work together but they were friends.)
Born in Staten Island, New York to Claude and Mary Normand. Normand started out as an artist model for Charles Dana Gibson (creator of the Gibson girl). Friends suggested she try out for the new medium of film and she did, working as an extra in Kalem and Biograph shorts. With Biograph's move to California she went to work for Vitagraph where she made a series of comedic shorts as 'Betty', one co-starring the first comedy film star John Bunny.
Eventually Normand returned to Biograph where she began working with Mack Sennett on comedic shorts that would eventually turn into Keystone Comedies. Normand and Sennett were lovers, close friends and close co-workers. All of Sennett's early ideas seemed to revolve around Normand. His creation of Keystone was contingent on Normand joining him; and though he would underpay her as he underpaid everyone he worked with, he insisted Normand have credit and say in the company. When Normand eventually left Keystone for Goldwyn, Sennett left soon after.
By 1912 Normand was writing her own films and by 1914 she was directing her films. By this point she was a major star, continually topping fan polls by new movie magazines. While the discovery of Charlie Chaplin varies from telling to telling, everyone involved agreed Sennett would not have hired (or kept him on) had it not been for Normand. Chaplin's second short for the company was Normand's "Mabel's Strange Predicament" which she starred and directed in. This was the first film Chaplin created his iconic tramp character for.
Chaplin and Normand had a comedic chemistry and would go on to team in a series of shorts until Chaplin left Keystone in 1915. As Chaplin's star rose many fan magazines began to call Normand a 'female Chaplin'. Normand and Chaplin had similar subtle mannerisms and the influence Normand had on Chaplin can not be understated. Before Chaplin left Keystone, they starred, alongside Marie Dressler, in "Tillie's Punctured Romance" the first full length comedy film.
With the loss of Chaplin, Normand and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle began to team together in a series of shorts (though they had acted together before). This series was also popular and the pair continued acting together until they both left Keystone for better pay.
Sennett and Normand became engaged around this time, though the engagement ended when Sennett was caught cheating on Normand. Friends report she suffered a severe head injury when Sennett's fling threw a vase at Normand's head. Those who knew Normand all believed Sennett was the love of her life; and she his. However they would never reconcile romantically. Sennett did convince Normand to create her own production company "Mabel Normand Film Company" to make her own features. The first project was "Mickey" and Sennett's handling of her business affairs resulted in the film not being released until 1918 (or having a definite version).
Normand dissolved the company and signed with Goldwyn where she went on to make comedy features. These movies would be more akin to sitcoms: they were shorter than a lot of features, but still features. Many are lost though several have turned up in the past 10 years.
Normand once again signed with Sennett to make features and this would result in her final feature films. However this would be a rocky venture. Normand's health was hit or miss (she had been diagnosed with tuberculosis when she was 10) and seemed to be worse than better. She also was drinking heavily. In 1922 her friend William Desmond Taylor was murdered. This case would become 'the case of the century' and became a media circus, it is still unsolved. Though Normand was cleared (she had been seen leaving his house with him waving goodbye to her; she was likely the last person to see him alive), the association left an unwelcome tarnish on her soon after the scandalous death of her friend Olive Thomas, and the unfair trial of Roscoe Arbuckle.
Normand continued working, making The Extra Girl. Soon after its release in 1923 she was again near another crime (a butler was shot at a party she attended; though he survived.) Soon after Normand took a break from film.
By 1926 Normand was ready for a comeback. She signed with Hal Roach to make comedy shorts. These were well received and by 1928 she had signed with the William Morris Agency to make talkies. However she did not realize how sick she was and her health soon interrupted these plans.
Over the years Normand's tuberculosis has turned into rumors of a drug addiction. This started during the Taylor scandal when it was claimed that maybe he had been killed for interrupting a drug ring, and maybe Normand was part of it. While not prominent during her life it has become more commonly believed as time has passed despite no evidence. Normand's family, estate and personal nurse were all adamant she had never used any drugs. Sadly this rumor has become common place in Hollywood lore.
Normand's drinking increased as did her partying. During one party she decided to marry longtime friend Lew Cody at 2am. She instantly regretted the marriage and they continued living separately. As Normand's health decreased and she was committed to a sanitarium (akin to a hospital/hospice in modern terms) by 1929. She died in 1930 from tuberculosis.- Born on her father's farm in Green Ridge, Missouri, the youngest of five children. Moved with her family to Springfield, Missouri, where she grew up. Joined the Diemer Theatre Company during her second year of high school, and went on the road with a touring stock company at age 18, in 1907. Signed by the Powers Film Co. in New York in 1910, and proceeded to work thereafter for many companies in starring roles. In 1914, she starred in Pathe's The Perils of Pauline, the fifth serial chapter play ever made. She became an international star therein and was the leading heroine of serial films for the next several years. Following an unsuccessful attempt to achieve the same success in feature films, and with her health deteriorating, she retired in 1923, living in France until her death in 1938.
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A mining engineer's daughter, blond, blue-eyed Betty Compson began in show business playing the violin in a Salt Lake City vaudeville establishment for $15 a week. Following that, she went on tour, accompanied by her mother, with an act called 'The Vagabond Violinist'. Aged eighteen, she appeared on the Alexander Pantages Theatre Circuit, again doing her violin solo vaudeville routine, and was spotted there by comedy producer Al Christie. Christie quickly changed her stage name from Eleanor to Betty. For the next few years, she turned out a steady stream of one-reel and two-reel slapstick comedies, frequently paired with Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle.
In 1919, Betty was signed by writer-director George Loane Tucker to co-star opposite Lon Chaney as Rose in The Miracle Man (1919). The film was a huge critical and financial success and established Betty Compson as a major star at Paramount (under contract from 1921 to 1925). One of the more highly paid performers of the silent screen, her weekly earnings exceeded $5000 a week at the peak of her career. She came to own a fleet of luxury limousines and was able to move from a bungalow in the hills overlooking Hollywood to an expensive mansion on Hollywood Boulevard. From 1921, Betty also owned her own production company. She went on to make several films in England between 1923 and 1924 for the director Graham Cutts.
During the late 1920's, Betty appeared in a variety of dramatic and comedic roles. She received good reviews acting opposite George Bancroft as a waterfront prostitute in The Docks of New York (1928), and was even nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of a carnival girl in The Barker (1928). She gave a touching performance in The Great Gabbo (1929), directed by her then husband James Cruze, as the assistant of a demented ventriloquist (Erich von Stroheim), with whom she is unhappily in love. That same year, she appeared in RKO's first sound film, Street Girl (1929), and was briefly under contract to that studio, cast in so-called 'women's pictures' such as The Lady Refuses (1931) and Three Who Loved (1931).
The stature of her roles began to diminish from the mid 1930s, though she continued to act in character parts until 1948.
Betty's personal fortunes also declined. This came about primarily as a result of her marital contract to the alcoholic Cruze, whom she had divorced in 1929. For several years, Cruze had failed to pay his income tax and Betty (linked financially to Cruze) ended up being sued by the federal government to the tune of $150,000. This forced her to sell her Hollywood villa, her cars and her antiques.
In later years, Betty Compson developed her own cosmetics label and ran a business in California producing personalized ashtrays for the hospitality industry.- Alice Lake was born on 12 September 1895 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Hole in the Wall (1921), I Am the Law (1922) and Come Through (1917). She was married to Robert Williams. She died on 15 November 1967 in Hollywood, California, USA.
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Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the toothbrush mustache, bowler hat, bamboo cane, and a funny walk.
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in Walworth, London, England on April 16, 1889, to Hannah Harriet Pedlingham (Hill) and Charles Chaplin, both music hall performers, who were married on June 22, 1885. After Charles Sr. separated from Hannah to perform in New York City, Hannah then tried to resurrect her stage career. Unfortunately, her singing voice had a tendency to break at unexpected moments. When this happened, the stage manager spotted young Charlie standing in the wings and led him on stage, where five-year-old Charlie began to sing a popular tune. Charlie and his half-brother, Syd Chaplin spent their lives in and out of charity homes and workhouses between their mother's bouts of insanity. Hannah was committed to Cane Hill Asylum in May 1903 and lived there until 1921, when Chaplin moved her to California.
Chaplin began his official acting career at the age of eight, touring with the Eight Lancashire Lads. At age 18, he began touring with Fred Karno's vaudeville troupe, joining them on the troupe's 1910 United States tour. He traveled west to California in December 1913 and signed on with Keystone Studios' popular comedy director Mack Sennett, who had seen Chaplin perform on stage in New York. Charlie soon wrote his brother Syd, asking him to become his manager. While at Keystone, Chaplin appeared in and directed 35 films, starring as the Little Tramp in nearly all.
In November 1914, he left Keystone and signed on at Essanay, where he made 15 films. In 1916, he signed on at Mutual and made 12 films. In June 1917, Chaplin signed up with First National Studios, after which he built Chaplin Studios. In 1919, he and Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists (UA).
Chaplin's life and career was full of scandal and controversy. His first big scandal was during World War I, at which time his loyalty to England, his home country, was questioned. He had never applied for American citizenship, but claimed that he was a "paying visitor" to the United States. Many British citizens called Chaplin a coward and a slacker. This and other career eccentricities sparked suspicion with FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), who believed that he was injecting Communist propaganda into his films. Chaplin's later film The Great Dictator (1940), which was his first "talkie", also created a stir. In the film, Chaplin plays a humorous caricature of Adolf Hitler. Some thought the film was poorly done and in bad taste. However, the film grossed over $5 million and earned five Academy Award Nominations.
Another scandal occurred when Chaplin briefly dated 22 year-old Joan Barry. However, Chaplin's relationship with Barry came to an end in 1942, after a series of harassing actions from her. In May 1943, Barry returned to inform Chaplin that she was pregnant and filed a paternity suit, claiming that the unborn child was his. During the 1944 trial, blood tests proved that Chaplin was not the father, but at the time, blood tests were inadmissible evidence, and he was ordered to pay $75 a week until the child turned 21.
Chaplin also was scrutinized for his support in aiding the Russian struggle against the invading Nazis during World War II, and the United States government questioned his moral and political views, suspecting him of having Communist ties. For this reason, HUAC subpoenaed him in 1947. However, HUAC finally decided that it was no longer necessary for him to appear for testimony. Conversely, when Chaplin and his family traveled to London for the premier of Limelight (1952), he was denied re-entry to the United States. In reality, the government had almost no evidence to prove that he was a threat to national security. Instead, he and his wife decided to settle in Switzerland.
Chaplin was married four times and had a total of 11 children. In 1918, he married Mildred Harris and they had a son together, Norman Spencer Chaplin, who lived only three days. Chaplin and Harris divorced in 1920. He married Lita Grey in 1924, who had two sons, Charles Chaplin Jr. and Sydney Chaplin. They were divorced in 1927. In 1936, Chaplin married Paulette Goddard, and his final marriage was to Oona O'Neill (Oona Chaplin), daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1943. Oona gave birth to eight children: Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Chaplin, Josephine Chaplin, Victoria Chaplin, Eugene Chaplin, Jane Chaplin, Annette-Emilie Chaplin, and Christopher Chaplin.
In contrast to many of his boisterous characters, Chaplin was a quiet man who kept to himself a great deal. He also had an "un-millionaire" way of living. Even after he had accumulated millions, he continued to live in shabby accommodations. In 1921, Chaplin was decorated by the French government for his outstanding work as a filmmaker and was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. In 1972, he was honored with an Academy Award for his "incalculable effect in making motion pictures the art form of the century". He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1975 New Year's Honours List. No formal reason for the honour was listed. The citation simply reads "Charles Spencer Chaplin, Film Actor and Producer".
Chaplin's other works included musical scores that he composed for many of his films. He also authored two autobiographical books, "My Autobiography" (1964) and its companion volume, "My Life in Pictures" (1974).
Chaplin died at age 88 of natural causes on December 25, 1977 at his home in Vevey, Switzerland. His funeral was a small and private Anglican ceremony according to his wishes. In 1978, Chaplin's corpse was stolen from its grave and was not recovered for three months; he was re-buried in a vault surrounded by cement.
Six of Chaplin's films have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress: The Immigrant (1917), The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940).
Charlie Chaplin is considered one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of American cinema, whose movies were and still are popular throughout the world and have even gained notoriety as time progresses. His films show, through the Little Tramp's positive outlook on life in a world full of chaos, that the human spirit has and always will remain the same.- Actor
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Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895 in Piqua, Kansas, to Joe Keaton and Myra Keaton. Joe and Myra were Vaudevillian comedians with a popular, ever-changing variety act, giving Keaton an eclectic and interesting upbringing. In the earliest days on stage, they traveled with a medicine show that included family friend, illusionist Harry Houdini. Keaton himself verified the origin of his nickname "Buster", given to him by Houdini, when at the age of three, fell down a flight of stairs and was picked up and dusted off by Houdini, who said to Keaton's father Joe, also nearby, that the fall was 'a buster'. Savvy showman Joe Keaton liked the nickname, which has stuck for more than 100 years.
At the age of four, Keaton had already begun acting with his parents on the stage. Their act soon gained the reputation as one of the roughest in the country, for their wild, physical antics on stage. It was normal for Joe to throw Buster around the stage, participate in elaborate, dangerous stunts to the reverie of audiences. After several years on the Vaudeville circuit, "The Three Keatons", toured until Keaton had to break up the act due to his father's increasing alcohol dependence, making him a show business veteran by the age of 21.
While in New York looking for work, a chance run-in with the wildly successful film star and director Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, resulted in Arbuckle inviting him to be in his upcoming short The Butcher Boy (1917), an appearance that launched Keaton's film career, and spawned a friendship that lasted until Arbuckle's sudden death in 1933. By 1920, after making several successful shorts together, Arbuckle moved on to features, and Keaton inherited his studio, allowing him the opportunity to begin producing his own films. By September 1921, tragedy touched Arbuckle's life by way of a scandal, where he was tried three times for the murder of Virginia Rapp. Although he was not guilty of the charges, and never convicted, he was unable to regain his status, and the viewing public would no longer tolerate his presence in film. Keaton stood by his friend and mentor through out the incident, supporting him financially, finding him directorial work, even risking his own budding reputation offering to testify on Arbuckle's behalf.
In 1921, Keaton also married his first wife, Natalie Talmadge under unusual circumstance that have never been fully clarified. Popular conjecture states that he was encouraged by Joseph M. Schenck to marry into the powerful Talmadge dynasty, that he himself was already a part of. The union bore Keaton two sons. Keaton's independent shorts soon became too limiting for the growing star, and after a string of popular films like One Week (1920), The Boat (1921) and Cops (1922), Keaton made the transition into feature films. His first feature, Three Ages (1923), was produced similarly to his short films, and was the dawning of a new era in comedic cinema, where it became apparent to Keaton that he had to put more focus on the story lines and characterization.
At the height of his popularity, he was making two features a year, and followed Ages with Our Hospitality (1923), The Navigator (1924) and The General (1926), the latter two he regarded as his best films. The most renowned of Keaton's comedies is Sherlock Jr. (1924), which used cutting edge special effects that received mixed reviews as critics and audiences alike had never seen anything like it, and did not know what to make of it. Modern day film scholars liken the story and effects to Christopher Nolan Inception (2010), for its high level concept and ground-breaking execution. Keaton's Civil War epic The General (1926) kept up his momentum when he gave audiences the biggest and most expensive sequence ever seen in film at the time. At its climax, a bridge collapses while a train is passing over it, sending the train into a river. This wowed audiences, but did little for its long-term financial success. Audiences did not respond well to the film, disliking the higher level of drama over comedy, and the main character being a Confederate soldier.
After a few more silent features, including College (1927) and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), Keaton was informed that his contract had been sold to MGM, by brother-in-law and producer Joseph M. Schenck. Keaton regarded the incident as the worst professional mistake he ever made, as it sent his career, legacy, and personal life into a vicious downward spiral for many years. His first film with MGM was The Cameraman (1928), which is regarded as one of his best silent comedies, but the release signified the loss of control Keaton would incur, never again regaining his film -making independence. He made one more silent film at MGM entitled Spite Marriage (1929) before the sound era arrived.
His first appearance in a film with sound was with the ensemble piece The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929), though despite the popularity of it and his previous MGM silents, MGM never allowed Keaton his own production unit, and increasingly reduced his creative control over his films. By 1932, his marriage to Natalie Talmadge had dissolved when she sued him for divorce, and in an effort to placate her, put up little resistance. This resulted in the loss of the home he had built for his family nicknamed "The Italian Villa", the bulk of his assets, and contact with his children. Natalie changed their last names from Keaton to Talmadge, and they were disallowed from speaking about their father or seeing him. About 10 years later, when they became of age, they rekindled the relationship with Keaton. His hardships in his professional and private life that had been slowly taking their toll, begun to culminate by the early 1930s resulting in his own dependence on alcohol, and sometimes violent and erratic behavior. Depressed, penniless, and out of control, he was fired by MGM by 1933, and became a full-fledged alcoholic.
After spending time in hospitals to attempt and treat his alcoholism, he met second wife Mae Scrivens, a nurse, and married her hastily in Mexico, only to end in divorce by 1935. After his firing, he made several low-budget shorts for Educational Pictures, and spent the next several years of his life fading out of public favor, and finding work where he could. His career was slightly reinvigorated when he produced the short Grand Slam Opera (1936), which many of his fans admire for giving such a good performance during the most difficult and unmanageable years of his life.
In 1940, he met and married his third wife Eleanor Norris, who was deeply devoted to him, and remained his constant companion and partner until Keaton's death. After several more years of hardship working as an uncredited, underpaid gag man for comedians such as the Marx Brothers, he was consulted on how to do a realistic and comedic fall for In the Good Old Summertime (1949) in which an expensive violin is destroyed. Finding no one who could do this better than him, he was given a minor role in the film. His presence reignited interest in his silent films, which lead to interviews, television appearances, film roles, and world tours that kept him busy for the rest of his life.
After several more film, television, and stage appearances through the 1960s, he wrote the autobiography "My Wonderful World of Slapstick", having completed nearly 150 films in the span of his ground-breaking career. His last film appearance was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) which premiered seven months after Keaton's death from the rapid onset of lung cancer. Since his death, Keaton's legacy is being discovered by new generations of viewers every day, many of his films are available on YouTube, DVD and Blu-ray, where he, like all gold-gilded and beloved entertainers can live forever.- Actor
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Although all too frequently neglected by fans of silent comedy, Max Linder is in many ways as important a figure as Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, not least because he predated (and influenced) them all by several years and was largely responsible for the creation of the classic style of silent slapstick comedy.
