In this exclusive essay for The Archives blog, Ed Hulse, serial film aficionado and author of Distressed Damsels and Masked Marauders: Cliffhanger Serials of the Silent-Movie Era, takes us on a journey through the genesis of American serial film, its lasting contributions to the film industry, and how it compares to its European counterparts, such as the French silent serial, THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY.

          The basic elements of film grammar were already well established by 1913, when the initial episode of The Adventures of Kathlyn—the first true “chapter play”—flashed upon theater screens. Nonetheless, the serial’s contribution to the film industry’s development has been habitually underestimated by critics and historians.

Popular screen stars who made early appearances in silent-era serials included Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Constance Bennett, Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, Laura La Plante, Adolphe Menjou, Warner Oland, Esther Ralston, Milton Sills, Rudolph Valentino, Warren William, and Anna May Wong. Broadway favorites Billie Burke, Irene Castle, and Lillian Lorraine each top-lined a chapter play, as did champion prizefighters Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, and “Gentleman Jim” Corbett.

James Cruze and Irving Cummings acted in early serials before wielding megaphones from behind the camera, where they achieved greater fame. Journeyman directors W. S. Van Dyke, George Marshall, Richard Thorpe, and George B. Seitz enjoyed lengthy stints with major studios after helming episodic thrillers for Pathé and Mascot. Oscar-winning cinematographers Joseph August, Stanley Cortez, Linwood Dunn, Arthur Miller, and Leon Shamroy cranked cameras on serials before graduating to big-budget feature films. Playwright Philip Barry, whose Broadway hits included Holiday, The Animal Kingdom, and The Philadelphia Story, temporarily abandoned stage work in 1924 to write a Pathé serial, Ten Scars Make a Man.

Notwithstanding the eventual prominence of the people named above, the chapter play’s importance in American film history cannot be attributed to the careers it helped launch. The serial had much broader impact than it has been credited with. It changed the way motion pictures were advertised and distributed. (Distributors of episodic thrillers pioneered the use of billboard advertising and the practice of  saturation booking known as “opening wide.”) It codified narrative devices still employed today in movies and TV series, among them the so-called “cliffhanger” ending.  And it made weekly theater attendance a habit for millions of Americans, thus facilitating the industry’s rapid growth during the silent era.

The motion-picture serial was strictly a child of commerce, born not to advance the art of narrative filmmaking but, rather, as a cross-promotional device aimed at increasing the circulations of magazines and newspapers. There was nothing new about the idea; it had been bruited about in 1907. But five years passed before someone implemented it. The Edison Company in 1912 experimented with a loosely connected series of one-reel dramas, released monthly to correspond with the publication of prose versions in the McClure magazine Ladies’ World. The success of What Happened to Mary? inspired another circulation-building stunt, this one originating in the minds of Chicago Tribune editor Walter Howey and circulation manager Max Annenberg, who forged an alliance with local filmmaker Colonel William N. Selig. The Colonel agreed to produce a sequential film whose chapters would be adapted to prose and not only serialized in the pages of the Tribune but syndicated to other papers as well. Fictionalized by Harold MacGrath from scenarios by Gilson Willets, The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913) was phenomenally successful. It had a reasonably complex plot, a strong central villain, and endings that interrupted thrilling action sequences before their conclusion, leaving viewers in what was called “holdover suspense.”

From its beginnings, the motion-picture serial reflected the influences of popular-priced stage melodrama and mass-market fiction, the latter delivered to thrill-hungry readers in cheaply produced woodpulp magazines. Chapter-play writers hewed closely to the well-established conventions of pulp fiction and sensation-based theatrical productions because they hoped to attract the same consumers to which those mediums appealed: largely working class, with a small but significant percentage of the middle class; urban dwellers and small-town residents alike. The relatively short lengths and primitive storytelling techniques of early motion pictures made inevitable a reliance on melodrama, with its direct narratives, broadly sketched situations, and clearly defined character types.

Stage melodrama emerged at the turn of the 19th century, but it took nearly a hundred years to evolve into the form from which early filmmakers drew plots, themes, and concepts. By then known as “10-20-30” (reflecting the prices charged by theaters specializing in this type of show), the thrill-charged melodrama flourished in small towns and big cities alike, playing mostly to uncritical, marginally literate spectators. The hallmark of 10-20-30 was sensationalism.

