Stuff and Nonsense, Part II

More ink-based classic comedy odds and ends filched from Ebay.

A 1922 trade ad for Charley Chase's brother Paul Parrott's first series for Hal Roach.

At five reels, Grandma's Boy (1922) was Harold Lloyd's first true feature, the four reel featurette A Sailor-Made Man having been released the year before. I love the copy emphasizing that Grandma's Boy was still doing phenomenal business "in the Midst of Summer", a reminder that in the days before air-conditioning, crowded theaters in Summer were nasty, smelly sweatboxes you wouldn't want to spend too much time in.

1926 Pathe' exhibitor's yearbook promo for Lloyd's features. There's something a little unsettling about that portrait of Harold.

And speaking of unsettling, here's a 1922 trade ad for Eddie Lyons' Arrow comedies. Maybe that expression meant "zany funmaker" in 1922. Today it means "dangerous madman concealing a knife".

Nothing duller than a "respectable" silent short comedy. If you were the type of movie patron offended by the crude and untoward antics of, say, that disreputable rapscallion Buster Keaton, you could always watch Carter de Haven for a round of polite and barely audible chuckles. Mr. P. A. Powers is the same Pat Powers that distributed and provided the sound equipment for Walt Disney's first talking cartoons, screwed him out of his profits, and then signed his key animator and business partner Ub Iwerks out from under him to set up another studio.

Exploding stoves are wacky! Look at that cat fly! Ho ho! Who stars in Fox Imperial Comedies? Apparently no one worth mentioning by name. Just put your trust in William Fox that the stars are fully qualified and accredited Laughmakers. George Marshall did direct some of the Imperial Comedies, but King of the Kitchen (1926) was directed by none other than former Karno vet and Chaplin crony Albert Austin, best remembered as the wonderfully deadpan man whose alarm clock Chaplin eviscerates in The Pawnshop (1916). Austin reportedly spent his final years as a studio guard at Warner Brothers.. sad, but a definite improvement over the fate of former silent star Karl Dane who was reduced to selling hot dogs outside the MGM gates... as I'm sure I've mentioned before, ghoul that I am.

This 1926 promo for the Fox Animal Comedies was drawn by cartoonist, animator, puppeteer and all-round renaissance man Tony Sarg, who, among other things, created the first figural balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1927 (including the first character balloon, Felix the Cat). Sarg's association with Fox and the Animal Comedies is a total mystery to me as he had been out of the film business for several years. As for the films, I'm assuming they consisted of comically edited and doctored up nature footage.

Any idea who the mustachioed star of Educational's 1922 Mermaid Comedies might be? At first glance I thought it might be Billy Bletcher, but the dates don't add up. Is it Jimmie Adams, perhaps?

In 1926, Educational's tag "The Best of the Old and the Best of the New" had yet to take on the decidedly negative connotations it would during the 30s when the studio developed a decidedly unfair reputation as the elephants' graveyard of film comedy. They had a pretty good lineup in 1926, but I suspect that Educational made more money that year from the globally popular Felix the Cat cartoons than from the rest of their of their output combined.

One of Hal Roach's numerous Westerns starring Rex the Wonder Horse, this one written in part by Stan Laurel. There's even a horse love interest, "Lady", and a horse villain, "The Killer"! Kids in 1926 must have gone nuts over this.

1926 Charlie Chaplin reissues from Pathe'. The copy essentially reads "Chaplin. 'Nuff said."

Harold Lloyd On the Air

Of the three top comedians of the silent era, Harold Lloyd was easily the most comfortable with sound. Unlike Chaplin, for whom sound was anathema, or Keaton, whose innovative ideas about sound would have permitted him to remain a silent comic in a talking world, Harold Lloyd wanted to embrace the technology and become a fully-fledged Talking Comedian. In 1929, realizing that talkies were to be more than a passing fad, he reshot the bulk of the finished but unreleased silent Welcome Danger, making it the first talking feature from a major silent comedian (Keaton would have beaten him to the punch. He had wanted to shoot Spite Marriage as a talkie but MGM balked and it was released as a silent in April, six months before Lloyd's picture). Lloyd quickly established a voice for his famous "glass" character, thin, uncertain, but emphatic. The voice didn't add very much to Lloyd's characterization, but it certainly didn't detract, and I'm probably one of the few people who thinks that Harold's desperate calls for help during the building-climbing climax of Feet First (1930) effectively add to the tension rather than spoil the sequence. So comfortable was Lloyd with sound, in fact, that he was even prepared to cast off visuals altogether and move into radio, a bold move for a comedian with only a few years stage experience and a reputation built exclusively on pantomime. Negotiations for a radio series had begun in 1938, but Lloyd was understandably shaky about making the jump. From Billboard:


As it happened, Lloyd needn't have worried about injuring his film standing with a lousy radio series. The picture then in release, Professor Beware, was such a box office disappointment that Lloyd quit movies altogether. Probably having second thoughts about continuing as a performer in any medium, Lloyd nixed the radio deal.