Linder started out as an actor in the French theatre, but after making his screen debut in 1905 he quickly became an enormously famous and successful film comedian on both sides of the Atlantic, thanks to his character "Max," a top-hatted dandy. By 1912 he was the highest-paid film star in the world, with an unprecedented salary of one million francs. He began to direct films in 1911 and showed equal facility behind the camera, but his career suffered an almost terminal blow when he was drafted into the French army to fight in World War I. He was gassed, and the illness that resulted would blight his career. Although offered a contract in America, recurring ill health meant that his US films had little of the sparkle of his early French work, and a brief attempt to revive his career by making films for the recently-formed United Artists (one of whose founders, of course, was Chaplin) in the early 1920s came to little, although these later films are now regarded as classics. He returned to France and killed himself in a suicide pact with his wife in 1925.- Actor
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Starting his show-business career as a singer and acrobat in French music halls, Deed got in almost at the ground floor of the French film industry, making his debut in 1905. It didn't take him long to become one of France's first major comic film stars, and he soon became internationally famous. Unfortunately, his popularity started to wane by 1915, and his screen appearances became less frequent; he made his last film in 1928. Sadly, he died ten years later, broke and forgotten by the industry that he helped to launch.Cretinetti and Boireau- Actor
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Born in France in 1872, Charles Prince Seigneur had been a stage comedian for years when he made his first films at Charles Pathé's studio in 1909. He quickly became the one film comedian of the time who could compete with Max Linder in terms of popularity, known as Rigadin in France, Moritz in Germany, Whiffles in England, and Tartufini in Italy. However, whereas Linder remains a relatively well-known name among silent film enthusiasts, Prince appears to have been forgotten since his popularity faded after the first world war. Swedish film historian Rune Walderkrantz pointed out that Prince used less refined methods than Linder, being more of a clown in the traditional manner. Prince kept on performing until his death in 1933, however, appearing mostly in bit parts on film.Rigadin- When John Bunny died the New York Times stated, "The name John Bunny will always be linked to the movies." Little did movie fans of 1915 realize that he would be completely forgotten the next year and completely omitted from many books on silent movies 70-80 years later.
Bunny was the ninth in a line of English sea captains and would be the first not to follow in that profession. He attended St. James High School in Brooklyn and worked as a grocery clerk before running away in the late 1800s to discover the world of entertainment and appear in a small touring minstrel show. He became involved in theater and appeared in musical comedies such as "Old Dutch" with Hattie Williams and Lew Fields. He also worked as a stage manager for various stock companies. Bunny's rebellious nature took over again and he quit the theater to become involved in the "flickers". This was a very bold step. Not only was it a major step down for a "legitimate" stage actor to go into the movies at that time, but Bunny took a pay cut from $150 to $40 a week to work for Vitagraph in 1910. He made more than 250 shorts for Vitagraph over five years and become the best known face in the world.
Bunny always said that he did not aim to be a comedian, but with his short, gnome-like appearance and a weight approaching the 300-pound mark, he wound up taking advantage of these features to play comedy (he once asked rhetorically, "How could I play Romeo with a figure like mine?"). Bunny's co-star for the majority of his films was Flora Finch, who contrasted with Bunny's figure by being tall and thin. They usually appeared as Mr. & Mrs. Bunny. Their shorts were referred to as "Bunnygraphs" and "Bunnyfinches". They stayed away from physical comedy and dealt with relationships, usually the man getting away with something that his wife disagrees with.
Bunny even traveled to England to make a version of Charles Dickens' "Pickwick Papers". He decided to go back on the road with "John Bunny in Funnyland", but it was not a success. Not only did the show fail, but he was tired and ill. He talked to Vitagraph about restarting his film career, but it was too late. The man who led an adventurous life--he raced horses and flew airplanes--died at his home at 1416 Glenwood Road in Brooklyn of Bright's Disease in 1915. His funeral was held at the Elks Club House on West 43rd St. After just five years in the business, Bunny was gone and forgotten. The news of his death was heard around the world. He was so popular in Russia they created a series with an impersonator using the name "Poxon" after Bunny died. Bunny had two children, George (dec. 1958) and John (dec. 1971) Sadly, only a handful of Bunny's films survive. The one most available is the popular A Cure for Pokeritis (1912). - Actor
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Iowa-born Chester Conklin was raised in a coal-mining area by a devoutly religious father who hoped that his son would go into the ministry. However, Chester got the performing bug one day when he gave a recitation at a community singing festival and won first prize. Knowing his father would never approve of his desire to become a comedian, he left home. One night in St. Louis he caught a vaudeville act by the famous team of Joe Weber and Lew Fields, who were doing what was called at the time a "Dutch" act. Conklin thought that he could do that act himself, and better, so he decided to develop a character patterned after his boss at the time, a German baker named Schultz. Schultz had a thick accent and a very bushy "walrus"-type mustache, which Conklin appropriated for his new character. He managed to break into vaudeville with this act and spent several years on tour with various stock companies. Eventually he secured a job as a clown with a traveling circus. After seeing several of Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops shorts in theaters, Conklin went to the Sennett studio and applied for a job there. Sennett hired him as a Keystone Kop (at $3 a day). He stayed with Sennett for six years, and became famous for his pairing with burly comic Mack Swain in a series of "Ambrose and Walrus" shorts and appeared in several of Charles Chaplin's shorts for the studio (Chaplin adapted Conklin's "walrus" mustache as part of the costume for his "Little Tramp" character). Conklin was approached by Fox Films to do a series of comedy shorts, and when Sennett refused to match the offer Fox made, Conklin left Sennett and signed with Fox. He stayed with Fox for several years, then freelanced for several independent producers in a series of comedy shorts. Conklin worked steadily into the sound era, and retired from the screen in 1966. His last movie was the well-received Western comedy A Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966), in which his character was named "Chester."- Actor
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Roscoe Arbuckle, the youngest of nine children, reportedly weighed 16 pounds at birth in Smith Center, Kansas on March 24, 1887. His family moved to California when he was one year old. At age 8 he first appeared on the stage. His first part was with the Webster-Brown stock company. From then until 1913, Roscoe was on the stage, performing as an acrobat, a clown, and a singer. His first real professional engagement was in 1904, singing illustrated songs for Sid Grauman at the Unique Theater in San Jose, California at $17.50 a week. He later worked in the Morosco Burbank stock company and traveled through China and Japan with Ferris Hartman. His last appearance on the stage was with Hartman in Yokahama, Japan in 1913, where he played the Mikado.
Back in Hollywood, Arbuckle went to work at Mack Sennett's Keystone film studio at $40 a week. For the next 3-1/2 years he never starred or even featured, but appeared in hundreds of one-reel comedies. He would play mostly policemen, usually with the Keystone Kops, but he also played different parts. He would work with Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling, Charles Chaplin, among others, and would learn about the process of making movies from Henry Lehrman, who directed all but two of his pictures. Roscoe was a gentle and genteel man off screen and always believed that Sennett never thought that he was funny.
Roscoe never used his weight to get a laugh. He would never be found stuck in a chair or doorway. He was remarkably agile for his size and used that agility to find humor in situations. By 1914 he had begun to direct some of his one-reels. The next year he moved up to two-reels, which meant that he would need to sustain the comedy to be successful; as it turned out, he was. Among his films were Fatty Again (1914), Mabel, Fatty and the Law (1915), Mabel and Fatty's Wash Day (1915), Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World's Fair at San Francisco (1915), Fatty's Reckless Fling (1915), and many more. For "Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World's Fair at San Francisco", Keystone took the actors to the real World's Fair to use as background; the studio's cost was negligible, while the San Francisco backgrounds made the picture look expensive.
By 1917 Roscoe formed a partnership with Joseph M. Schenck, a powerful producer who was also the husband of Norma Talmadge. The company they formed was called Comique and the films that Roscoe made were released through Famous Players on a percentage basis, and soon Arbuckle was making over $1,000 a week. With his own company Roscoe had complete creative control over his productions. He also hired a young performer he met in New York by the name of Buster Keaton. Keaton's film career would start with Roscoe in The Butcher Boy (1917). Roscoe wrote his own stories first, tried them out and then devised funny twists to generate the laughs. His comedy star was second only to Charles Chaplin. With the success of Comique, Paramount asked Roscoe to move from two-reel shorts to full-length features in 1919. Roscoe's first feature was The Round-up (1920) and it was successful. It was soon followed by other features, including Brewster's Millions (1921) and Gasoline Gus (1921).
Ufortunately, tragedy struck on Labor Day on September 5, 1921 with the arrest and trial of Roscoe Arbuckle on manslaughter charges. Roscoe with friends Lowell Sherman and Fred Fishback drove to San Francisco where they checked into the St Francis Hotel threw a party and which was crashed by a "starlet" named Virginia Rappe, who fell seriously ill and died three days later from a ruptured bladder. Rappe had accused Arbuckle of raping her prior to passing away, but Rappe had a history of accusing men of rape. The newspapers, led by William Randolph Hearst, used this incident to generate Hollywood's first major scandal. Roscoe was tried not once but three times for the criminal charges; the trials began in November 1921 and lasted until April 1922; the first two ended with hung juries (the mistrial decision in the second trial was reached on February 3, 1922, the day after Arbuckle's friend and fellow Paramount director William Desmond Taylor was found murdered, and Arbuckle was visibly affected by the news). At his third and final trial in April of 1922, the jury not only returned a "not guilty" verdict but excoriated the prosecution for pursuing a flimsy case with no evidence of Arbuckle having committed any crime; it was at this final trial that the jury went further, writing a personal letter of sympathy and apology to Arbuckle for putting him through this ordeal. He kept it as a treasured memento for the rest of his life.
However, Arbuckle's acquittal marked the end of his comedic acting career. Unable to return to the screen, he later found work as a comedy director for Al St. John, Buster Keaton and others under the pseudonym "William Goodrich" (he was inspired to use this pseudonym by Keaton, who suggested Arbuckle use the name "Will B. Good"). In 1932 producer Samuel Sax signed Roscoe to appear in his very first sound comic short films for Warner Brothers, starting with Hey, Pop! (1932). He completed six shorts and showed the magic and youthful spirit that he had a decade before. With the success of the shorts, Warner Brothers signed Roscoe to a feature film contract, but he died in his sleep on June 29, 1933 , at age 46, the night after he signed the contract.- Actor
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While Charley Chase is far from being as famous as "The Big Three" (Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd) today, he's highly respected as one of the "greats" by fans of silent comedy.
Chase (real name Charles Parrott) was born in Maryland, USA, in 1893. After a brief career in vaudeville, burlesque, and musical comedy he appeared with Al Christie at Universal Studios as a comedian in 1913 before moving to the Mack Sennett Studios the following year. His career in films did not start off with remarkable success. He played bit parts in a large number of short comedies, coming to notice in 'The Knockout' with Charlie Chaplin, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Edgar Kennedy and The Keystone Cops. This was followed by appearing in a number of films written and directed by Chaplin. At the end of 1914 he was one of the stars in the spectacular Tillie's Punctured Romance featuring all the stars on the lot, and which took 14 weeks to shoot. He spent another year with Sennett starring in his own shorts, one of his first being Settled at the Seaside co starring Mae Busch. In 1915he started directing films using his real name and switching to his stage name when starring. He moved to Fox Studios in 1916 where he directed, wrote and starred in comedies some of which featured Chester Conklin. After a couple of further studio moves he rejoined Sennett then went to Paramount before arriving at Hal Roach Studios in 1920 as a director, before Roach realized what a gifted performer he had hired. "I can play anything!" Chase told Roach, and eventually his claim was confirmed. Although Mack Sennett's Keystone studio has earned legendary status as the ultimate factory of comic invention, it can hardly be denied that Roach developed a more refined style of comedy which obviously fitted Chase better (indeed, Sennett's unsophisticated product increasingly lost favor with the movie-going public by the early 1920s, while Roach's studio flourished). During five years, 1924-29, he starred in nearly a hundred two-reelers, most of which were directed by Leo McCarey.
Chase usually portrayed an apparently gentle and charming man who in reality, it eventually turned out, was quite a loser after all. His character was largely inspired by Lloyd Hamilton, another neglected comedian whom Chase had directed in several two-reelers. Among Charley's most memorable shorts are Innocent Husbands, Mighty Like a Moose, and Movie Night.
From the beginning, Charley Chase was a "critics' darling," but none of his movies were remarkably successful at the box office. There is no official "explanation" to this, but one reason may be that Chase, in contrast to the more popular clowns, never starred in any feature during the silent period. On a personal level, Chase was severely hobbled by alcoholism, which is unapparent in his films.
Chase made several promising appearances after the talkies arrived, in 1929-30, especially in Laurel and Hardy's highly acclaimed feature Sons of the Desert (1933). Despite this, he was never offered any further appearances in features. But he continued to perform in shorts and did also direct some of the Three Stooges' early movies. He died in 1940, not yet 47 years of age, of a heart attack. It is reasonable to believe that his early death was to a large extent caused by his addiction to alcohol, a problem which had troubled his family for several years. His brother James, also an actor, had died the year before. The two brothers had been close throughout their lives, although their personal problems frequently affected each other (or perhaps that was the reason for their being so close.) Chase was married to Bebe Eltinge from 1914, a marriage that lasted until his death and produced two daughters, Polly and June.
Chase's silent work was celebrated on DVD in two volumes from Kino Video. At long last his comic genius is being recognized.- Actor
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Born in Burchard, Nebraska, USA to Elizabeth Fraser and J. Darcie 'Foxy' Lloyd who fought constantly and soon divorced (at the time a rare event), Harold Clayton Lloyd was nominally educated in Denver and San Diego high schools and received his stage training at the School of Dramatic Art (San Diego). Lloyd grew up far more attached to his footloose, chronically unemployed father than his overbearing mother.
He made his stage debut at age 12 as "Little Abe" in "Tess of d'Ubervilles" with the Burwood Stock company of Omaha. Harold and his father moved to California as a result of a fortuitous accident settlement in 1913. Foxy bought a pool hall (that soon failed) while Harold attended high school. The pair were soon broke when his father suggested he try out for a job on a movie being shot at San Diego's Pan American Exposition by the Edison Company. On the set he first met Hal Roach who would be the most influential person in his professional life. Roach (admittedly a poor actor) told Lloyd that someday he'd be a movie producer and he'd make him his star.
Soon afterward, Roach inherited enough money to begin a small production company (Phun Philms, quickly renamed Rolin, with a partner who he soon bought out) and contacted Lloyd to star in the kinds of films he wanted to make: comedies. On the basis of a handful of self-produced shorts starring Lloyd, he managed to land a production contract with the U.S. branch of the French firm, Pathe, who literally paid Roach by the exposed foot of film on what films were accepted. Things were touch and go in the beginning, with improvised scenarios, outdoor shoots meaning Pathe rejected several of their first efforts, resulting in missed paydays. During his first contract with Roach he appeared in "Will E. Work" and then "Lonesome Luke" comedies, essentially cheap variations of Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp character. He abandoned the character in disgust in late 1917, adopting his "glasses" persona, an average young man capable of conquering any obstacle thrown at him. He began cementing his new image with Over the Fence (1917), that ushered in a prolific number of shorts through late 1921, often releasing 3 per month. In his "glasses" personification, Lloyd's popularity grew exponentially with each new release, but Lloyd rapidly grew dissatisfied with his relationship with his producer. Roach and Lloyd fought constantly; it's not so much that he didn't want to work for Roach, he didn't want to work for anyone - a trait he himself recognized from early on. To be fair, Roach was increasingly preoccupied with other stars (The "Our Gang" series was launched to huge success in 1922 and he also produced ''Snub Pollard" shorts, among others) and although he would always resent Lloyd's attitude and ultimate defection to Paramount, the loss of his major star wouldn't financially cripple him. Lloyd had his own quirks; he fell in love with his first co-star Bebe Daniels, who left him after it became apparent he was unable to make a commitment (however the two would remain lifelong friends). Lloyd, in his own way was decidedly complex: he could be professionally generous (often allowing debatably deserving directorial credit to members of his crew) while being notoriously cheap. Yet he practiced little financial self control in anything that concerned himself. Wildly superstitious, he engaged in strict rituals about dressing himself, leaving through the same doors as he entered, and expected his chauffeurs to know which streets were unlucky to traverse. As his finances improved with age he happily indulged himself with a myriad of hobbies that would include breeding Great Danes, amassing cars, bowling, photography, womanizing, and high-fidelity stereo systems. He was open minded about homosexuals while being practically Victorian in his ideas about raising his daughters. He had an enormous libido and rumors abounded about illegitimate children and according to Roach, chronic bouts with VD. Most traumatically, he suffered the loss of his right thumb and forefinger in an accidental prop bomb explosion on August 14, 1919, just as his career was starting to take off. Lloyd would go to great lengths to hide his disability, spending thousands on flesh-colored prosthetic gloves and hiding his right hand whenever knowingly photographed, even long after his career ended. Upon his recovery he completed work on Haunted Spooks (1920) and successfully renegotiated his contract with Pathe, which began a career ascent that would rival Chaplin's (indeed, Lloyd was more successful, considering grosses on total output as Chaplin's output soon dwindled by comparison). Lloyd began feature film production with the 4-reel A Sailor-Made Man (1921). It began as a 2-reel short but contained, in his words, "so much good stuff we were loathe to take any of it out." It became a huge hit and continued to release hit features with ever increasing grosses but split with Hal Roach (who retained lucrative re-issue rights to his earlier films) after completing The Freshman (1925), one of his finest films. Pathe's U.S. operations quickly unraveled after their U.S. representative, Paul Brunet returned to France, and Lloyd made a decisive move (Roach himself would also leave Pathe, opting for a distribution deal with MGM - Mack Sennett, also distributed by Pathe, would be financially ruined). After weighing various attractive offers, Lloyd signed an advantageous contract with Paramount and racked up another hit with For Heaven's Sake (1926), one of his weakest silent features, yet it grossed an incredible $2.591 million, nearly equaling "The Freshman" and astonishing even himself.