The average 10-20-30 story was presented in four acts and incorporated as many as 20 separate scenes, some ending with thrilling situations—not unlike the serial’s “cliffhanger” endings—calling for elaborate scenic effects. The climax of Joseph Arthur’s The Still Alarm (1890), adapted to celluloid several times during the silent-movie era, boasted a race-to-the-rescue climax in which real horses, hitched to a real fire engine, galloped on a treadmill (backed by a revolving cyclorama to create the illusion of speed) to the scene of a conflagration represented by smoke wafting across the stage from carefully hidden pots.

The heroine of Charles T. Dazey’s In Old Kentucky (1893), which also had several screen incarnations, was called upon to swing by rope across a deep chasm and rescue a racehorse from a burning stable. Ramsey Morris’s The Ninety and Nine (1902) depicted the passing of a locomotive through a forest fire, and Charles A. Tyler’s Through Fire and Water simulated the plunging of a canoe over a waterfall. Such effects required complicated sets and apparatus, and were often achieved with astonishing verisimilitude. Both natural and unnatural disasters paraded nightly across the stages of 10-20-30 theaters.

The fiction in dime novels and pulp magazines naturally lacked the sensory appeal of the sensational stage melodrama, but it offered a level of narrative complexity rarely found in 10-20-30 theatrical fare. A popular setting was the mansion of mystery, where large groups of people assembled, one at a time, to pursue some sinister objective. There was also an emphasis on crime stories that routinely featured mystery men—some masked and cloaked, some grotesquely disguised—on both sides of the law. They clashed over treasure maps, hidden fortunes, secret formulas, revolutionary inventions, and deeds to valuable properties.

Early chapter plays often had urban backgrounds, reflecting not only a thematic predisposition but also the east-coast locations in which early production companies had studios: Manhattan, Brooklyn, and New Jersey’s Fort Lee and Jersey City. Thanhouser’s The Million Dollar Mystery and Pathé’s The Exploits of Elaine, both 1914 releases, were seminal serials built around master criminals with immense organizations. Malefactors plotted their depredations in secluded lairs outfitted with hidden doors, secret passages, underground tunnels, and basement torture chambers.

          The American movie serial quickly stultified, a prisoner of its own clichés and inhibited by self-imposed restrictions on chapter length, subject matter, and budgetary expenditure. Chapter plays made in Europe, while similarly obsessed with crime and melodrama, were not as rigidly formatted, nor did they rely so much on physical action and breathtaking stunts to hold spectator interest. Louis Feuillade’s Fantomas, Les Vampires, and Judex are generally considered to be the most noteworthy examples of French serials, but the form was extremely popular in that country and dozens of as-yet-unheralded chapter plays were made there during the silent era. The 10 episodes of La Maison du Mystère (The House of Mystery, 1923), directed by Alexandre Volkoff and starring distinguished Russian actor Ivan Mosjoukine, consume seven hours and unfold over an 18-year span. It incorporates into a mature and complex plot such familiar serial elements as murder, blackmail, and an innocent man’s efforts to clear his name. But the characters are more fully developed than is usually the case in American silent serials, and the narrative never devolves into a tiresome progression of chases, fights, captures, and escapes.

In short, it is everything the American chapter play might have been, had commercial considerations been sublimated to artistic expression.

Ed Hulse is a journalist and historian who has been writing about the film and video industries since 1979 for such publications as The New Yorker,The New York Times, Premiere, Entertainment Weekly, Video Review, Video Business, and Consumer Electronics Monthly. His books include The Blood ’n’ Thunder Guide to Pulp Fiction, The Films of Betty Grable, Filming the West of Zane Grey, and Distressed Damsels and Masked Marauders. The latter’s companion volume, Handsome Heroes and Vicious Villains, will be published in March 2015. Hulse also is the editor and publisher of Blood ’n’ Thunder, a quarterly journal that celebrates adventure, mystery, and melodrama in American popular culture of the early 20th century. Distressed Damsels and Masked Marauders is available to order from Morania Press.

