Cider and Feet

Two silent comedy-oriented 78s from the Edison recording team of Arthur Collins and Byron G. Harlan, "The Half-Ton Duo", courtesy archive.org. Edgar Leslie and Archie Gottler's Those Charlie Chaplin Feet (1915) is well known as the most popular of the Chaplin Craze novelty songs. Leslie's lyrics nicely sum up the spirit of Chaplin's early Keystones and Mutuals:

Those Charlie Chaplin feet.
Those funny Chaplin feet.
When he comes down the street
He makes a cop flop.
They chase him 'round the town.
An auto knocks him down.
Poor Charlie!
Twenty times a day they spill him
But they never kill him!

Sipping Cider Thru' a Straw is associated with silent comedy in a much more roundabout way. For reasons unknown to me, the sheet music for this 1919 song by David Lee and Carey Morgan is "dedicated to "Fatty" Arbuckle, the Famous Paramount Comedian". The song has a rather "rural" quality which does evoke the small town character of many of Roscoe's shorts, but I'm probably just grasping at straws (heh) here.. Does anyone here know the real reason for the dedication to Roscoe?

"Writing" Comedy with Fatty Arbuckle

From Photoplay, April, 1918. Roscoe, Al, and Buster are the focus of this brief examination the improvisational methods employed by most slapstick comics before the arrival of sound. The short in question is, of course, Out West. The anonymous author has an obsession with quotation marks that rivals that of George Herriman!

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?

We will BURY you.... in hilarity!

I sure don't, but do you remember the days when you could publish a trashy trade paperback about a silent comedian... and people would buy it? Believe it or not, Leo Guild's The Fatty Arbuckle Case is far more objective than the lurid jacket would indicate. I mean, look at it!

Poor Roscoe! Stanley Borack has painted him as the love-child of Curly Howard and Nikita Kruschev (and who ever imagined that Virginia Rappe had such a long torso!). Fortunately for Roscoe, better books have been written about his career and tragic downfall, including Stuart Oderman's latest, probably definitive, biography. But what about the others, I ask you? It has been too long since a classic comedy fan could plunk down a quarter for a cheap, poorly-researched paperback with a misleading cover about his or her favorite silent comedians. Let us relive those dear, dead days of yesteryear with this sampling of phoney paperback covers I just made up.