Lloyd could do no wrong throughout the 1920s, he consistently earned at or near $1.5 million per film with his Paramount contract, and seemed invincible. He married his second co-star Mildred Davis on February 10, 1923 and she retired from acting (replaced by Jobyna Ralston). He built a huge 32-room mansion he christened, "Greenacres" that took over 3 years to complete and the couple eventually had 3 children. His final silent film, Speedy (1928), shot on location in New York, was one of the few major hits of the sound transition period and remains (as do most of Lloyd's films) thoroughly enjoyable today. The advent of sound proved problematic for the comedian. His films were gag-driven and his writing team was wholly unaccustomed to converting their type of comedy into dialog. While his first sound effort (began as a silent), Welcome Danger (1929) grossed nearly $3 million, by any standard it's a bad film, and marked a serious decline in Lloyd's screen persona; he became a talking comedian. Ironically, as bad as the film is, it would prove to be the last solid hit of his career. His next talkie, Feet First (1930), included a climb reminiscent (but technically superior to that) of his hit Safety Last! (1923), only being in sound, it contained every grunt and groan and proved painful to watch. With a gross of less that $1 million, Lloyd would see slightly over $300,000, his smallest feature paycheck to date, and it became clear he was in trouble. Lloyd fought back with Movie Crazy (1932). Generally regarded as his finest talkie, it grossed even less than "Feet First." Lloyd left Paramount for Fox and suffered his first outright flop with his next feature, The Cat's-Paw (1934), which grossed $693,000 against a negative cost of $617,000 ---resulting in red ink on a net basis. The miracle Harold Lloyd needed to salvage his career would never happen, but he refused to go down without a fight. Amazingly, the public was oblivious to his decline, and he was widely considered as one of the few silent comedy stars to have made a successful transition through the first decade of sound. But to those within the industry, the numbers didn't add up. Back at Paramount on a 2-movie deal, Lloyd starred in The Milky Way (1936), a better-than-average comedy that pulled a world-wide gross of $1.179 million, but it had production budget exceeding $1 million, resulting in a $250,000 loss for the studio. Paramount was livid, demanding a personal guarantee from Lloyd on anything over $600,000 for his next film, Professor Beware (1938). The comedian soon discovered he couldn't complete the film within the required budget and did something unprecedented --for him at least-- he invested his own money. The final production cost was $820,275 - and it grossed a mere $796,385 - and as a result of a complex payment deal, Lloyd ended up personally losing $119,400 on its initial release (he would eventually recoup the bulk of his losses over the next 35 years). At the relatively young age of 45, Harold Lloyd's Hollywood career was effectively over. Still immensely wealthy from a conservative investment strategy, and always hyperactive, he sought out ways to occupy his time, dragging his kids on marathon movie nights all across Los Angeles and falling back on his many hobbies. Foxy, who had handled the bulk of his correspondence (almost all Lloyd's pre-1938 autographs were actually signed by Foxy) and had carefully documented his press clippings since his acting career had began, retired to Palm Springs in 1938, leaving a void in Lloyd's life. He produced two pictures for RKO, A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob (1941), and a Kay Kyser vehicle, My Favorite Spy (1942) which must have looked good on paper but went nowhere at the box office. This ended his career as a producer. He would sign a $25,000 deal with Columbia in 1943 for a comeback project that never materialized. In 1944, Lloyd was approached by director Preston Sturges who envisioned a first-rate vehicle for him entitled, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947). The production launched Sturges' new California Pictures, was financed by Howard Hughes, and initially released by United Artists. It proved to be a nightmare for everyone concerned. Its $1.7 million production cost proved to be an insurmountable obstacle preventing it from profitability and the eccentric Hughes withdrew it from circulation, later retitling it "Mad Wednesday," re-editing and re-releasing it as an RKO feature in 1951 to an even more dismal box office. Lloyd would also zealously protect ownership of his material and was quite litigious. He successfully sued MGM over their unauthorized poaching of his gags on a Joan Davis vehicle, She Gets Her Man (1945) (sadly an action that put the final nail in the professional coffin of the hopelessly alcoholic Clyde Bruckman). With his career at an end, Harold renewed his interest in photography and became involved with color film experiments. Some of the earliest 2 color Technicolor tests had been shot at Greenacres in 1929. In the late 1940s he became fascinated with color 3D still photography and often visited friends on film sets. Throughout the late 40s and well into the 1960s Lloyd indulged himself with glamor models. At his death, his collection of 3D stills numbered 250,000 (the vast majority of which are nudes). Recently his granddaughter published an elaborate book of photos carefully excised from the collection. In the late 1940s Lloyd became an active member of the Shriners (he'd joined originally in 1924) and an effective administrator for their Los Angeles crippled children's hospital. Harold is reported to be the only actor that owned most of the films he appeared in (sadly many of the earliest ones were destroyed in a nitrate fire in a vault at Greenacres in 1943). This ownership gave him the ability to withhold his films from being shown on television; Lloyd feared incorrect projection speed and commercials would damage his reputation. As a result, a generation of film fans saw very few of his films and his reputation was diminished. He did release 2 compilation films, of which the first, World of Comedy (1962) was very successful. Mildred descended into alcoholism in the 1950s and died in 1969. Lloyd occupied his time with extensive travel (he thoroughly enjoyed speaking engagements where he could interact with students on the subject of silent film) and continued his pathological passion for his hobbies through the end of his life. He became interested in high fidelity stereo systems and habitually ordered several record companies' entire annual catalogs, eventually amassing an LP collection rivaling most record stores. He enjoyed cranking music to volumes that caused the inlaid gold leaf on Greenacres' ceilings to rain down on anyone below. Conversely, he balked at modernizing anything inside the mansion, seeing improvements and redecorating as things that would survive him, and thus a complete waste of money. Lloyd was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer by his brother-in-law, Dr. John Davis (Jack Davis, who starred in early "Our Gang" shorts) and died on March 8, 1971. His son, Harold Lloyd Jr. was an alcoholic homosexual and died soon afterward. Although Lloyd left an estate valued at $12 million (in 1971 dollars), he failed to make a provision for the maintenance of Greenacres, a blunder that would seriously complicate his estate. His granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd has been largely responsible for restoring his reputation of late, working to preserve his surviving films; many have been issued on HBO Video, Thames Video. Several have been superbly restored with new musical accompaniments and are shown periodically on TCM.- Actor
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Langdon first performed when he ran away from home at the age of 12-13 to join a travelling medicine show. In 1903 he scored a lasting success in vaudeville with an act called "Johnny's New Car" which he performed for twenty years. In 1923, he signed with Principal Pictures as a series star, but transferred to the Mack Sennett Studio when Mack Sennett bought the contract. Early in his film career, he had the good fortune to work regularly with the young Frank Capra. The two developed a unique character of an innocent man-child who found himself in dramatic and hazardous circumstances with only providence and good luck making him come out on top. This character clicked with the public and Langdon enjoyed a streak of artistic and commercial successes using it with Capra's direction. Unfortunately, he began to take the praise of his talent too seriously and broke with Capra so he could hog all the glory himself with his films. This proved to be a disastrous mistake as his first film "Three's a Crowd", a sickeningly sentimental film that plainly showed that he did not even approach the talent and skill of Capra which was needed to keep his character style viable. It has been also speculated the public was getting tired of Langdon's character, which contributed to Langdon's first solo film being an artistic and commercial failure. That film was the first in a series of bombs that ruined Langdon's career and relegated him to minor films from third string companies for the rest of his life.- Actor
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Stan Laurel came from a theatrical family, his father was an actor and theatre manager, and he made his stage debut at the age of 16 at Pickard's Museum, Glasgow. He traveled with Fred Karno's vaudeville company to the United States in 1910 and again in 1913. While with that company he was Charles Chaplin's understudy, and he performed imitations of Chaplin. On a later trip he remained in the United States, having been cast in a two-reel comedy, Nuts in May (1917) (not released until 1918). There followed a number of shorts for Metro, Hal Roach Studios, then Universal, then back to Roach in 1926. His first two-reeler with Oliver Hardy was 45 Minutes from Hollywood (1926). Their first release through MGM was Sugar Daddies (1927) and the first with star billing was From Soup to Nuts (1928). Their first feature-length starring roles were in Pardon Us (1931). Their work became more production-line and less popular during the war years, especially after they left Roach and MGM for Twentieth Century-Fox. Their last movie together was The Bullfighters (1945) except for a dismal failure made in France several years later (Utopia (1950)). In 1960 he was given a special Oscar "for his creative pioneering in the field of cinema comedy". He died five years later.- Actor
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Although his parents were never in show business, as a young boy Oliver Hardy was a gifted singer and, by age eight, was performing with minstrel shows. In 1910 he ran a movie theatre, which he preferred to studying law. In 1913 he became a comedy actor with the Lubin Company in Florida and began appearing in a long series of shorts; his debut film was Outwitting Dad (1914). He appeared in he 1914-15 series of "Pokes and Jabbs" shorts, and from 1916-18 he was in the "Plump and Runt" series. From 1919-21 he was a regular in the "Jimmy Aubrey" series of shorts, and from 1921-25 he worked as an actor and co-director of comedy shorts for Larry Semon.
In addition to appearing in two-reeler comedies, he found time to make westerns and even melodramas in which he played the heavy. He is most famous, however, as the partner of British comic Stan Laurel, with whom he had played a bit part in The Lucky Dog (1921). in the mid-1920s both he and Laurel wee working for comedy producer Hal Roach, although not as a team. In a moment of inspiration Roach teamed them together, and their first film as a team was 45 Minutes from Hollywood (1926). Their first release for Roach through MGM was Sugar Daddies (1927) and the first with star billing was From Soup to Nuts (1928). They became a huge hit as a comedy team, and after several years of two-reelers, Roach decided to star them in features, their first of which was Pardon Us (1931).
They clicked with audiences in features, too, and starred in such classics as Way Out West (1937), March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934) and Block-Heads (1938). They eventually parted ways with Roach and in the mid-1940s signed on with Twentieth Century-Fox.
Unfortunately, Fox did not let them have the autonomy they had at Roach, where Laurel basically wrote and directed their films, though others were credited, and their films became more assembly-line and formulaic. Their popularity waned and less popular during the war years, and they made their last film for Fox in 1946.
Several years later they made their final appearance as a team in a French film, a troubled and haphazard production eventually, after several name changes, called Utopia (1950), generally regarded to be their worst film. Hardy appeared without Laurel in a few features, such as Zenobia (1939) with Harry Langdon, The Fighting Kentuckian (1949) in a semi-comedic role as a frontiersman alongside John Wayne and Riding High (1950), in a cameo role. He died in 1957.- Actor
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First of all, the cross-eyed comedian of silent days was not born that way. Supposedly his right eye slipped out of alignment while playing the role of the similarly afflicted Happy Hooligan in vaudeville and it never adjusted. Ironically, it was this disability that would enhance his comic value and make him a top name.
Ben Turpin was born in New Orleans in 1869, the son of a French-born confectionery store owner. When 7 years old, his father moved to New York's lower East Side. A wanderlust fellow by nature, Turpin lived the life of a hobo in his early adult years. He started up his career by chance while bumming in Chicago where he drew laughs at parties. An ad in a newspaper looking for comedy acts caught his eye and he successfully booked shows along with a partner. Going solo, he performed on the burlesque circuit as well as under circus tents and invariably entertained his audiences by doing tricks, vigorous pratfalls and, of course, crossing his eyes. One of his more familiar sight gags was a backwards tumble he called the "108." He happened upon the Happy Hooligan persona while playing on the road and kept the hapless character as part of routine for 17 years.
He started in films at age 38 in 1907, joining Essanay Studios shortly after the company began operating in Chicago. He also became their resident janitor for a spell. He stayed with the company for two years but remained on the edges of obscurity. Appearing sporadically in silent comedy shorts, he typically played dorky characters who always did something wrong. His big break came when he returned to Essanay and was introduced to Charles Chaplin, who immediately took to him and set him up with Mack Sennett. By 1917 Sennett had turned Turpin into a top comedy draw. With his trademark crossed eyes and thick mustache, he made scores of slapstick films alongside the likes of Mabel Normand and 'Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle', among others. Most notable were his films that parodied hit movies of the day such as his The Shriek of Araby (1923), in which his character lampooned Rudolph Valentino. Turpin's true forte was impersonating the most dashingly romantic and sophisticated stars of the day and turning them into clumsy oafs.
Turpin retired from full time acting in 1924 to care for his ailing wife Canadian comedy actress Carrie Turpin (nee LeMieux). After her death the following year he returned but his marquee value had slipped drastically. The advent of sound pretty much marked the end to his special brand of physical comedy. He was only glimpsed from then on, mostly in comic cameos for other top stars such as a bit as a plumber with Laurel & Hardy in Saps at Sea (1940), his last. He died of heart disease that same year.- Actor
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Ford Sterling was born on 3 November 1883 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA. He was an actor and director, known for The Trouble with Wives (1925), He Who Gets Slapped (1924) and Yankee Doodle in Berlin (1919). He was married to Teddy Sampson. He died on 13 October 1939 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
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Slapstick comedian known for his charming, white-painted face and clownish smile, mugged his way to being a very highly paid and popular actor. His career was marred by personal problems, and his fortune was lost to high spending. By the time he died, he'd already been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown and was penniless. He was 39 years old.aka Jester- Actor
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William Claude Dukenfield was the eldest of five children born to Cockney immigrant James Dukenfield and Philadelphia native Kate Felton. He went to school for four years, then quit to work with his father selling vegetables from a horse cart. At eleven, after many fights with his alcoholic father (who hit him on the head with a shovel), he ran away from home. For a while he lived in a hole in the ground, depending on stolen food and clothing. He was often beaten and spent nights in jail. His first regular job was delivering ice. By age thirteen he was a skilled pool player and juggler. It was then, at an amusement park in Norristown PA, that he was first hired as an entertainer. There he developed the technique of pretending to lose the things he was juggling. In 1893 he was employed as a juggler at Fortescue's Pier, Atlantic City. When business was slow he pretended to drown in the ocean (management thought his fake rescue would draw customers). By nineteen he was billed as "The Distinguished Comedian" and began opening bank accounts in every city he played. At age twenty-three he opened at the Palace in London and played with Sarah Bernhardt at Buckingham Palace. He starred at the Folies-Bergere (young Charles Chaplin and Maurice Chevalier were on the program).
He was in each of the Ziegfeld Follies from 1915 through 1921. He played for a year in the highly praised musical "Poppy" which opened in New York in 1923. In 1925 D.W. Griffith made a movie of the play, renamed Sally of the Sawdust (1925), starring Fields. Pool Sharks (1915), Fields' first movie, was made when he was thirty-five. He settled into a mansion near Burbank, California and made most of his thirty-seven movies for Paramount. He appeared in mostly spontaneous dialogs on Charlie McCarthy's radio shows. In 1939 he switched to Universal where he made films written mainly by and for himself. He died after several serious illnesses, including bouts of pneumonia.- Actor
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In recalling silent movie comedian Harry "Snub" Pollard, his slight frame (5' 6"), bullet-shaped head and dark, droopy mustache are definitive identification badges. Born in Melbourne, Australia as Harold Fraser on November 9, 1889, he started off performing with the Pollard's Lilliputian Opera Company at an early age and was also a church choirboy. Adopting the last name of "Pollard" as his last name moniker in tribute to the company, he went on to perform with other Down Under children's troupes. When a vaudeville company he was touring with in 1910 made it to the United States, Harry decided to stay in the country.
Nicknamed (and billed) "Snub," he started off in bit parts at the Essenay Film Studios in 1911 and briefly worked with the Keystone Kops. Moving up into support roles, often with the Keystone Cops series, Hal Roach took an avid interest in him and, by 1915, had Snub co-starring with Harold Lloyd and Bebe Daniels in the highly successful Lonesome Luke series, which ran for years (86 films in all). In 1919, Snub took a chance and ventured on with his own solo one- and two-reeler's with zany slapstick, sights gags and gimmicks-a-plenty. He performed many of his own stunts and was often seriously injured as a result. Many of them were ably directed by Charley Chase and co-starred Marie Mosquini as his frequent leading lady. Snub's "second banana" status, however, was firmly entrenched, and his starring vehicles were met with only a modicum of interest. One of his most notable is the short comedy It's a Gift (1923) in which he played an eccentric inventor pursued by oil magnates interested in his newest creation.
In between Snub made personal appearances on the farcical stage. His production film company, created in 1926, was forced to fold and found himself relegated to supporting other top comedians again, notably Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and Andy Clyde. He was further financially strapped when the Depression hit. By the late 1930s, he was appearing in "poverty row" films. One last hurrah would be his playing of Pee Wee, the sidekick to cowboy Tex Ritter, in a series of minor westerns. Relegated now to atmospheric bits, it is noted that in the film Singin' in the Rain (1952), he is the rained-on passerby that Gene Kelly gives his umbrella to toward the end of the title song. Snub continued to work in relative obscurity until his death on January 19, 1962 of cancer. Earning a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in silent films, the thrice-married actor was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills.- Actor
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Lee Moran was born on 23 June 1888 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The Little Irish Girl (1926), The Actress (1928) and Fixed by George (1920). He was married to Esther (Brown) Schinzel. He died on 24 April 1961 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
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Eddie Lyons was born on 25 November 1886 in Beardstown, Illinois, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Everything But the Truth (1920), All Bound Around (1919) and Good Night, Ladies (1919). He was married to Virginia Kirtley. He died on 30 August 1926 in Pasadena, California, USA.- Producer
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Mack Sennett was born Michael Sinnott on January 17, 1880 in Danville, Quebec, Canada, to Irish immigrant farmers. When he was 17, his parents moved the family to East Berlin, Connecticut, and he became a laborer at American Iron Works, a job he continued when they moved to Northampton, Massachusetts. He happened to meet Marie Dressler in 1902, and through her went to New York City to attempt for a career on the stage. He managed some burlesque and chorus-boy parts. In 1908, he began acting in Biograph films. His work there lasted until 1911; it included being directed by D.W. Griffith and acting with Mary Pickford and Mabel Normand. By 1910, he was directing.