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“Although born in 1889, Ivan Mosjoukine is eighteen, of character and temperament; and those who saw him, in THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY and Le Brasier Ardent, play love scenes will not contradict me: he loves with a respectful and shy ardor that is not found in any other leading man and that one hardly feels but around this age; Mr. Mosjoukine remains there. . . at least on screen.”

Source: Mon Ciné, Nr. 129, 07-08-1924

You can see Ivan Mosjoukine’s “shy ardor” in THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY, on home video for the first time in a 3-disc DVD collection and available for pre-order today.

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Of all the developments that made 1917 such a landmark year in film—the industry-wide adoption of what is now known as “classical continuity editing,” Mary Pickford’s emergence as the most powerful woman in Hollywood history, Charlie Chaplin’s maturation as an artist—perhaps the happiest for movie fans today was the big screen debut of the greatest film comedian of all time, Buster Keaton.

That Buster Keaton is only now arriving on the scene may come as a bit of a surprise to those of us who naturally think of Keaton as a contemporary of Chaplin—certainly we frame the debate “Chaplin versus Keaton” in those terms—but the fact is, Chaplin was already an international star with sixty films to his credit (including forty he directed himself) before Keaton ever set foot in a film studio. And although Keaton would brilliantly subvert most of the rules of early film comedy in a brief but prolific run between 1920 and 1928, it was by and large Chaplin who had established those rules, a fact that Keaton himself later conceded.

Which is not to say Keaton was an amateur when he joined Roscoe Arbuckle during the filming of The Butcher Boy in early 1917. He had been performing on the vaudeville stage with his parents from the age of four as part of a rough and tumble “knockabout” comedy act.

“I’d just simply get in my father’s way all the time,” Keaton said, “and get kicked all over the stage. But we always managed to get around the [child labor] law,” he added, “because the law read: No child under the age of sixteen shall do acrobatics, walk wire, play musical instruments, trapeze—and it named everything—but none of them said you couldn’t kick him in the face.”

Legend has it he was dubbed “Buster” when escape artist Harry Houdini saw the infant Keaton take a fall down a flight of stairs and bounce up unharmed. Whether he was born with it, or developed it doing routines with his father, if Keaton wasn’t the most talented pratfall artist in movie history, I’d like to see the guy who survived long enough to be a better one. He did stunts that rivaled those of Douglas Fairbanks, and when he was done, he doubled for his co-stars and did their stunts, too.

“The secret,” he once said, “is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It’s a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I’d have been killed if I hadn’t been able to land like a cat.”

In early 1917, Keaton was booked into New York’s Winter Garden for a series of shows when he bumped into Roscoe Arbuckle while strolling down Broadway.

For those of you who only know Arbuckle—”Fatty” to his fans, “Roscoe” to his friends—through the tabloid scandal and subsequent trial that (despite his acquittal) ended his career, you’re missing out on one of the greatest comedic actor-directors of the silent era. Although I wouldn’t put him in the same league as “the three geniuses”—Chaplin, Keaton and Harold Lloyd—Arbuckle was, in terms of his popularity and impact, the best of the rest, the very top of the second tier of comedians that included Mabel Normand, Charley Chase, Harry Langdon, Ford Sterling and Max Linder.

Mark Bourne in his review of the Arbuckle/Keaton collection for The DVD Journal suggested that Arbuckle was to his biggest commercial rival, Charlie Chaplin, what Adam Sandler is these days to Woody Allen, “less artistic and sophisticated by miles, but nonetheless obviously skilled and unquestionably popular with his own characteristic wacky and raucous manner.”

The collaboration between Keaton and Arbuckle was to prove pivotal for Buster.

“Arbuckle asked me if I’d ever been in a motion picture,” Keaton told Kevin Brownlow in 1964. “I said I hadn’t even been in a studio. He said, ‘Come on down to the Norma Talmadge Studio on Forty-eighth Street on Monday. Get there early and do a scene with me and see how you like it.’ Well, rehearsals [at the Winter Garden] hadn’t started yet, so I said, ‘all right.’ I went down and we did it.”