But by 1944, Lloyd was ready for a second go. Instead of a starring role in a series of his own, Lloyd opted to play it safe.. too safe. The Old Gold Comedy Theater was inspired by the overwhelming success of long-running dramatic anthology Lux Radio Theater. While Lux featured adaptations of major movies then in release, usually starring the actual casts, the Old Gold Comedy Theater concentrated exclusively on adaptations of comedies. The show was hosted by Lloyd in much the same capacity as Cecil B. DeMille on Lux. DeMille hosted Lux with such overwhelming authority that, in the words of one Tune In reviewer, he sounded like the voice of God. As host of OGCT, Harold Lloyd was similarly a legitimate voice of authority but, as the "director" of the Comedy Theater, a mild spoof of DeMille as well. "Director" Harold Lloyd opened each show with silly question and answer sessions or games to "cast" that week's adaptation. The material Lloyd had to work with was, if the episodes I've heard are any indication, extremely weak and would have been hopeless no matter who the host, but Lloyd's ineffectual and not terribly interesting voice is no help. Without visuals, Lloyd could be just about anybody (and even being Harold Lloyd in 1944 may not have carried much weight with an audience). The Old Gold Comedy Theater ran for one season only and is mostly of interest for those with a taste for screwball comedy (which I don't). Courtesy of Jerry Haendiges' Same Time, Same Station comes these two episodes of OGCT; A Girl, A Guy, and A Gob (2/11/45) and Vivacious Lady (11/19/44). The adaptation of Lloyd's 1936 feature The Milky Way announced at the end of A Girl, A Guy, and A Gob is included on the Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection DVD set. If anyone here has heard it, I'd like to read your assessment.

Charlie v. Charles

Can I get much further from true Third Banana comedians than Chaplin? Geoff argues that Charlie certainly qualifies for Third Banana status here in the States as we, well, booted him out (or, rather, cowardly locked him out) in 1952. Perhaps, but like so many other colossal flubs on the part of America's Powers That Be, Chaplin's shameful expulsion has largely gone down the memory hole, as have his leftist politics, and today his films tend to stand on their own. Nevertheless, Third Banana or Ultimate Top Banana, this Punch review of City Lights, arguably Chaplin's finest feature, deserves some attention for its keen insights and remarkable prescience. E. V. L., the Punch film critic who also disproved the theory that the world in 1930 was united in its love of Keaton's MGM talkies, here examines the pros and cons of City Lights, the nature of Charlie's fame, and, to top it off, charts the potential path of Chaplin's career in sound. Indeed, as it turned out, the Tramp and sound were mutually exclusive and while Chaplin, now Mr. Charles, didn't really turn into a dramatist, most of his talkies are pretty heartbreaking. There's an interesting dig at Harold Lloyd in there, too, whose comedy megastar status had yet to fade in 1931. If I disagree with E. V. L. about anything here, it's his assessment of City Lights' crushing final moments. There's nothing positive about that ending; it's a profoundly cruel scene with both the Tramp and the Flower-girl now permanently separated from one another by personal and social expectations, easily the darkest ending of any of Chaplin's films. As Walter Kerr writes in The Silent Clowns, "The end is isolation, face to face, smiling through ice."

click on thumbnail for full-sized image

What's missing from this picture?

This has always puzzled me, and I'm sure there's more to it than meets the eye. Mack Sennett released this publicity photo of new star Harry Langdon in or around 1924. Harry is seen outside his dressing room, contemplating a signboard featuring the names of Sennett performers who had previously used the room, illustrating his status as new top dog in the Sennett pantheon. Of course it's just a gimmick, but the names Sennett or his publicity men opted to use are somewhat peculiar. Chaplin is a given, and his half-brother Syd was a star at the time. Gloria Swanson is also an obvious inclusion, although I doubt she would have wanted her name memorialized as a Sennett discovery. Harold Lloyd, on the other hand, breezed through the studio between gigs for Hal Roach, barely registering as more than an extra, hardly a Sennett "find". And what about the names that aren't included? Roscoe Arbuckle is missing, undoubtedly because of the scandal and blacklist, but what about Mabel Normand?? Given Mack's on again/off again relationship with Mabel, this seems a rather pointed omission. And that her star was on the decline in 1924 was no excuse. Hell, they've got Ford Sterling's name up there! Strangely, if you look closely at the photo, you'll notice that room was left at the bottom for Langdon's name, but one name on the sign was painted over in white and Langdon's name was written over it. Was it Arbuckle? Mabel?