In 1912, he and two bookies-turned-producers--Adam Kessel and Charles Bauman--formed the Keystone Film Company. Sennett brought Mabel Normand with him and soon added Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, Chester Conklin Al St. John, Slim Summerville, Minta Durfee and Charles Chaplin (who was directed by Sennett in 35 comedies during 1914). He told Chaplin, "We have no scenario--we get an idea, then follow the natural sequence of events until it leads up to a chase, which is the essence of our comedy." To the slapstick chase gags of the Keystone Kops were gradually added the Bathing Beauties and the Kid Komedies. In 1915 he, Griffith and Thomas H. Ince formed Triangle Films.
Comedy moved from improvisational slapstick to scripted situations. Stars like Bobby Vernon and Gloria Swanson joined him. In 1917, he formed Mack Sennett Comedies, distributing through Paramount--and later Pathe--and launching another star, Harry Langdon. When Sennett returned to Paramount in 1932, he produced shorts featuring W.C. Fields and musical ones with Bing Crosby. After directing his only Buster Keaton film, The Timid Young Man (1935), he returned to Canada a pauper. In 1937, he was awarded a special Oscar--"to the master of fun, discoverer of stars... for his lasting contribution to the comedy technique of the screen."
Mack Sennett died at age 80 on November 5, 1960 in Woodland Hills, California, and was interred at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. For his contributions to the motion picture industry, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a star on Canada's Walk of Fame.- Alongside Ben Turpin, diminutive Scots-born Jimmy Finlayson was, arguably, the most instantly recognisable of the many clowns of silent screen slapstick who made their living as comic foil to stars like Laurel & Hardy, or Harold Lloyd. The perpetually exasperated, squinting, bald-pated master of the 'double-take and fade' with the walrus (fake) moustache began his working life as an apprentice in his father's iron foundry. Not finding this much to his liking he decided on a mercantile career and enrolled at Edinburgh University. There, he befriended the actor John Clyde, who, before long, talked him out of business and into acting. So, Jimmy quit university and found a job as small part character player with the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh. Soon after, he began to work in comedy with a local repertory company and in music hall, appearing in plays written by Harry Lauder's brother - and fellow Scotsman - Alec.
A year later (in 1911), Jimmy crossed the Atlantic to appear on Broadway in the West End cast of "Bunty Pulls the Strings", followed in 1912 by "The Great Game". Buoyed by success, he decided to stay in America and embarked on a nationwide tour in vaudeville, again accompanied by Alec Lauder. Ending up in California after four years on the road, Jimmy decided to settle in Hollywood. He was joined there by his younger brother Bob who eventually became a camera technician. In 1916, Jimmy was given a few minor roles at L-KO, but it was not until 1920 that he signed a three-year contract with Mack Sennett. It is by no means certain that Finlayson was ever one of the original Keystone Kops, though he certainly donned police uniform for several of his two-reelers and appeared as a Kop in both Stout Hearts and Willing Hands (1931) and Hollywood Cavalcade (1939). In several of his early films, he was also co-starred with Ben Turpin, invariably playing the part of the villain or straight man to Turpin's cross-eyed antics.
Jimmy's prospects improved when he joined Hal Roach at Culver City in 1923. He started off as the antagonist in several of Stan Laurel's early solo efforts, but Roach -- recognising his potential -- attempted to elevate him to first billing. Stan Laurel turned director for three short films with Jimmy as the nominal lead: Yes, Yes, Nanette (1925), Chasing the Chaser (1925) and Should Husbands Pay? (1926). Since these failed to propel Finlayson into the first comedic echelon, he was instead briefly touted as one third of a starring trio alongside Laurel and Oliver Hardy. However, this idea was quickly abandoned, and, by 1928, Jimmy had comfortably settled into his niche as antagonist or mainstay comic support. By this time he had rather perfected his inimitable mannerisms: the long double-take, the squint, one-eyed stare and raised eyebrow, usually followed by a palpable state of near-apoplexy. Much of the joy in anarchic comedies like Big Business (1929) is derived precisely in the anticipation of the 'civilised', well-ordered violence which is about to take place when Laurel & Hardy square off against Finlayson.
Jimmy appeared in some of the best two-reelers Roach made at MGM, and was subsequently involved as an integral part in most of Laurel & Hardy's feature films, standing out in Pardon Us (1931), Our Relations (1936) , and, above all, as the perfidious Mickey Finn in Way Out West (1937). He also appeared opposite other leading comics, including Charley Chase in, among others, Hasty Marriage (1931) and His Silent Racket (1933) - on occasion even without wearing his famous whiskers. It is now generally acknowledged that another of Jimmy's screen mannerisms -- his drawn-out, frustration-borne exclamation "d'ohhhhh" -- famously inspired Dan Castellaneta's Homer Simpson, uttering his suitably shortened trademark, "d'oh".
With the era of madcap comedy drawing to a close, Jimmy Finlayson continued on in movie bit parts and walk-ons, often with credits like 'loafer' or 'Scottish Farmer with Mustache'. Illness brought about his retirement in 1951. He died two years later from a heart attack at his home in Hollywood. - Director
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Georges Méliès was a French illusionist and film director famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema.
Méliès was an especially prolific innovator in the use of special effects, popularizing such techniques as substitution splices, multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color.
His films include A Trip to the Moon (1902) and An Impossible Voyage (1904), both involving strange, surreal journeys somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films.
Méliès died of cancer on 21 January 1938 at the age of 76.
In 2016, a Méliès film long thought lost, A Wager Between Two Magicians, or, Jealous of Myself (1904), was discovered in a Czechoslovak film archive.- Actor
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Al St. John was born on 10 September 1893 in Santa Ana, California, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Billy the Kid in Texas (1940), Prairie Badmen (1946) and Billy the Kid Trapped (1942). He was married to Yvonne June Villon Price Pearce (actress), Lillian Marion Ball and Flo-Bell Moore. He died on 21 January 1963 in Lyons, Georgia, USA.- Actor
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Mack Swain was born in 1876 and soon became a talented vaudevillian. In 1913 he was hired by Mack Sennett and appeared in a few Mabel Normand pictures until a year later he became even bigger when Charlie Chaplin arrived at the Keystone Studio. Swain later created a character by the name of Ambrose whom he appeared with Mr. Walrus (Played by comic Chester Conklin) most memorably in "Love Speed & Thrills" (1915).
After that his career began to go downward until Charlie Chaplin rescued it in 1921 and he later appeared in his masterpiece "The Gold Rush" (1925). After "The Gold Rush" he appeared in many Hollywood productions such as Lon Chaney's "Mockery" and "The Last Warning" (1929).
In 1931 he appeared in the academy award nominee for best short "Stout Hearts and Willing Hands" which also co-starred former keystone actors such as Chester Conklin, Sterling Ford, Clyde Cook, and Owen Moore. He retired from then onward and died in 1935.- Actor
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Bobby Vernon was born in the U.S. in 1897, was trained in Vaudeville and became a talented comic in the silent era. He began working in 1913, appearing in Lon Chaney's Almost an Actress (1913) and later worked for Mack Sennett, who teamed him up with young Gloria Swanson in 9 comedies between 1916 and 1917, most memorably in Teddy at the Throttle (1917), which also co-starred Wallace Beery, Gloria Swanson's husband, off-screen.
When the sound era arrived, he starred in three more films and retired to be a writer and comedy supervisor at Paramount for W.C. Fields and Bing Crosby.- Actress
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This vivacious, platinum-blonde leading lady of silent screen comedy was a former Ziegfeld Girl (under her birth name 'Anderson'). The daughter of Norwegian immigrants, she appeared in vaudeville from early childhood and began in films in 1915. Two years later she made her debut on Broadway. From the early 1920's, Vivien became a regular feature in two-reelers for Hal Roach, her forte being the 'slow burn'. She invariably played a put-upon society matron, or the long-suffering wife of either Charley Chase (Mighty Like a Moose (1926)), Oliver Hardy (Along Came Auntie (1926)and That's My Wife (1929)), Stan Laurel (Love 'Em and Weep (1927)), Edgar Kennedy (Dumb's the Word (1937)) or Leon Errol (in a series of shorts at RKO, beginning with Wrong Romance (1937)).
Vivien successfully made the transition to sound and was featured to great effect with Laurel & Hardy in We Faw Down (1928), Scram! (1932) (an infectious drunken scene), and Way Out West (1937). Her film roles were usually small, though she made the most of being one of the Florodora Sextette in the musical period romance The Florodora Girl (1930). Vivien retired in 1951, settling in Sherman Oaks, California. In the final year of her life, she worked at Neff's Toy Store as a saleslady.- Alice was a silent screen comedic actress. She worked in a number of Keystone films and also appeared in the early films that Chaplin did. Other actors that Alice worked with who went on to become big stars were Mabel Normand and Marie Dressler . Alice was married and divorced from Broadway actor Harry Davenport. Alice was the mother of Dorothy Davenport who was married to Paramount matinee idol Wallace Reid.
- Alice Howell was born on 5 May 1888 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Cinderella Cinders (1920), The Pride of the Force (1925) and Shipwrecked (1926). She was married to Richard Smith and Benjamin Vincent Shevlin. She died on 12 April 1961 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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When top "working girl" silent screen comedienne Mabel Normand would gripe to Mack Sennett about making classier films, Sennett's quippy retort would always be, "I'll send for Fazenda." This pretty, oval-faced, highly popular Keystone comedy cut-up put in her time first in comic two-reelers from 1913 on, but soon unleashed her real gift "dressing down" for laughs with her best known character types as frizzy-haired country bumpkins complete with spit curls, multiple pigtails and calico dresses, a look that went on to inspire bucolic comics Judy Canova and Minnie Pearl.
Louise was born on June 17, 1895, in Lafayette, Indiana, the daughter of a merchandise broker. Raised in California, she attended Los Angeles High School and St. Mary's Convent. She found odd jobs working a dentist, a candy store owner, and a tax collector. While performing in a high school show, lucky Louise was discovered by a Sennett talent agent and taken immediately to films. The 18-year-old hopeful made her first films with Joker Studios and went on to be highly featured in a slew of "Mike and Jake" comedy shorts starring Max Asher and Harry McCoy. She would also co-star in a number of burlesque-style features with Asher and Bobby Vernon in such vehicles as Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl (1914), A Freak Temperance Wave (1914), The Tender Hearted Sheriff (1914), Love and Electricity (1914), The Diamond Nippers (1914) and Schultz the Paperhanger (1914).
Soon silent kingpin Sennett himself began incorporating the funny girl's gift for slapstick comedy in his highly popular "Keystone Kops" shorts. Between the years 1915 to 1917, she rose quickly up the front ranks as an early plain-Jane Carol Burnett goofball playing an assortment of serviles -- maid, cook, janitress, flower girl, nurse and fortune teller types. In A Hash House Fraud (1915) she played a flirty cashier; in Her Fame and Shame (1917) she played a star-struck daughter who attempts burlesque to save her pop's mortgage; in The Betrayal of Maggie (1917) and Maggie's First False Step (1917) she portrayed the eager title roles; and in Her Torpedoed Love (1917), she plays a daffy cook whose life is in danger when a greedy butler (Ford Sterling) learns her boss is leaving her his entire estate.
During this peak time, Louise got to work alongside the most brilliant of silent male screen clowns, including Sterling himself, and Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, Ben Turpin, Charley Chase, Charles Murray, Harry Booker, Edgar Kennedy, Mack Swain, Chester Conklin, James Finlayson, Slim Summerville, Billy Bevan, Jack Cooper, Billy Armstrong and Hugh Fay. Other popular Sennett comic outings for Louise would include Ambrose's Nasty Temper (1915), Fatty's Tintype Tangle (1915), A Game Old Knight (1915), A Versatile Villain (1915), The Judge (1916), Bombs! (1916), Are Waitresses Safe? (1917), Those Athletic Girls (1918), The Village Chestnut (1918) Hearts and Flowers (1919), Back to the Kitchen (1919), The Gingham Girl (1920), Bungalow Troubles (1921) and Made in the Kitchen (1921).
Sennett's Down on the Farm (1920) is a silent film feature-length rural comedy featuring an all-star cast of funsters with Louise playing a typical role as the farmer's daughter. Louise eventually left Sennett's company in the early 1920s and, in a change of pace, progressed on her own in both comic and dramatic outings. She appeared in the comedy drama Quincy Adams Sawyer (1922) starring John Bowers, Blanche Sweet and Lon Chaney; three dramatic pieces, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), The Wanters (1923) and Being Respectable (1924), all starring Marie Prevost; the social drama Main Street (1923) starring Florence Vidor; the historical drama (as a country gal) The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln (1924); the tearjerker This Woman (1924) starring Irene Rich and Julliet Akinyi; the canine family adventure The Lighthouse by the Sea (1924) featuring Rin Tin Tin; the Raymond Griffith comedy vehicle The Night Club (1925); the melodramas The Price of Pleasure (1925) starring Virginia Valli and Déclassé (1925) starring Corinne Griffith; and a rare comedy Bobbed Hair (1925) starring Ms. Prevost; Occasional star roles during this silent period included the comedies Listen Lester (1924), Footloose Widows (1926), The Gay Old Bird (1927) and The Cradle Snatchers (1927).
Coming the advent of sound, Louise had no problem whatsoever adjusting to sound where her eccentric talents were greatly utilized in (mostly) Warner Bros. musicals, dramas and knockabout comedies. She provided comedy relief/support in such films as the mystery thriller The Terror (1928); the adventure film The Lady of the Harem (1926); the romantic comedy The Red Mill (1927) starring Marion Davies; the W.C. Fields talking remake of the silent comedy Tillie's Punctured Romance (1928); the sports comedy Babe Comes Home (1927) starring legendary ballplayer Babe Ruth; the war comedy Ham and Eggs at the Front (1927); the Will Rogers comedy A Texas Steer (1927); the comedy Heart to Heart (1928); the dramedy Vamping Venus (1928) which reunited her with Charles Murray and co-starred a rising Thelma Todd; the war drama Noah's Ark (1928); the action adventure Stark Mad (1929) the musicals On with the Show! (1929) and No, No, Nanette (1930) (as Sue Smith); the comedy Wide Open (1930); and the light romantic comedy Loose Ankles (1930).
On November 24, 1927, Louise married renowned Warner Bros. producer Hal B. Wallis who went on to produce several movies that she later appeared in, including Colleen (1936), First Lady (1937), Ready, Willing and Able (1937) and Swing Your Lady (1938). They had one child, Brent, who would grow up to become a psychiatrist. Ending her career on a dramatic note, Wallis would produce Louise's effort -- a supporting role in the Bette Davis/Miriam Hopkins soaper The Old Maid (1939) in the role of, what else, a maid!
Away from the limelight, Louise remained socially prominent and became a noted humanitarian and art collector. In 1958, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The 66-year-old former actress suffered a brain hemorrhage in Beverly Hills and died on April 17, 1962. She was survived by her husband, who, in 1966, married actress Martha Hyer. Louise was interred at the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.- Actress
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Mistinguett was born on 3 April 1875 in Enghien-les-Bains, Val-d'Oise, France. She was an actress and writer, known for La Vie En Rose (2007), Chignon d'or (1916) and Rigolboche (1936). She died on 5 January 1956 in Bougival, Yvelines, France.Elsie LeClaire in USA- Actor
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Charles Murray was born on 22 June 1872 in Laurel, Indiana, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Percy (1925), Vamping Venus (1928) and The Wizard of Oz (1925). He was married to Nellie Bae Hamilton. He died on 29 July 1941 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
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Charley Bowers led an extraordinary life even prior to getting involved with motion pictures. Supposedly kidnapped by circus performers at age six, he became an accomplished tightrope walker before returning home two years later. He did all types of work over the years, including circus jobs, theatrical work, bronco busting, and cartooning. Bowers was an accomplished cartoonist, and used his skills and highly creative mind to get into the animation field, eventually taking charge of the entire Mutt and Jeff series of cartoons for Pathe-Freres and Bud Fisher Film Corp., personally writing, producing, directing and often animating several hundred of these popular cartoons through 1926. In 1926 he began to give serious thought to live-action filmmaking, and had invented a photographic process and camera by which he could accomplish truly amazing and mind-boggling stop-motion-based special effects, incorporating them into a non-animated context. These live-action Bowers comedies - at least the few that are known to still exist - are unparalleled in their anarchic comic invention and creativity, though, admittedly, much of this is due to the outstanding special effects Bowers created. His character, often a foolish ne'er-do-well or eccentric inventor, was modeled after the standards: Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon. However, although likeable, the Bowers film persona played second banana to the films' conceptual comedy and effects. He made 12 two-reel comedies from 1926 to 1927, most of them released through R-C Pictures. In 1928 he followed with six more released through Educational Pictures ("The Spice of the Program"). No one is quite sure what he did following these last two-reelers, aside from a film called It's a Bird (1930), and two films made later on: Pete Roleum and His Cousins (1939), a short directed by Joseph Losey for the 1939 New York World's Fair, and Wild Oysters (1941), a short he made for the Fleischer Brothers; both of these films circulate on the occasional public domain compilation video. Unfortunately, Bowers is almost completely forgotten today, though his films are regarded as some of the most astounding of his time, in the opinion of those few who are lucky enough to have seen them. Three of the live-action shorts were rediscovered not too long ago and preserved by Cinematheque Quebecoise in Montreal: A Wild Roomer (1927), Egged On (1926) and Now You Tell One (1926). The third of these can be seen on the "Tons of Fun" volume of Kino's video series, "The Slapstick Encyclopedia." A fourth, There It Is (1928), was recently preserved by George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Seek and ye shall find!- Actor
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World-famous, widely popular American humorist of the vaudeville stage and of silent and sound films, Will Rogers graduated from military school, but his first real job was in the livestock business in Argentina, of all places. He transported pack animals across the South Atlantic from Buenos Aires to South Africa for use in the Boer War (1899-1902). He stayed in Johannesburg for a short while, appearing there in Wild West shows where he drew upon his expertise with horse and lasso. Returning to America, he brought his talents to vaudeville and by 1917 was a Ziegfeld Follies star. Over the years he gradually blended into his act his unique style of topical, iconoclastic humor, in which he speared the efforts of the powerful to trample the rights of the common man, while twirling his lariat and perhaps chewing on a blade of straw. Although appearing in many silents, he reached his motion-picture zenith with the arrival of sound. Now mass audiences could hear his rural twang as he delivered his homespun philosophy on behalf of Everyman. The appeal and weight of his words carried such weight with the average citizen that he was even nominated for governor of Oklahoma (which he declined).- Actor
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Johnny Hines was born on 25 July 1895 in Golden, Colorado, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Little Johnny Jones (1923), Whistling in the Dark (1933) and The Live Wire (1925). He was married to Irma Warner. He died on 24 October 1970 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
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Familiar to many as the frustrated cop, businessman or landlord in countless two-reel comedies by The Three Stooges, Vernon Dent got his start in show business as a member of a singing troupe traveling in Southern California in the early 1920s. He was befriended by comedian Hank Mann, a member of the famed Keystone Kops. Mann thought that Dent was good comic material and gave him a supporting part in a series of two-reel comedies he was making. In the early 1920s Dent was good enough to be given his own series of comedy shorts by Pathe. After this series was over, he freelanced and worked for such top comics as Larry Semon. He found his real niche when he was hired by Mack Sennett, and spent most of the rest of the 1920s at that studio. For such a large man (5'9" and 250 pounds) Dent was surprisingly graceful, and Sennett was enthused to discover that he was a natural at physical comedy, able to do a pratfall as well as or better than Sennett's top comics. Dent really came into his own in the series of comedies that Harry Langdon made for Sennett, which rocketed Langdon to stardom and also brought recognition to Dent. When Langdon left Sennett, Dent stayed and supported such Sennett comics as Billy Bevan and Ralph Graves. Dent and Langdon were reunited in a series of shorts for Educational Pictures in the early 1930s, and his value in the series was such that Langdon insisted Dent always receive second billing after him. Dent joined Columbia in 1935, where he achieved his greatest success, and stayed there until 1953. He worked especially well with Shemp Howard of The Three Stooges, and the two remained lifelong friends. Shortly after retiring in the mid-'50s, Dent went blind, a result of his lifelong battle against diabetes. Although there were rumors that he died because he was a Christian Scientist and refused to take insulin, in an interview several years ago Dent's wife stated that he was not a Christian Scientist, and died from a sudden, massive heart attack.- Actor
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Being one of numerous important comedians during the silent era whose popularity has turned into almost complete obscurity, Lloyd Hamilton has nevertheless earned a reputation as an original talent among film historians and enthusiasts. Born into a conservative middle-class family in California, presumably in 1891, Hamilton began his career as an extra in theatre-productions. He entered films at an early age, although the exact year remains hard to specify; he claimed to have appeared in his first films at Lubin Company in 1914, but he can be glimpsed in a few surviving Frontier-comedies from the year before. However, it is correct that it was in the year of 1914 that he first gained success, when he teamed up with Bud Duncan in Kalem's 'Ham and Bud'-series, being one of the very first permanent comedy teams produced in the movies. The series turned out moderately popular and ran for three years, although it can be hard to understand this success for modern viewers; by common agreement, the 'Ham and Bud'-films have not aged well and remain of interest mostly due to the limited insight into Hamilton's maturity as a performer that they provide.