That first scene, in the Arbuckle short comedy The Butcher Boy, ends in one of the best of Keaton’s early gags. At the 6:25 mark of the film, Keaton wanders into the country store where Arbuckle works as a butcher and by the end of the scene, Keaton’s trademark porkpie hat is full of molasses and the store is a wreck.

“The first time I ever walked in front of a motion picture camera,” he said, “that scene is in the finished motion picture and instead of doing just a bit [Arbuckle] carried me all the way through it.”

It’s a terrific sequence, but it’s as notable for what isn’t in it as what is—Keaton does not wear an outrageous costume or wild facial hair, nor does he indulge in the over-the-top reactions and shameless mugging common to the era. He’s just a thoroughly average American—albeit, one who can take a swipe at Al St. John, do a 360º spin in mid-air and wind up flat on his back—who has somehow wandered in off the street and found himself thrust into the insanity of a two-reel silent comedy.

Keaton’s understatement was the antithesis of the Mack Sennett approach, and was so wholly original, it constituted something of a revolution. Audiences and critics alike instantly took note, if not always approvingly.

“The deadpan was a natural,” Keaton said. “As I grew up on the stage, experience taught me that I was the type of comedian that if I laughed at what I did, the audience didn’t. Well, by the time I went into pictures when I was twenty-one, working with a straight face, a sober face, was mechanical with me.

“I got the reputation immediately [of being] called ‘frozen face,’ ‘blank pan’ and things like that. We went into the projection room and ran our first two pictures to see if I’d smiled. I hadn’t paid any attention to it. We found out I hadn’t. It was just a natural way of acting.”

But deadpan, as any Keaton fan can tell you, isn’t synonymous with inert, and as film historian Gilberto Perez has noted, Keaton was able to show us a face, “by subtle inflections, so vividly expressive of inner life. His large deep eyes are the most eloquent feature; with merely a stare he can convey a wide range of emotions, from longing to mistrust, from puzzlement to sorrow.”

Keaton’s next film with Arbuckle, The Rough House, is one of their best. Not only does it feature some of the best gags of Arbuckle’s career—the dancing dinner rolls, trying to douse a raging fire with a teacup, squeezing out a bowl of soup with a sponge—but many film historians also now list Keaton as its uncredited co-director.

“The first thing I did in the studio,” he told Robert and Joan Franklin in 1958, “was to tear that camera to pieces. I had to know how that film got into the cutting-room, what you did to it in there, how you projected it, how you finally got the picture together, and how you made things match. The technical part of pictures is what interested me.”

Keaton and Arbuckle made three more comedies in 1917, His Wedding Night, Oh Doctor! and Coney Island. Each features an aspect of Keaton rarely seen after.

In the first, Keaton plays a milliner’s delivery boy and winds up in drag as he models a wedding dress. Mistaking him for the bride, Al St. John kidnaps Keaton and hauls him off to the preacher at gunpoint.

In Oh, Doctor!, he plays Arbuckle’s little boy, a reprise of the sort of comedy Keaton and his father Joe had done for years on stage, and pulls off a stunt you have to see to believe—Arbuckle smacks him, Keaton tumbles backwards over a table, picks up a book as he falls, and lands upright in a chair, with the book on his lap as if he’s been there all along, reading comfortably.

And while Coney Island is mostly an excuse to watch Arbuckle caper around Luna Park—its plot of men wooing women on park benches is a throwback to the Keystone comedies—the film is worth seeking out for two reasons: one, for its documentary footage of Coney Island nearly one hundred years ago, and two, a rare chance to see Buster Keaton smile!

The smile notwithstanding, in terms of his look, his acting style, his fearless physical stunts and his fascination with technology, the basic Keaton was already on full display in these early two-reel comedies. He had only to add the context—that of a rational man enmeshed in the machinery of a universe that exists only to achieve absurd ends—for his unique brand of humor to reach its full flower.

In 1918, Keaton made five more two-reel comedies with Arbuckle before shipping off to France to serve in the army during World War I. Although not credited as such, by this time Keaton was working as the assistant director when Arbuckle, the credited director, was in front of the camera.

“You fell into those jobs,” Keaton said later. “He never referred to me as the assistant director, but I was the guy who sat alongside of the camera and watched scenes that he was in. I ended up just practically co-directing with him.”