Hamilton left Kalem for Fox in late 1917, where he appeared on his own under the direction of Henry Lehrman and Jack White. Along with White and another director who would later reach fame as a performer in his own right, Charley Chase, Hamilton established 'Mermaid Comedies' in 1920, a production unit exclusively dedicated to comedy shorts. He appeared in a number of films over the next few years; sadly, only a few of these are known to exist today, but comedies such as "Moonshine" and "The Simp" (both 1920) confirm Hamilton's progression as a performer during this time. Indeed, by 1922 he was hailed in the press as a "great comedy coup" and audiences had already taken notice of him. Hamilton's screen personality was something of its own, inheriting very few traits of the other major comedians of the time; tubby and baby-faced though he was, his character was a childish man of personal contrasts: he possessed a touch of bewilderment, irresponsibility, incredible self-assurance and frustration that gave him a partly tragic complexion, which in return probably made his comedy more appealing to adults than children.
By the mid-1920s, Hamilton's popularity had grown such a degree that he considered it appropriate to establish his own production company. It was about this time that he starred in his first feature-length film, "The Darker Self," a film which does not only seem rather tasteless today due to the use of racial stereotypes, but which in fact was a disaster also when originally released and Hamilton's reputation suffered a blow because of it. He nevertheless produced many fine short comedies throughout the decade, such as "Move Along" (1926), "Nobody's Business" (1926) and "Somebody's Fault" (1927), most of which were directed by Norman Taurog. While it may be argued that some of the films suffer from lack of continuity, they often provide many clever visual gags and camera-tricks which still make them pleasant to watch; in fact, in one respect absence of continuity suits Hamilton's character well, as his movies are not so often based upon a particular story as of him being constantly haunted by bad luck, with one bad situation leading up to an even worse situation.
Despite being so very amusing on-screen, Hamilton led a troublesome private life. He was a hard drinker, which severely affected his family life. His first marriage was to actress Ethel Lloyd, five years his senior, which took place at an early point of his movie career and lasted just a few years; they were separated by 1923, and their split caused a two-year long court battle. He married a second time in 1927 to Irene Dalton, who had appeared in some of his films. Dalton accused her husband of being violent when drunk, and the couple divorced after a year. (None of the marriages produced any children.) In the midst of these personal difficulties, Hamilton was suddenly banned from the screen after a boxer was murdered in a street-fight in which he was involved; the comedian was not a suspect, but the tolerance of scandals was minimal in Hollywood at this time and he remained unemployed for more than a year. He did a comeback in a series of two-reeler's for Mack Sennett at Educational Films in 1929, this time in sound pictures, which had just done its lasting entrance in the medium. Lloyd had a good voice which suited his character perfectly, but by this time his troubled life-style had begun to get the better of him. After the contract with Sennett expired, it was rumored that he would begin a new series of two-reeler's for Hal Roach, but being informed of Hamilton's alcoholism, Roach refused to hire him. He died unemployed and ill in 1935, aged 43.
During his brief period as a star, Charlie Chaplin is reported to have remarked that Lloyd Hamilton "is the one actor of whom I am jealous," and Charley Chase confessed that whenever he had difficulties in doing a scene, he'd always ask himself, "How would Lloyd have done it?" Buster Keaton also expressed great fondness of his work, stating in a late interview that Hamilton was "one of the funniest men in pictures." Critic and playwright Walter Kerr, considered by many the most insightful authority on silent comedy, discusses his work with great respect and admiration in his 1975-book "The Silent Clowns." However, despite all acclaim, Lloyd Hamilton is exceedingly seldom given a mention today even among silent comedy fans. One significant reason to this is his sad lack of surviving output; most of his negatives were destroyed in a laboratory fire at Universal shortly after his death. Happily, a fine collection of his work is now available on DVD through silent comedy specialists "Looser Than Loose."- Max Davidson was born on 23 May 1875 in Berlin, Germany. He was an actor, known for A Daughter of the Poor (1917), Don Quixote (1915) and The Johnstown Flood (1926). He was married to Alice Marti. He died on 4 September 1950 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1892, rustic-looking George "Slim" Summerville possessed one of those malleable mugs that made you laugh even before he opened his mouth. Young Slim ran away from home as a youth and lived a rather wanderlust life until a chance meeting with Mack Sennett through his comedian friend Edgar Kennedy changed everything.
Slim broke into silent films at age nineteen as one of Sennett's pie-hurling Keystone Kops and became part of the stock company of players. Making an unbilled appearance in Keystone's first feature film Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), Summerville's gangly build and naive innocence, not to mention his potato-like nose, mournful mug, and slim, curling upper lip, helped set him apart -- so much so that Summerville eventually branched out into his own short vehicles.
Much more comfortable in rumpled clothes and overalls than a suit and tie, he later learned the ropes of directing and in the 1920s helmed a string of short films for both Fox and Universal studios. He refocused on acting come the advent of sound and made a rather easy transition, standing out in a number of commercial films, both comedic and dramatic, including the mammoth war epic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), the landmark musical film King of Jazz (1930), Hecht-MacArthur's classic The Front Page (1931), the Shirley Temple vehicles Captain January (1936) and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938), and John Ford's Tobacco Road (1941). In addition, Slim scored in a series of short comedies opposite Zasu Pitts, and a slew of supports in Hoot Gibson westerns.
Usually playing much older than he was, the sleepy-eyed, slow-drawling Summerville played his last role in The Hoodlum Saint (1946), before dying of a stroke on January 5, 1946, at the not-so-old age of 53. He left a strong enough legacy, however, to be remembered as one of the screen's more reliable comedians. He was survived by his wife Eleanor and son Elliot.- Actress
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Mae Busch can certainly claim career versatility, having successfully played Erich von Stroheim's mistress, Lon Chaney's girlfriend, Charley Chase's sister, James Finlayson's ex-wife and Oliver Hardy's wife! She was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1891; her parents were in the theater and when she was six years old the family moved to the US, arriving in San Francisco in 1897 before moving to New York. It is claimed Mae was placed in St. Elizabeth's Convent in New Jersey until at least the age of 12, when she joined her parents in vaudeville as part of the Busch Devere Trio (New York press articles confirm Mae as being part of the group in early 1908). Her big break came in March 1912 when she replaced Lillian Lorraine in the lead role in the Broadweay play "Over the River", with Eddie Foy. She continued in this role until the end of the season, when she joined one of Jesse L. Lasky's touring "girl" shows, where she stayed until signed by Mack Sennett for his Keystone Pictures in 1915. As she was performing on Broadway at the same time as "The Agitator" was filming in California, the claim that this was her first film is incorrect. Similarly, there is no evidence that she knew Mabel Normand prior to arriving in Los Angeles in 1915.
In Hollywood things didn't begin so well for Mae. In order to get work, she falsely claimed to have lived in Tahiti and to be able to swim and dive. A high dive she took while filming The Water Nymph (1912) resulted in an injury and her returning to her parents in New York. It was only then when working in the theater again that she developed into leading-lady status.
Mae returned to Hollywood, and Keystone, in 1915. However, her friendship with Mabel ended abruptly when she was "caught" with Sennett, Mabel's fiancé, and Mae was forced to leave Keystone. Over the years she had substantial roles in quite a few films, such as von Stroheim's The Devil's Passkey (1920) and Foolish Wives (1922). Although 1927 was the year of her first movie with Stan Laurel and Hardy, it wasn't until Unaccustomed As We Are (1929) that she first played Mrs. Hardy, the role that she will always be remembered for. She was Mrs. Hardy again in Their First Mistake (1932), Sons of the Desert (1933), and The Bohemian Girl (1936). She also appeared in other Laurel and Hardy pictures but not as Mrs. Hardy, such as Charlie Hall's wife in Them Thar Hills (1934), and she only flirted with Hardy in Tit for Tat (1935).
Mae's Hollywood career lasted 30 years; she worked with many of the leading directors, actors and actresses of the time. After a long illness she died in 1946, aged 54. She was cremated and her ashes remained in a cardboard box at the Motion Picture Country Home Hospital for over 20 years until a proper interment and plaque was provided.- Edna Marion was born on 12 December 1906 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for The Still Alarm (1926), Readin', 'Ritin', 'Rithmetic (1926) and The Call of the Wilderness (1926). She was married to William E. Paxson and Herbert P. Naisbitt. She died on 2 December 1957 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Dorrit Weixler was born on 27 March 1892 in Berlin, Germany. She was an actress, known for Das rosa Pantöffelchen (1913), Die das Glück narrt (1913) and Todesrauschen (1914). She died on 30 November 1916 in Berlin, Germany.
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Ossi Oswalda was born Oswalda Staglich on February 2, 1899 in Berlin, Germany. She trained to be a ballerina and worked in chorus lines when she was a teenager. Director Ernst Lubitsch discovered her and cast her in his 1916 film The Shoe Palace. Over the next five years she appeared in many of Lubitsch's comedies including The Doll, The Oyster Princess, and I Don't Want To Be A Man. She usually played spoiled, child-like characters and even appeared in drag. Ossi became one of Europe's most bankable stars earning her the nickname "The German Mary Pickford". She and Ernst Lubitsch became very close friends but their relationship was never romantic. In 1919 she married Hungarian Baron Gustav Von Koczian. Ossi and her husband started their own production company but they only made five films together.
Their marriage ended in 1925 and Ossi began a high profile romance with Crown Prince Willhelm. She signed a contract with an American producer in 1926 and tried to change her image by playing more glamorous characters. Unfortunately her career suffered with the arrival of sound films. Her last role was in the 1933 drama The Star Of Valencia. Ossi continued to work on the stage appearing in operettas in Germany and Vienna. Eventually she moved to Czechoslovakia with her boyfriend Julius Aussenberg, a former producer. In 1943 she wrote the story for the film Fourteen At The Table. Sadly by the Spring of 1947 Ossi was bankrupt and suffering from numerous health problems. She died on July 17, 1947 in Prague. Ossi was only forty-eight years old. She is buried in Olsany Cemetery in in the Czech Republic.- Actor
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Karl Valentin, whose real name is Valentin Ludwig Fey, began an apprenticeship as a carpenter in 1897 after attending a private school. Two years later he met Gisela Royes, his future wife. Two daughters were born from this union. Between 1899 and 1901, Valentin worked as a journeyman carpenter. The following year he attended the Strebel comedy school in Munich. He made his first appearance on October 1, 1901 under his stage name Karl Valentin. His father died during this performance. Valentin then ran the Falk und Fey shipping business together with his mother, which was sold as a bankrupt company in 1906.
In the same year, Valentin moved with his family to Zittau in Saxony, his mother's hometown. In 1907 he started a tour. But success with the self-built musical device "Living Orchestrion" failed to materialize and Valentin returned to Munich. There he initially worked in an inn. From 1908 onward he had success with his monologues "The Aquarium" and was hired by the Volkssängerbühne in the "Frankfurter Hof". Valentin's comedy was based on the grotesque language of his long body, on funny puns and slapstick. His jokes often hit the audience or himself. The pessimism and tragic character of his comedy had a real background.
Valentin often chafed against reality, against official or social circumstances or against his fellow human beings. In 1911 he met Elisabeth Wellano, his later stage partner as Lisl Karlstadt. During this time he married Gisela Royes. In 1912/13, the first silent film that has survived to this day was released with the title "Karl Valentin's Wedding", in which he exposed the marriage institution to satire. In his enthusiasm for the medium of film, Karl Valentin made around 40 films, which were often based on his stage jokes. In 1914 the first works on the program "Tingeltangel" were created, which also contains the well-known sketch "The Orchestra Rehearsal". Exempt from military service for health reasons, Karl Valentin gave almost 120 performances in hospitals during the First World War.
From 1915 he directed the Munich cabaret "Wien-München". Together with Berthold Brecht, Valentin parodied his play "Drumming in the Night" at the Munich Kammerspiele. In 1922/23 the comedian appeared alongside Brecht, Erich Engel, Lisl Karlstadt and Blandine Ebinger in the surrealist film "Mysteries of a Hairdressing Salon". During this time Valentin performed abroad for the first time. His first guest appearance in Berlin in 1923 was enthusiastically received by Alfred Kerr and Kurt Tucholsky. He was called a "word picker" because of his linguistic acrobatics. Valentin's last known silent film, "Der Sonderling", was made in 1929. Two years later he opened his own theater in the Goethe Hall on Leopoldstrasse in Munich.
Clashes with the police arose because of fire safety requirements. In 1932 he took part in his first sound film "The Bartered Bride". He adopted a skeptical attitude towards the Nazi regime, but made no political statements. In 1934, Karl Valentin opened his "Panoptikum" as an exhibition of horror and nonsense items such as a glass of Berlin air. But the project initially failed until it was reopened the following year - but with the same failure. After the Nazi henchmen banned the film "The Inheritance", in which Valentin took part, because of "miserable tendencies", he rarely received film offers. From 1939 onward, the comedian and his new partner and lover Annemarie Fischer had success with the "Ritterspelunke" project, a mixture of panopticon, pub and theater.
Disputes with Nazi authorities were one reason for the closure of the economically successful "Ritterspelunke". The room was supposed to become an air raid shelter. From 1940 to 1947 he did not appear in public, but wrote many dialogue pieces and poems. His last play, "Family Sorrows," was written in 1943. Due to economic hardship, he became a journalist for the Munich Feldpost. After the war, Valentin tried to stay afloat by selling home-made household items. The radio series on Bavarian Radio "It's about Karl Valentin" was discontinued because listeners complained about the excessive pessimism.
Radio and record recordings followed in 1946 and a joint appearance with Lisl Karlstadt the following year.
Karl Valentin died on February 9, 1948 in Planegg near Munich of a cold caused by malnutrition.- Actor
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Ferenc Futurista was born on 7 December 1891 in Prague, Austria-Hungary [now Czech Republic]. He was an actor and writer, known for Za oponou smrti (1923), Ferenc se zení (1918) and Osálená komtesa Zuzana (1918). He died on 19 June 1947 in Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic].- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
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Bobby Ray was born on 6 October 1899 in New York, USA. He was an assistant director and actor, known for Dugan of the Dugouts (1928), Riley of the Rainbow Division (1928) and Yellow Cargo (1936). He was married to Gladys Jensen and Doris Storck. He died on 26 March 1957 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
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Hank Mann was born on 28 May 1887 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940) and City Lights (1931). He was married to Dolly Myers Robinson, Rae Max and Estelle. He died on 25 November 1971 in South Pasadena, California, USA.- Frank "Fatty" Alexander was an obese comedian who appeared in silent one- and two-reel slapstick comedies as a side-kick before co-starring with two other heavyweights, Hilliard Karr and 'Kewpie Ross' in F.B.O.'s low-budget "Ton of Fun" series at the end of the silent era. Born in Olympia, Washington on May 25, 1879, Frank Alexander was a cowboy and stage driver prior to ballooning up in weight and turning his attention away from the bright lights of the open spaces to those of Hollywood.
He made his screen debut with Keystone in support of screen comedian Syd Chaplin in Gussle's Backward Way (1915), the eighth of Chaplin's nine "Gussle" comedies, and his debut as his own director. Ironically, Syd -- Charles Chaplin's older half-brother -- had made his own acting debut the year before in Fatty's Wine Party (1914), with the great man himself, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, after whom Alexander modeled his screen persona. Paramount's biggest star at the time of his fall from grace after his three manslaughter trials for the death of Virginia Rappe, the original "Fatty" at 266 lbs. couldn't match Frank Alexander, who topped the scale at 350 lbs.
Although Syd Chaplin continued with his Gussle character for one more movie, Alexander did not appear as his sidekick, although he stayed on the Keystone lot. His next appearance was as a fireman in the Mack Swain vehicle When Ambrose Dared Walrus (1915). After moving over to Fox for a couple of comedies with Harold Lloyd in 1917, Alexander caught on with comedian Larry Semon, a white-faced comedian whose screen popularity and income rivaled that of the great Charlie Chaplin himself.
Alexander became a member of Semon's stock company at Vitagraph along with Oliver Hardy, whom Alexander made look as svelte as his future partner Stan Laurel. From 1918's Pluck and Plotters (1918) to 1925's The Perfect Clown (1925), Alexander would appear in 27 Semon films, including Babes and Boobs (1918), Bathing Beauties and Big Boobs (1918), and Boodle and Bandits (1918). Kid Speed (1924) was typical of Semon's two-reel farces that were filmed quickly at the Charles Ray Studios.
Fatty played Avery DuPays (a pun on avoirdupois), the city's wealthiest man, who will marry off his daughter Lou (Dorothy Dwan) to whomever wins the Big Auto Race. The Speed Kid (Semon) and Dangerous Dan McGrew (Oliver "Babe" Hardy) are in love with Lou, but she seems to prefer the Kid (her real life husband, Semon). Fatty's character favors the wealthier McGrew, who sabotages the brakes on The Kid's race car. Despite this problem, or more likely, because of it, -- the Kid wins both the race and the girl. The entire second reel features the race, which features The Speed Kid barreling through a farm house and emerging covered in a sheet, thus evoking the specter of the Ku Klux Klan and scaring his African- American sidekick/mechanic Spencer Bell (often billed by Semon with the highly imaginative moniker "G. Howe Black" and mostly forced to play the crude stereotype). At one point, former world's heavyweight boxing champion James J. Jeffries (the Great White Hope himself!) comes on-screen as a blacksmith just to punch "Babe" Hardy in the nose!
Alexander ended his association with Semon after playing Dorothy's father in Semon's "Wizard of Oz" (1925), a box office flop that finished off Semon personally and professionally. Frank Alexander made avoirdupois, if not screen history, as "Fatty" Alexander, part of "A Ton of Fun", one of three very fat comedians who appeared in a series of two-reel slapstick comedies produced by 'Joe Rock' from 1925-1927. The team made its debut in 1925's Tailoring (1925), with Fatty using the moniker 'Tiny' (which Alexander also used in "All Tied Up" (1925), directed by and co- starring beanpole comic actor Slim Summerville. The shorts were made by Poverty Row studio Standard Photoplay Co. and released by Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Office (F.B.O.), the precursor to R.K.O Radio Pictures.
Advertized by F.B.O. as the "three fattest men on the screen, "Fatty romped across the screen in with fellow fat men Hilliard Karr (a.k.a. "Fat" Karr) and Kewpie Ross in 34 shorts, many with the adjective "Heavy" in the title (The Heavy Parade (1926), Heavy Fullbacks (1926), Heavy Infants (1928) and the strangely named Heavyation (1926)). Also billed as "The Three Fatties", the "Ton of Fun" team offered the most anarchic comedy per pound available at the time or after. In the series entry Three of a Kind (1981), The Three Fatties play entertainers at a nightclub/restaurant. In short order, a melee breaks out between the audience and A Ton of Fun, with the expected result of tables overturned and dishes smashed.
After making the last "Ton of Fun" comedy in 1928, A Joyful Day (1928), Alexander became a supporting player at Hal Roach Studios in two of director Leo McCarey's shorts, Feed 'em and Weep (1928) and Madame Q (1929) starring Edgar Kennedy. With the coming of the sound era, Fatty Alexander's career tailed off. At Roach, he appeared in support of 'Harry Langdon' in The Shrimp (1930), but was then bounced around among the studios, including Roach, Universal and R.K.O., playing bit parts as fat men. He appeared in support of Zazu Pitts in two of her comedies, then did a turn in the early 'George Stevens' comedy The Kick-Off! (1931). His last movie was 1933's "The Barber Shop" starring W.C. Fields, in which he appeared as in an unbilled bit part.
Frank "Fatty" Alexander, 58, died in his 4155 Lankershim Blvd. home on September 8, 1937 in Los Angeles, California. His "Variety" obit called him a 440-pound comic. - Actor
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Harry Sweet was born in Teller County, Colorado, in 1901 and moved with his family to Reno, Nevada, in 1916. While in high school he was a movie projectionist for several theaters in the city. He also was a talented acrobat.
He arrived in Hollywood in 1919 and immediately went to work as an actor for L-KO Studios, which was supervised by Universal Studios. Sweet made only one film there because Universal shut down L-KO as a precautionary measure during the Spanish Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919. He then moved over to Century Films, where he appeared in Baby Peggy and Brownie the Wonder Dog comedy shorts along with other animal shorts that included the "Century Lions" and the "Century Dogs."
In 1924, Sweet left Century for Mack Sennett Studios, where Richard Jones, the supervising director for Sennett, assigned Sweet to direct the studio's leading comedy players. Sweet directed Ben Turpin in "Romeo and Juliet" (1924) and "The First 100 Years" with Harry Langdon. Sweet followed with a number of other directing assignments for Sennett. Although he continued to act, he took on more and more directing assignments.
In 1930, RKO Studios hired Sweet to supervise its short subject department. There, he helped Edgar Kennedy - a second-string comedian to Harry Langdon, Harold Lloyd and other big comedy stars of the day - originate the "Mr Average Man" series. The series of comedy shorts became a big hit and ran through 1948.
RKO released the first "Mr. Average Man" film, "Lemon Meringue," on Aug. 3, 1931. Sweet also directed a pair of "Whoopie Comedies" with Kennedy and Florence Lake. "Rough House Rhythm" was released in April 1931 and "All Gummed Up" followed a month later.
An experienced pilot since he was a teenager, Sweet took writer Howard "Hal" Davitt and Vera Williams, a 20-year-old actress who used the stage mane Claudette Ford, on a flying trip on June 8, 1933, to Big Bear Lake in San Bernardino County to scout film locations. At about 7:15 p.m., the plane lost power and nose-dived into the lake. Davitt and Williams were killed on impact and Sweet drowned.- Actor
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Syd Chaplin was born on 16 March 1885 in London, England, UK. He was an actor and director, known for King, Queen and Joker (1921), The Better 'Ole (1926) and A Lover's Lost Control (1915). He was married to Minnie Chaplin and Henriette. He died on 15 April 1965 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France.- Billie Ritchie was born in Scotland in 1874 and joined the world-renowned Karno Fun Factory and Comedy Troupe traveling the world with Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel, among others. In 1914 he left Karno and began making silent films for director Henry "Pathe" Lehrman's L-Ko Comedy studios and then his Fox/Sunshine Studios. Ritchie always claimed that Charlie Chaplin imitated his on-stage character of a rag-bedecked "little tramp," although he himself was saddled with the description of being one of the many Chaplin imitators. In late 1919 Ritchie was injured while making a Lehrmann comedy when several ostriches used in filming attacked the unfortunate actor. He was severely injured, and over the next two years was confined to his bed with serious back and internal injuries. He eventually succumbed to his injuries on July 6, 1921, dying in bed at his Hollywood home at 1200 North McCadden Place. He was only 42.Chaplin borrowed his baggy trousers and his coconut hat to make up the successful character 'Carlito'
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Mace was a dentist from Erie, Pennsylvania who at one point did some stage stock work for Mack Sennett. Heading west, he worked for Carl Laemmle and Thomas H. Ince before settling back with Sennett. After achieving success as the Chief of the Keystone Kops, he quit Sennett and opened his own company, trying to develop films around his old "One-Round O'Brien" character. After that didn't work out as he planned, Mace moved to Apollo Films. That was also a failure, and he later formed his own company, the Fred Mace Feature Film Company. Unfortunately, the company folded, and Mace returned to Sennett. By that time, however, his popularity had wained, and Mace received few roles over the next two years. He was ultimately found dead in a New York City hotel room, reportedly of a stroke.- Actor
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Monty Banks was a short, stocky but somehow debonair Italian-born comic actor, later also writer and director. In the US from 1914, he first appeared on stage in musical comedy and cabaret. By 1917 he was working as a dancer in New York's Dominguez Cafe. After this he turned to films, acting and doing stunt work at Keystone, Universal and for Al Christie. Changing his name from Mario Bianchi to Monty Banks may have been prompted by Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle as a passing reference to his playing '"montebanks". By 1919 Banks had moved to Vitagraph to play a villain in The Grocery Clerk (1919), foil to star comic Larry Semon.
Banks first came to the fore in his own right as star of the "Welcome Comedies" made by Warner Brothers. He spent the early 1920s at Fox and Grand Asher, graduating to writing and directing two-reel comedies with himself as the star. Most noteworthy entries in regard to inventive sight gags and Mack Sennett--style madcap plots are Pay or Move (1924) and The Golf Bug (1924). The success of this series prompted Banks to create an independent production company, the Monty Banks Pictures Corporation, in conjunction with writer/director Howard Estabrook. He made several feature-length films for Pathe, including Play Safe (1927)) (generally considered his best work), which featured a climactic runaway train sequence. This style of fast-action slapstick made it inevitable that Banks suffered more than his fair share of injuries, especially since he continued to do many of his own stunts.
From the late 1920s Banks worked in England and made several appearances in sound films. However, his accent proved to be something of an obstacle. He therefore decided, after 1930, to concentrate on directing and producing. He helmed four features starring the popular entertainer Gracie Fields, who became his second wife in 1940. In 1935 he directed a well-received George Formby comedy, No Limit (1935), about the TT motorcycle races on the Isle of Man, which were shot on location there.
With the outbreak of World War II Banks--being an Italian citizen--would have faced internment in England as an enemy alien. He therefore deemed it necessary to flee to Canada, and from there to the neutral United States. He eventually obtained American citizenship, for which he had applied years earlier, but had forgotten to submit the necessary paperwork. Back in Hollywood he ended up at 20th Century-Fox, directing Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in Great Guns (1941), arguably one of their lesser efforts.
Banks died of a heart attack during a trip through Italy in January 1950, aged just 52. Sadly, the majority of his one- and two-reelers are now considered lost films. As a result, his status as a leading comic of the silent screen may have somewhat diminished--except, perhaps, in his home town of Cesena, where a foundation was established in his honor (the "Aula Didattica Monty Banks"), offering students "practical courses on experimental aspects of video production".- Actor
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Hallam Cooley was born on 8 February 1895 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Monster (1925), Holiday (1930) and Sporting Youth (1924). He was married to Doris McMahon, Elizabeth Bates and Edna Clara Kemp. He died on 20 March 1971 in Tiburon, California, USA.- Actor
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Neely Edwards was born on 16 September 1883 in Delphos, Ohio, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Show Boat (1929), Scarlet Pages (1930) and The Hangover (1931). He was married to Marguerite Snow and Bella B. Cohen. He died on 10 July 1965 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Margaret Joslin was born on 6 August 1883 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She was an actress, known for A Snakeville Courtship (1913), Sophie's New Foreman (1913) and Sophie's Hero (1913). She was married to Harry Todd. She died on 14 October 1956 in Glendale, California, USA.
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Once you saw her, you would not forget her. Despite her age and weight, she became one of the top box office draws of the sound era. She was 14 when she joined a theater group and she went on to work on stage and in light opera. By 1892, she was on Broadway and she later became a star comedienne on the vaudeville circuit. In 1910, she had a hit with 'Tillie's Nightmare' which Mack Sennett adapted to film as Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) with Charles Chaplin. Marie took top billing over a young Chaplin, but her film career never took off and by 1918, she was out of films and out of work. Her role in the chorus girls' strike of 1917 had her blacklisted from the theaters. In 1927, MGM screenwriter Frances Marion got her a small part in The Joy Girl (1927) and then a co-starring lead with Polly Moran in The Callahans and the Murphys (1927) (which was abruptly withdrawn from circulation thanks to objections of Irish-American groups over its depiction of gin-guzzling Irish). Her career stalled and the 59-year old actress found herself no longer in demand. In the late 1920s she had been largely forgotten and reduced to near-poverty. Despite her last film being a financial disaster, Irving Thalberg, somewhat incredibly, sensed her potential was determined to re-build her into a star. It was a slow return in films but her popularity continued to grow. But it was sound that made her a star again. Anna Christie (1930) was the movie where Garbo talks, but everyone noticed Marie as Marthy. In an era of Harlow, Garbo and Crawford, it was homely old Marie Dressler that won the coveted exhibitor's poll as the most popular actress for three consecutive years. In another film from the same year, Min and Bill (1930) she received a best actress Oscar for her dramatic performance. She received another Academy Award nomination for Emma (1932). She had more success with Dinner at Eight (1933) and Tugboat Annie (1933). In 1934, cancer claimed her life.- Anita Frances Garvin was born in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York, the youngest of 3 children to Ann Frances Donovan, who was half Irish and half Blackfoot Indian, and Edward Garvin, an engineer who was killed in an accident when Anita was 6. By the age of 12 she was 5' 6", enabling her to pass for 16 and get a job in a Mack Sennett bathing beauty stage show. Later she became a Ziegfeld Girl in the Follies but, having always been interested in films, left when the touring company of Sally arrived in California in 1924 to try to find work in films. Her good looks and ability soon got her work in comedies produced by the Christie Film Company and Educational Pictures. In 1925 she was hired by producer Joe Rock as leading lady for an up-and-coming comic actor named Stan Laurel, who the following year asked her to appear in Raggedy Rose (1926), which he was directing at the Roach Studios. Stan admired her dedication to comedy and introduced her to Hal Roach, who used her in the films of Charley Chase, Our Gang, and the comedy duo of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, with whom she made 11 films, including From From Soup to Nuts (1928), Sailors, Beware! (1927), the lost Hats Off (1927), Blotto (1930), and Be Big! (1931), playing Stan's wife in the latter two. She married band leader Red Stanley in 1930, and during the mid '30s they owned The Momtmarte, a restaurant in downtown Hollywood which attracted the top stars. They closed it in the late '30s, and she went into partial retirement, preferring home life and raising their two children, Anita Patricia and Edward. After appearing with The Three Stooges in their 1940 film Cookoo Cavaliers (1940), she retired permanently. She spent her last years in the Motion Picture Country Home in California and is buried in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery.
- Katherine Grant was born on May 1, 1904 in Los Angeles, California. Her parents divorced and her father passed away in 1921. At the age of eighteen she won the Miss Los Angeles beauty contest and competed in the Miss America pageant. Katherine worked as a professional dancer and to make extra money she posed nude for an art study project. She made her film debut in the comedy short Saturday Morning and was offered a contract with Hal Roach. In 1923 she appeared in more than a dozen films including A Man About Town and Frozen Hearts. As her career took off the photographer who had taken her nude photos started to extort her. Katherine reported the man to the police and the scandalous photos did not hurt career. By 1925 she had become one of Hal Roach's favorite comedy vamps and he signed her to a new five year contract. Katherine worked with Oliver Hardy in Wild Papa and with Charley Chase in The Uneasy Three.She and Charley also performed in a vaudeville act together.
Unfortunately Katherine struggled with her weight and went on starvation diets to stay thin. On December 8, 1925, she was the victim of a hit-and-run accident. Doctors told her to take a break from acting but she returned to work a few days later. In the Spring of 1926 Katherine suffered a nervous breakdown on the set and was put in a sanitarium. Newspaper reports blamed the breakdown on her extreme dieting. Sadly Katherine would never make another film. Her health continued to get worse and she started suffering from dementia. Eventually she was sent to to Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino where she would live the rest of her life. Katherine died on April 2, 1937 from pulmonary tuberculosis. She was only thirty-two years old. Katherine was buried in an unmarked grave at Evergreen cemetery in Los Angeles, California. Fans of the late actress honored her with a marked headstone, in a special ceremony, on August 27, 2016. - Actor
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Glenn Tryon was born on 2 August 1898 in Julietta, Idaho, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Lonesome (1928), The Secret Menace (1931) and Hot Heels (1927). He was married to Jane Frazee and Lillian Hall. He died on 18 April 1970 in Orlando, Florida, USA.- Actor
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Billy West was a silent film comedian, the best-known and most successful imitator of Charles Chaplin's "Tramp" character, until West developed his own comedic persona. Oliver Hardy was West's foil in many of his silents.- Joe Cobb was born on 7 November 1916 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, USA. He was an actor, known for Uncle Tom's Uncle (1926), Good Cheer (1926) and The Buccaneers (1924). He died on 21 May 2002 in Santa Ana, California, USA.
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Edgar Kennedy, who was born on April 26, 1890, near Monterey, California, hit the road as a young man and traveled across the country, working in a succession of jobs. He became a professional boxer, claiming to have gone 14 rounds against The Manassas Mauler, Jack Dempsey.
In addition to his knowledge of the "Sweet Science", Kennedy possessed a good musical voice, and wound up singing in musical shows in the Midwest, his first taste of show business. During his cross-country peregrinations he wound up in Los Angeles, and found himself hired as an actor by comedy producer Mack Sennett. At the Sennett Studios he was allegedly one of the original Keystone Kops, but soon graduated from bit parts to supporting roles in Keystone comedies, including Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) with Charles Chaplin. Kennedy had good roles in other Chaplin movies, but when his contract expired in 1921 he went freelance, though he did occasionally return to Sennett.
After leaving Sennett Kennedy established himself as a first-rate supporting comic, and made a career out of playing harassed businessmen, next-door neighbors, cops, etc. By the late 1920s his craft was most prominently featured in comedies for Hal Roach, Sennett's arch-rival, where he flourished in support of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. It was with Roach that he developed his mastery of the "slow burn", a routine for which he became famous. He often played a none-too-bright policeman brought to the boiling point by the absurdities of Laurel and Hardy. He also directed the two in From Soup to Nuts (1928) and You're Darn Tootin' (1928).
RKO hired Kennedy to appear in a series of comedy shorts called "The Average Man," in which he played the head of a family. The shorts had very tight shooting schedules, often as few as three days, but Kennedy was always a pro and delighted the audience by giving them his all. He made over 200 short subjects and appeared in over 100 feature films, still in demand right up to the day he died of cancer on November 9, 1948.- Jack Cooper was born on 25 January 1890 in Stockport, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Taxi Spooks (1929), The Carnival Girl (1926) and Midnight Daddies (1930). He was married to Adella Louise Anthes. He died on 12 January 1970 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Attended Horace Mann school in San Jose. Once belonged to a bicycle club there, known as the Garden City Wheelmen. His nickname in those days was "Spike", but thanks to the fame garnered from playing the comic strip character in the silent Universal short subject series, he would let himself be known as "Andy Gump". (San Jose Evening News, 25 April 1928)
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Lew Fields was born on 1 January 1867 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), The Barker (1917) and Mike and Meyer Go Fishing (1915). He was married to Rose Harris. He died on 20 July 1941 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
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"Sunshine Sammy" Morrison was most famous as one of the Dead End Kids/East Side Kids, but he was probably the most experienced actor of that group. Morrison made his film debut while still an infant; his father worked for a wealthy Los Angeles family that had connections in the film industry, and one day a producer who was an acquaintance of his father's needed a baby for a scene and asked him to bring Sammy as a replacement for a child who wasn't working out. Morrison pulled off the job like a trouper, and his career was born. He appeared in films with such comedians as Harold Lloyd and, in fact, was paired with 'Snub' Pollard in a series of one-reel comedies in 1920. Producer Hal Roach gave Morrison his own comedy series in 1921, but only one was made. He was eventually cast by Roach as one of the original Our Gang kids. He left the series in 1924 for a turn in vaudeville, where he spent the next 16 years. When the East Side Kids films were being cast, producer Sam Katzman remembered Morrison from the days when Katzman was a theatrical producer and Morrison had worked for him, and hired him as a member of the gang. Morrison left the series when he was drafted into the army during World War II, and after he got out he was offered his old job back, but declined it. After a few more film roles, Morrison left show business entirely, took a job in an aircraft assembly plant and spent the next 30 years in the aircraft industry.- Actor
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Hal Roach hired him in the early 20's as a comedian called Paul Parrott but his talent was as a film director. He was also a good writer turning out many scripts for Laurel and Hardy and directed 22 of their films, more than any other of their directors. His first film with them was the silent Their Purple Moment (1928), followed a year later with Two Tars (1928). The reason for his success was that he not only encouraged innovation but made suggestions that strengthened the films. his last silent film with them was Habeas Corpus (1928), while his first sound film the following year, Perfect Day (1929), was one of their biggest hits of the time. When Hal Roach started planning a feature film for Laurel and Hardy, James was responsible for convincing Stan that it would work and directed Pardon Us (1931), which was a big success. He continued with some of their well known shorts such as The Music Box (1932), County Hospital (1932), and Twice Two (1933). He would no doubt have continued with the Boys but his drinking and drug use got out of control and he became unreliable and eventually died at the young age of 41.- Actor
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Billy Bevan's show-business career began in his native Australia, with the Pollard theatrical organization. The company had two theater troupes, one which toured Asia and the other traveling to North America. Bevan wound up in the latter, performing in skits and plays all over Canada and Alaska then down into the continental US. While in a road company of the play "A Knight for a Day", Bevan was noticed by comedy pioneer Mack Sennett, who hired him on the spot. Bevan made many one- and two-reel shorts for Sennett over a ten-year period, and then transitioned into a reliable comic actor in many Hollywood comedies over the next 20 years or so (even doing voice-overs for cartoons). He made his last film in 1950, then retired. He died in Escondido, CA, in 1957.- Actor
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Billy Bletcher, standing 5' 2", was known as the little guy with the big voice, who, ironically, started his film career during the silent era.
Billy's show business career began in 1913 at the age of 19 in vaudeville, and within a year, he went to work for Vitagraph Studios in Brooklyn where he both acted and directed. Two years later, he met his wife, Arline Harriett Roberts with whom he would stay married until the day he died in 1979.
In 1917, he took his wife westward to Hollywood where he started with smaller production companies, such as the Christie Film Company, writing and acting in shorts, and then moved on to larger and larger companies, such as the Fox Film Corporation where he did a few cowboy movies, one with Tom Mix, playing the comedic element. Then onto larger companies, such as Warner Brothers, RKO, Columbia, and Paramount where he had mostly bit parts, but got experience working with the likes of The Three Stooges and The Marx Brothers. But it was in Mack Sennett's comedy troupe where he started getting recognition doing two-reelers, and his biggest break came when Hal Roach studios pared him with Billy Gilbert and his career took off. Because pictures now had sound, directors and studios everywhere were clamoring for his deep, rich voice.
Mack Sennett and Hal Roach put Bletcher in shorts with W.C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy and he even played Spanky's father in the Little Rascals series, but it was Disney who made Bletcher a star.
Pinto Colvig, the original voice of Goofy and Pluto, told Bletcher that Disney needed a big, blustering voice to "huff and puff and blow your house in," so he tried out, got the job, and within a very short time, Disney had him doing a session a week in the sound booth, sometimes doing two and three voices. His voice got so famous that when he auditioned to do the voice of one of the seven dwarfs in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Walt Disney took him aside and told him, "Billy, your voice is heard so much in all of these singles that I make, I don't think I'd want to use you as one of the Seven Dwarfs." Bletcher admits that because his voice was so low and resonant, the characters he got to play were usually the "heavies" (bad guys). And as a heavy his voice became too recognizable for him to get a role in a feature length Disney production, with one exception: he did get a minor role in Dumbo as the voice of one of the clowns.
As a voice actor, he could go anywhere and soon found himself working for Leon Schlesinger at Warner Brothers, but never got credit for his work since Mel Blanc had it in his contract that he'd be the sole credit for voice characterizations. And at that time there were only a dozen or so actors doing voicework that the jobs were plentiful. He worked for Disney, Warner, and at MGM he did the voice of the Captain in the Captain and the Kids cartoons.
In the fifties, he did several characters on the Lone Ranger radio program, but before that he did what's known in the business as ADR (automated dialogue replacement) work, with his old pal Pinto Colvig. In The Wizard of Oz (1939), their voices were substituted for a few of the munchkins.
All in all, Bletcher worked on just over 450 films spanning nearly 60 years, his last film being a made-for-TV version of Li'l Abner (1971) in which he played Pappy Yokum. He passed away 13 years later at the age of 84.- Actor
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William 'Billy' Franey was a leading comic character actor of dishevelled appearance and fuzzy moustache, usually in a suit a couple of sizes too big. His screen career began around 1913, with leads in the 'Joker' comedy series released by Universal. He was co-starred with Louise Fazenda (until her departure for Keystone in 1915) and, subsequently, Gale Henry. In 1920, Franey joined an independent company, Reelcraft, where he made a series of one-reel shorts bearing his name. Few of them have survived. Those that have, notably The Plumber (1921) and The Bath Dub (1921), are brilliantly inventive examples of knockabout slapstick comedy.
Since Reelcraft was a state company, there was only limited regional release and little or no national publicity. As a result Franey's time at the top of his profession lasted merely a year. From 1921, he appeared in support of other comedians, notably in the 'Blue Ribbon' series produced by Joe Rock. He also played straight character roles in motion pictures, including a fair number of westerns. During the last three years of his life, he played 'Pop', father of Vivien Oakland and father-in-law to Edgar Kennedy, in a series of 18-19 minute comedy featurettes made for RKO. Billy continued acting on screen right up to his death from influenza in 1940.- Actor
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Bobby Dunn was born on 28 August 1890 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. He was an actor, known for His Busted Trust (1916), The Thrill Hunter (1926) and Our Alley (1923). He died on 24 March 1937 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
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Chubby silent film comic Bert Roach began on the New York stage at the age of 17. In 1911, he headlined in the two-act musical farce Louisiana Lou and then spent several years in stock as a lead tenor. Two years later, he made his screen debut at Keystone in Mack Sennett's Fatty's Magic Pants (1914). From then on, he remained busily engaged as a utility player, tallying up an impressive 350-plus acting credits. Often sporting an oversized Germanic moustache, Bert was a natural for silent slapstick. He had recurring roles in several Alice Howell vehicles at Universal in the mid-20s. In early talkies, he was employed by both Al Christie and Hal Roach (no relation) where he often showed his penchant for playing inebriates. He also had a good line in looking scared out of his wits, which he demonstrated to effect in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). On rare occasions, he was featured support in A-grade product like San Francisco (1936) (Freddie Duane) or The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) (Athos). For the most part, however, he was merely glimpsed in the background as nameless bartenders, stage hands, drunks and 'fat men'. Bert was one of many veteran silent comics who came together in 1947 to appear in the (inaccurate) Pearl White biopic The Perils of Pauline (1947), starring Betty Hutton.- Phyllis Haver was born Phyllis O'Haver on January 6, 1899, in Douglas, KS. When she was a child her family moved to California. Young Phyllis got a job playing piano at a local movie theater. Producer Mack Sennett saw her and hired her to be one of his "Sennett Bathing Beauties". Between 1916-20 she appeared in more than 35 short films. With her curvy figure and blonde hair she quickly became one of the most popular of Sennett's bathing beauties. Eventually she left Sennett compact and signed a contract with Cecil B. DeMille. She co-starred with Olive Borden in Fig Leaves (1926) and with Victor McLaglen in What Price Glory (1926). She also won rave reviews for her performances as Roxie Hart in Chicago (1927).
In 1929 she married millionaire William Seeman. Although she was at the peak of her career, she decided to retire from acting. She and William moved into an 11-room penthouse in New York City. Phyllis said she loved being a wife and never wanted to return to Hollywood. Sadly, after 16 years of marriage she and William divorced. The couple had no children. As she grew older Phylis became more reclusive. She lived in a large house in Connecticut and rarely had visitors. Her only companion was her longtime housekeeper. She reportedly made several suicide attempts and was devastated when her former boss Mack Sennett died.
On November 19, 1960, 61-year-old Phyllis took her own life with an overdose of barbiturates. She was found in her bed fully dressed and wearing make-up. Phyllis was buried at Grassy Hills Cemetery in Falls Village, CT. - Getting her show business start in vaudeville, Phyllis Allen's large physique and excellent timing made her a natural for film comedies, and she appeared in many of Mack Sennett's slapstick films. She also appeared in several of Charles Chaplin's movies, and was often paired with equally hefty comedian Mack Swain.
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Flora Finch was born in London, England, on June 17, 1867. After spending time on the legitimate stage, she began to make films, and was one of the early comedy stars of the silent-film era. Her first film was Mrs. Jones Entertains (1909). After making nine more films she began appearing with rotund comic John Bunny, and together they would make more than 250 shorts over the next five years, becoming the cinema's first popular comedy team. Among their more popular titles were The New Stenographer (1911), The Subduing of Mrs. Nag (1911) and A Cure for Pokeritis (1912). She made other films on her own in addition to those she made with Bunny, and after he died in 1915 she began her own series of comedy shorts, although not meeting with the kind of success she had with Bunny. By the time the sound era began she was relegated to minor supporting roles and bit parts, although she did have a fairly decent role in The Scarlet Letter (1934) with Colleen Moore, as one of the self-righteous women in Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale of life in colonial America. Finch retired from acting after appearing in The Women (1939), ending a long and illustrious career. On January 4, 1940, she died of rheumatic fever, brought on by a streptococcus infection, in Los Angeles, California. She was 70 years old.- Actress
- Writer
Often compared in looks and ability to Mabel Normand, lively, dark-haired comedienne Fay Tincher began as a vaudeville and musical comedy actress. Though she had operatic aspirations at the outset, Fay settled on an acting career. She first appeared on the Chicago stage while still finishing her studies. In 1913, she moved to the West Coast where she was discovered for film by D.W. Griffith. After a few short films she was cast as a vamp in The Battle of the Sexes (1914). However, it was soon realised that comedy, not drama, was her forte. No romantic or vixenish leads for this gal. Fay just wanted to make people laugh. She made sure that her appearance gave her a head start. Already rather short (at 5 feet 2 inches), she adopted as her trademark a purposefully unglamorous look: wearing essentially no makeup, she styled her hair with a distinctive big curl plastered to her forehead and dressed either in masculine clothes or in a black and white striped outfit which would not have looked out of place in a barber's shop.
At Reliance-Mutual, Fay was featured in the 'Komic Comedies' (1914-15), and successfully created her own regular character, a feisty stenographer named 'Ethel'. Publicity at the time touted her as 'the female Chaplin'. She gained further public notice by winning a bathing suit contest at Venice, California which led to further job offers. Between 1916 and 1919, Fay starred in two-reelers for Arts-Triangle, Keystone and Al Christie. She even briefly, and unsuccessfully, fronted her own production company. In 1923, she settled at Universal, adopting the character 'Min Gump' in the long-running 'Andy Gump' series, based on the comic strip. The coming of sound, coinciding with the end of the series in 1928, prompted Fay's sudden and permanent departure from the screen.- Campbell was born in Sale, Cheshire on 26th April 1880 and began acting as a boy. He married fellow music hall performer Fanny Gertrude Robotham on March 30, 1901 and was later hired by English music hall impresario Fred Karno for his "Fun Factory" comedy troupes that featured other comics like a young Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. Campbell arrived in New York with a Karno troupe in July, 1914 and was soon hired by Broadway producer Charles Frohman. In late 1915 fellow Karno alum Chaplin and his brother Sid found Eric working in a George M. Cohan play "Pom Pom" and in March, 1916, brought him to Hollywood. Built like a wrestler, over 6' tall and over 250 pounds, topped by small shaved head. Chaplin smeared his face with exaggerated eyebrows and darkened eyes, with a scraggly and long beard. He was the menacing bearded ogre opposite Chaplin in his most famous silents. His first Chaplin film was The Floorwalker (1916), playing the role of the villainous heavy, reprised in subsequent classics like The Rink (1916), The Pawnshop (1916), The Adventurer (1917), The Cure (1917), The Immigrant (1917), Easy Street (1917) and Chase me Charlie (1917). By the summer of 1917 Campbell was Chaplin's favorite co-star and foil, and almost as famous as the little comedian. In early 1917 Campbell filmed his last Chaplin Mutual, The Adventurer, after which Chaplin began construction on his own studio on LaBrea Avenue in Hollywood (which still stands today). During the five-month construction period, Chaplin lent Campbell to Mary Pickford, the world's biggest star, to appear in her film Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley (1917). He was on the verge of becoming a world-wide star as filming began. But at the same time that he was becoming famous his personal life was beset by tragedy and scandal. On July 9, 1917 his wife died suddenly of a heart attack after dinner at a Santa Monica restaurant near their home. Walking to a nearby store to buy a mourning dress, his 16-year-old daughter Una was hit by a car a seriously injured. At a September 12th party given for Artcraft Studio publicity man Pete Schmid, Campbell met Pearl Gilman, a diminutive vaudeville comedienne with a family reputation for gold-digging. She had been married to candy heir Charles W. Alisky in 1912, and a few years later divorced and married another wealthy man, Theodore Arnreiter. Her sister Mabelle was married to elderly steel magnate William E. Corey, the owner of U.S. Steel. Just five days after they met, Campbell and Gilman Alisky-Arnreiter were married at the home of Elaine Hardy at 824 5th Street in Santa Monica. His daughter Una, still recuperating at a friend's home in Santa Monica canyon, was not told of the wedding for several weeks. Less than two months after marrying the gentle giant, Gilman Alisky-Arnreiter sued him for divorce. He moved out of the Santa Monica bungalow and into the Los Angeles Athletic Club, taking a room next to his best friend Chaplin. A month later later on December 20, Campbell attended a Christmas party at the Vernon Country Club, and drove back to L.A. in a drunken stupor. Approaching the intersection of Wilshire Blvd. and Vermont Ave. at over 60 m.p.h., he lost control of his car, crossed Wilshire and hit another car head-on. He was killed instantly, his massive body locked in the crumpled wreckage for over five hours. Heartbreak never left Campbell, even in death. After his remains were cremated, his ashes were sent to the Rosedale Cemetery, where they remained for six months while the cemetery waited in vain for someone to pay for his funeral. When the bill remained unpaid, the urn was returned to the Handley Mortuary, where it sat unnoticed in a closet from 1917 until late 1938. When the mortuary closed the urn was sent back to Rosedale, where it sat in another closet for still another 13 years. In 1952 a kindhearted office worker arranged for Campbell's remains to finally be buried. But, unfortunately, he forgot to record exactly where Campbell was buried, so the burly Scotsman is lost among the markers and statues in the quiet cemetery. In conjunction with a Scottish film about Campbell's life, a memorial plaque was laid in 1996. Campbell's death had a profound effect on Chaplin, and a quieter effect on movie history. After that time, Chaplin's movies lost some of their comic mystery; that certain something that his Mutual films had but subsequent films did not. His later works were much more self-centered and missing the comic give-and-take of his work with Campbell. There's no telling how famous Eric Campbell would have become, or what different films Chaplin may have done with his burly best friend.
- Joe Roberts was born on 2 February 1871 in Albany, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Our Hospitality (1923), The Primitive Lover (1922) and Three Ages (1923). He was married to Lillian Stuart Feld Roberts and Nina Mildred Straw Shannon. He died on 28 October 1923 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Bud Jamison was born on 15 February 1895 in Vallejo, California, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Three Little Beers (1935), Their First Tintype (1920) and Captain Caution (1940). He was married to Georgia Kathleen Holland. He died on 30 September 1944 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.- A veteran stage and screen actor, Swickard was the brother of actor Charles Swickard. He entered films in 1912 and was playing supporting roles for Mack Sennett by 1914. He remained with Sennett until 1917 when he started numerous aristocratic roles in films. His career in sound films was somewhat limited and he played in low-budget and action serial type films. In 1939, his ex-wife, Broadway actress Margaret Campbell, was brutally murdered by their son. Swickard died a year later from natural causes, not, by jumping from the Hollywood sign as several accounts state.
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Glen Cavender was born in Tucson, Arizona, USA. He was an actor and director, known for [=tt0017925], [=tt0463180] and The Man from Brodney's (1923). Before he went into the movies he was a soldier of fortune. He served in the Boer war, in Cuba and in the Philippines. Also, served in China during the Boxer rebellion during which earned the medal of the French legion of honor. The French officer leading the combined sortie of French and American troops was shot in the storming of Tsin Tsin and Cavender took his place. He claimed that his military experience help with the role of Pancho Villa in [=tt0008738] even if it was a comedy. He was married to Hazel Chene. He died on February 9, 1962 in Hollywood, California, USA.- George Davis was born on 7 November 1889 in Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands. He was an actor, known for The Circus (1928), Le petit café (1931) and The Awakening (1928). He died on 19 April 1965 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Lige Conley was born on 5 December 1897 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Casey Jones, Jr. (1923), King of the Kitchen (1926) and Sally, Irene and Mary (1938). He died on 11 December 1937 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Actor
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Lupino 'Nipper' Lane was one of the few English actors to achieve fame in Hollywood in the 20's. He was a descendant of the clown Grimaldi, who, it was said, was the first to use concealed trap doors for comic effect., Lupino carried on that tradition and had many years of stage experience from his time in England..He was double jointed and could twist his arms , legs and body into amazing positions and it was his acrobatic ability that caught the filmgoer's eye. He never developed a constant character, his comedy routines seemed to be more important to him and his chief delight was in dressing up. His films were mainly made at the Educational Studios in Hollywood and sadly many of them were lost forever having been sold for their scrap value He'd made over 40 films by the time 'talkies' arrived and unable to adapt to them concentrated on his first love, the theatre and carried in a successful career, so much so that when he died none of his obituaries mentioned his films. which included 'Sword Points', loosely based on the Three Musketeers, 'Summer Saps', 'Naughty Boy' (with his brother Wallace) and 'Maid in Morocco'- Actor
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Born in Birmingham, England, Charlie Hall was a member of the famed Fred Karno vaudeville troupe, which gave the world Charles Chaplin and Stan Laurel. Hall arrived in the U.S. in the early 1920s, after Chaplin and Laurel, and entered films playing a foil for many of the era's top comics. He is best remembered, though, as the short, stocky, black-haired, bad-tempered nemesis to Laurel and Oliver Hardy in scores of their films, often playing a husband jealous of Hardy's attentions to his wife, a competing store owner, or just a bystander who winds up in an altercation with the duo.- Writer
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Earle Rodney was born on 4 June 1888 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was a writer and actor, known for Uppercut O'Brien (1929), The College Kiddo (1927) and Clancy at the Bat (1929). He was married to Leona Adelle Domke. He died on 16 December 1932 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Billy Dooley was born on 8 February 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Call of the Yukon (1938), The Marines Are Here (1938) and Manhattan Tower (1932). He died on 4 August 1938 in Hollywood, California, USA.
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Famed vaudeville comedian Bobby Clark was born in Springfield, Ohio on June 16, 1888. When he was 12 years old, Bobby and his classmate Paul McCullough created a tumbling act that they took on the road. The duo toured with a traveling minstrel troupe before joining a circus as clowns. The clown act eventually matured to the point where it was time to graduate from the circus to the more sophisticated vaudeville circuit.
Clark & McCullough debuted as a vaudeville comedy team at the Opera House in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1912. Their popularity increased, and after the First World War, they began appearing in London, where they made a great success in musical-comedy. After seeing them in London, composer Irving Berlin signed them for his own Broadway show, the "Music Box Revue". It was a smash hit, and by the time taking pictures debuted, they signed with Fox for a series of one-reel recreations of their act. However, both comedians were uncomfortable with the new medium and soon returned to Broadway. In 1930, RKO-Radio Pictures signed them up to make shorts, and the deal allowed them to continue making Broadway appearances. From 1930 to 1935, from A Peep on the Deep (1930) to Alibi Bye Bye (1935), Clark & McCullough appeared in 22 shorts for RKO, many of which were scripted by Clark himself, with Clark nominally the dominant one closely shadowed by the less talkative McCullough, who was known for his reactive, raucous laugh.
In 1935, after they had finished their vigorous slate of short films for RKO, Clark & McCullough went on tour with "The George White's Scandals". However, McCullough experienced a nervous breakdown from overwork and was committed to a sanitarium for depression and extreme exhaustion. Shortly after being released in early-to-mid March 1936, the comedian visited a barbershop (on March 23rd), and attempted suicide by slicing his neck and wrists with the barber's own razor. Paul McCullough died two days later.
Bobby Clark was devastated. Aside from a bit part in The Goldwyn Follies (1938), he never again appeared in movies. He spent several months in seclusion after his partner's death, but finally returned to Broadway in "The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936". His appearances on Broadway continued, and his fame grew again as he appeared in legitimate plays such as Sheridan's "The Rivals" as well as musical comedies and revues. Begining in 1942, producer Mike Todd cast him in five Broadway shows, all of them smash hits: the musical revue "Stars & Garters" with Gypsy Rose Lee (1942-43); the Cole Porter musical "Mexican Hayride"(1944-45); a production of Molière's "The Would-Be Gentleman"(1946); and the musical revues "As the Girls Go"(1950) and "Michael Todd's Peep Show" (1951).
Bobby Clark also hosted segments of the TV show The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950) produced by Todd. He then bid showbiz adieu, although he emerged from retirement in 1956 to tour with the road show of "Damn Yankees!". Clark died on February 12, 1960, having outlived the minstrel show, vaudeville and burlesque eras. He was 71 years old. The duo of Clark & McCullough is lesser known today than their comedy contemporaries (Three Stooges, Laurel & Hardy", etc.) primarily because their many short films were considered too risqué to be replayed on TV.- Hilliard "Fat" Karr was an obese comedian who appeared in silent two-reel slapstick comedies with two other heavyweights, Frank Alexander and 'Kewpie Ross', in F.B.O.'s low-budget "Ton of Fun" series at the end of the silent era.
Hailing from Houston, Texas, Hilliard Karr made his motion picture debut in the Florida Film Corp.-produced "Sunbeam Comedy" A Dumbwaiter Scandal (1919). Three years later he was in California working for Metropolitan Pictures Corp., appearing as J.B. Warner's sidekick in the Western Big Stakes (1922). It then moved over to Universal for director King Baggot's Human Hearts (1922) and on to Coffin Productions for Easy Pickin' (1922), the first film in which his billing gave cognizance to his extensive weight (he was credited as "Fatty" Karr).
In 1924 and '25, beginning with Lost Control (1924), Karr began appearing in comedy shorts for Century Film Corp. (distributed by Universal), where he worked with directors Edward Ludwig and Charles Lamont, among others. Typical of his films was the Buster Brown short Educating Buster (1925), which starred Pete the Dog as Buster's pooch Tighe. Karr subsequently appeared as the aptly named character "Fatty" in the Blue Streak Western The Circus Cyclone (1925) for Universal in 1925, but for the bulk of his cinema career thereafter, he made merry as part of the comedy team Ton of Fun from 1925 through1928.
As a Ton of Fun, Karr appeared with two other very fat comedians, each of whom topped the scale at 300 lbs ("Fatty" Alexander weighed 350 at the height or his fame). The team made their debut as a comedy team in 1925's Tailoring (1925), with Alexander billed as "Tiny Alexander" (he would later take on the moniker "Fatty" for the series) and Karr would be billed as "Fat Karr." A typical sight gag in a "Ton of Fun" comedy would be Fatty Alexander, in Campus Romeos (1927), playing a salesman who hails a pretty young woman sitting astern in a canoe at the shore. As Fatty steps into the bow of the canoe to show the prospective customer his wares, the bow immediately sinks under his extensive weight, forcing the canoe to go perpendicular. The sweet young thing cannonballs out of the canoe, somersaults into the air and lands in the drink beside a wet Fatty whose bulk has destroyed the once water-worthy vessel.
Produced by Joe Rock, the shorts were made by the Poverty Row studio Standard Photoplay Co. and released by Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Office (F.B.O.), the precursor to R.K.O Radio Pictures. The series was made, in those far-less politically correct, less health-conscious times, to serve as part of the bill for budget-conscious theaters catering to the masses in the days when the movies were king, and television still a gleam in the eyes and imaginations of inventors and radio moguls.
Advertised by F.B.O. as the "three fattest men on the screen," Fat Karr romped across the screen with Fatty Alexander and Kewpie Ross in 34 shorts, many with the adjective "Heavy" in the title (The Heavy Parade (1926), Heavy Fullbacks (1926), Heavy Infants (1928) and the strangely named Heavyation (1926)). Also billed as "The Three Fatties," the "Ton of Fun" team offered the most anarchic comedy per pound available at the time or after. In the series entry Three of a Kind (1926), The Three Fatties play entertainers at a nightclub/restaurant. In short order, a mêlée breaks out between the audience and A Ton of Fun, with the expected result of tables overturned and dishes smashed.
In another entry, Heavy Love (1926), they portray three of the most inept carpenters who ever drove a nail through a board, let alone a skull. The Three Fatties get themselves a job working for a young lady (Lois Boyd) and end up building and subsequently destroying the most bizarre house ever seen.
After making the last "Ton of Fun" comedy in 1928, A Joyful Day (1928), Kewpie Ross retired from the screen and Fatty Alexander was reduced to bit roles in movies at other studios. Undaunted, Hilliard Karr soldiered on, appearing in supporting roles in F.B.O.'s Love in the Desert (1929) and Too Hot to Handle (1930) (the latter released by R.K.O., the entity Joe Kennedy created from F.B.O. and his other film assets) before calling it a career with an uncredited bit in R.K.O.'s The Big Shot (1931).
Hilliard Karr died in Dallas, Texas on October 5, 1945. He was 45 years old. - Augustus Carney was born in 1870 in the UK. He was an actor, known for Alkali Ike Plays the Devil (1912), Hank and Lank: Joyriding (1910) and Alkali Ike Bests Broncho Billy (1912). He died in 1920.
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Marcel Perez was born in 1885 in Madrid, Spain. He was an actor and director, known for The Wisest Fool (1919), He Wins (1918) and It's a Great Life (1918). He was married to Dorothy Earle. He died on 8 February 1929 in Los Angeles, California, USA.A Scrambled Honeymoon- Actress
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Dot Farley was born on 6 February 1881 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was an actress and writer, known for The Red Kimono (1926), So Big (1924) and The Little Irish Girl (1926). She died on 2 May 1971 in South Pasadena, California, USA.- Actress
- Writer
- Director
Eccentric, big-nosed, lugubrious-faced purveyor of silent screen slapstick, at one time billed as 'the elongated comedienne'. She was even suggested to have served as the model for 'Olive Oyl' of Popeye comic strip fame. An actual cartoon version of her was in fact featured in the British publication Film Fun. Gale started as a singer for the Temple Opera Company at the Century Theatre in Los Angeles. On screen from 1915, she first starred in a series of short comedies for independent producer Pat Powers, followed by the 'Joker' series at Universal opposite Augustus Carney and Billy Franey. From 1918, she fronted her own production unit, turning out 'Model' comedies, directed by her then-husband, Bruno C. Becker. These were made at facilities located at Santa Monica Boulevard and subsequently distributed by Reelcraft. By the mid-1920's, Gale had eased into supporting roles, playing old maids, harpies and hen-pecking wives in two-reelers for Joe Rock and Al Christie. She made a successful comeback at the end of the decade, co-starring in Charley Chase vehicles for Hal Roach, among which the most memorable entries were His Wooden Wedding (1925) and Mighty Like a Moose (1926). She also had a notable supporting role in Merton of the Movies (1924).
Personal details of her life are sketchy, but, by the time Becker died in 1926, Gale had married the animal trainer Henry East, a former MGM prop man. Thus, she embarked on a secondary career as co-owner of East Kennels. Their most famous charge was Skippy, a wire-haired terrier born in 1931, who rose to celluloid fame as the lovable Asta of The Thin Man (1934), and its sequels.- Anne Cornwall was born on 17 January 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for College (1927), Dulcy (1923) and The Roughneck (1924). She was married to Ellis Wing Taylor and Charles Maigne. She died on 2 March 1980 in Van Nuys, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was born into an unconventional a family at the turn of the 20th century. Her parents, James "Shamus" Sullivan and Edith "Biddy" Lanchester, were socialists - very active members of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in a rather broad sense - and did not believe in the institution of marriage and being tied to any conventions of legality, for that matter. Her mother had actually been committed to an asylum in 1895 by her father and older brothers because of her unmarried state with James. The incident received worldwide press as the "Lanchester Kidnapping Case."
Elsa had a great desire to become a classical dancer and to that end at age 10 her mother enrolled her at the famed Isadora Duncan's Bellevue School in Paris in 1912. But the uncertainties of WW1 brought her home after only two years. At age 12, she was sent to a co-educational boarding school in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, England, to teach dance classes in exchange for her education and board. In 1918, she was hired as a dance teacher at Margaret Morris's school on the Isle of Wight.
Next to dance, she loved the music halls of the period, so in 1920 she debuted in a music hall act as an Egyptian dancer. About the same time she founded the Children's Theater in Soho, London and taught there for several years. She made her stage debut in 1922 in the West End play "Thirty Minutes in a Street." In 1924 she and her partner, Harold Scott, opened a London nightclub called the Cave of Harmony. They performed one-act plays by Pirandello and Chekhov and sang cabaret songs. She would later collect and record these and many others. The spot was frequented by literati like Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells and also James Whale, working in London theater and soon to be directing on Broadway and Hollywood's most famous horror films. Lanchester kept busy including, on her own admission, posing nude for artists. During a 1926 comic performance in the Midnight Follies at London's Metropole, a member of the British Royal family walked out as she sang, "Please Sell No More Drink to My Father." She closed her nightclub in 1928 as her film career began in earnest.
Perhaps not beautiful in the more conventional sense, Lanchester was certainly pretty as a young woman with a turned-up nose that gave her a pert, impish expression, all the more striking with her large, expressive dark eyes and full lips. She had a lithe figure that she carried with the assuredness of her dancing background. Her voice was bright and distinctive, and had a delightful rush and trill that had an almost Scottish burr quality. What clicked on stage would do the same in the movies.
Her first film appearance was actually in an amateur movie by friend and author Evelyn Waugh called The Scarlet Woman: An Ecclesiastical Melodrama (1925). Her formal film debut was in the British movie One of the Best (1927). She continued stage work and became associated in 1927 with a rather self-possessed but keenly dedicated actor, Charles Laughton. He appeared with her in three of four films Lanchester did in 1928. (Three of these were written for her by H.G. Wells). They did a few plays as well and wed in 1929. According to Lanchester, after two years, she discovered Laughton was homosexual but they remained married until his death in 1962. Lanchester declared in a 1958 interview that she kept to a separate career path from her husband. They appeared together on occasion, moving through 1931 with several smart play-like films including Potiphar's Wife (1931) with Laurence Olivier. She had done the play "Payment Deferred" in London in 1930 and followed it to Broadway in 1931.
MGM offered her a contract in 1932. In 1933 Alexander Korda was casting his The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and decided that Laughton was the perfect choice - and his wife would be just as perfect as one of Henry's six wives. Her versatility pointed to a part with some comedic elements and fitting more into a caricature. She looked most like Hans Holbein's famous portrait of Anne of Cleves (Henry's fourth wife who was actually somewhat more homely than the painter depicted). In costume Lanchester was charming if not striking. Her interpretation of Anne was a perfect integration with herself, and her scene with Laughton informally playing cards on the marriage bed and deciding on annulment is a high point of the movie.
Of course, it would be hard to mention her film career of the 1930s without mentioning the one role that would forever dog her, Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Having come to Hollywood with Laughton in 1932 (but not permanently until 1939), Lanchester did only a few films up to 1935 and was disappointed enough with Hollywood's reception to return to London for a respite. She was quickly called back by an old friend from London, stage and film associate James Whale, now the noted director of Frankenstein (1931) and The Invisible Man (1933). He wanted her for two parts in Bride: author Mary Shelley and the bride. A central joke of the movie build-up was the tag lines: "WHO will be The Bride of Frankenstein? WHO will dare?"
Indeed, it was no honeymoon for her. For some ten days, Lanchester was wrapped in yards of bandage and covered in heavy makeup. The stand-on-end hairdo was accomplished by combing it over a wire mesh cage. Lanchester was in real agony with her eyes kept taped wide open for long takes - and it showed in her looks of horror. Her monster's screaming and hissing sounds (based on the sounds of Regents Park swans in London) were taped and then run backward to spook-up the effect. She was delightfully melodramatic and picturesque as Wollstonecraft, and her bride would become iconic. Many have considered Bride of Frankenstein (1935) the best of the golden age horror movies.
Lanchester stood out in her next movie with Laughton the next year, Korda's dark Rembrandt (1936), but she only did a few more films for the remainder of the decade. Through the 1940s she was doubly busy - a couple of films per year while regenerating her beloved musical revue sketches. She performed for 10 years at the Turnabout Theater in Hollywood, using old London music hall/cabaret songs and others written for her. Later she would have to split her time further doing a similar act at a supper club called The Bar of Music. By the later 1940s she had become rather matronly, and the roles would settle appropriately. But she always lent her sparkle, as with her charming maid Matilda in The Bishop's Wife (1947). She would be nominated for best supporting actress in Come to the Stable (1949).
She entered the 1950s busy with road touring of her nightclub act with pianist J. Raymond Henderson (who went by "Ray" and who is sometimes confused with popular songwriter Ray Henderson). There was a series of tours to complement Laughton's famous reading tours, called Elsa Lanchester's Private Music Hall which ended in 1952; Elsa Lanchester--Herself which ended in 1961; and once more in 1964 at the Ivar Theater. She was equally busy with a stock of film roles and a large share of TV playhouse theater. She made ten movies with Laughton, the last of which, Witness for the Prosecution (1957) garnered her second supporting actress nomination. But her dizzy Aunt Queenie Holroyd of Bell Book and Candle (1958) is a fond remembrance of that time.
With the two decades from the 1960s to early 1980s, Lanchester was a fixture on episodic TV and an institution in Disney and G-rated fare - perhaps a bit ironic for the unconventional Lanchester. She wrote two autobiographies: "Charles Laughton and I" (1938) and "Elsa Lanchester: Herself" (1983), both recalling her nearly 100 roles before the camera. Lanchester remained humorously reflective in regard to her film career, describing it as "...large parts in lousy pictures and small parts in big pictures." It was the mix of silly, bawdy, and outrageous in her revues that was her great joy: "I was content because I was fully aware that I did not like straight acting but preferred performing direct to an audience. You might call what I do vaudeville. Making a joke, especially impromptu, and getting a big laugh is just plain heaven."