The new balance in their collaboration showed up in front of the camera as well. In the first three films of 1918, he and Arbuckle are equal partners, more Laurel and Hardy—with Keaton as a thin straight man and Arbuckle a rotund goof—than the star/supporting player dynamic of 1917. The first film of the year, Out West is a parody of the Western genre, popular at the time, with Arbuckle playing a drifter riding the rails who winds up working for Keaton as an uncharacteristically tough saloon owner. Parody would soon prove to be one of Keaton’s trademarks—indeed, his two-reeler The Frozen North in 1922 was such a savage parody of William S. Hart’s “good bad guy” westerns that Hart refused to speak to Keaton for two years.

Next up was The Bell Boy, the story of two Stooge-like bellhops in a shabby hotel. The horse-drawn elevator is pure Keaton who was always fascinated by machines, and built several movies around them, culminating in his classic train picture, The General.

The film that followed, Moonshine, is the most Keatonesque of all his collaborations with Arbuckle. Ostensibly the story of a pair of inept revenuers (Keaton and Arbuckle) hot on the trail of West Virginia bootleggers, this is really a movie about movies, with the title cards constantly breaking the fourth wall to explain the filming process. “Look, this is only a two-reeler,” one says, “We don’t have time to build up to love scenes.” Opening up the mechanics of movie making for laughs was a Keaton trick he would revisit time and again, culminating with Sherlock Jr. in 1924 when a projectionist gets sucked into the film itself.

The next two shorts, Good Night, Nurse and The Cook, both came out after Keaton had shipped out for the European war and his contributions look hasty, as if he filmed a couple of scenes for both, leaving the main plot for Arbuckle to flesh out later. Still, they’re both worth a look, particularly The Cook which was thought to be lost for decades until rediscovered in Norway in 1999.

After a year in the Army left Keaton deaf in one ear, he went right back to making short films with Arbuckle. The first of them, Back Stage, is a traditional “hey kids, lets put on a play” story with one extraordinary scene—anticipating Keaton’s most famous stunt in 1928’s Steamboat Bill Jr., a house falls on Arbuckle only to miss him thanks to an open second floor window. Here, the house is only a cardboard stage prop and, unlike that latter example which might have killed Keaton, nobody is in danger, but seeing this early attempt at a famous gag is a bit like finding a preliminary sketch of Picasso’s Guernica on the back of a cocktail napkin.

There were two more shorts, The Hayseed in 1919 and The Garage in 1920, after which Arbuckle left to make full-length feature films, but not before leaving the keys to the studio to Keaton. With Arbuckle’s public blessing, Keaton began to direct films of his own.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

The blog-typing sock puppet known as the Mythical Monkey is the polite, personable alter ego of John Parker, a Washington attorney and writer with a lifelong interest in classic movies.  His blog, A Mythical Monkey Writes About The Movies, is a collection of essays focused on silent cinema and the early sound era.

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“A young and beautiful artist particularly applauded in THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY, that serial film of a very curious character. This artist is Hélène Darly, whose performance is so personal it is quite remarkable. We will see her in the near future in La Chiffonier de Paris, a film made by the Société des Films Albatros.”

    

Inside, journalist V. Remay relays an impromptu interview with a gracious Darly. The full text is in French above. In the excerpt we’ve translated below, Darly describes how Fille du peuple helped prepare her for her later role in THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY and describes the extremely unorthodox manner in which some of her most emotional scenes from the serial were shot.

“Hélène Darly: On the other hand, I had the opportunity there [shooting Fille du peuple] to worry about the issue of crying on screen, which served me well later in THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY. I realized that tears look very bad on screen and I studied the facial expressions that can show sobs without tears…

Do you understand me? The internal tears, the tears that choke…

V. Remay: Do I understand you?…But I can only think about your lead scenes in the Tribunal scenes in THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY. In this film that I love, I rank them among the best, and I admire you without reservation.

Hélène Darly: It’s kind, what you’re saying to me…But do you know how I shot them? Mosjoukine was just in bed, with typhoid fever. We hardly worked. And then [director Alexandre] Volkoff said to me one day:

You know that we have some film to shoot for your lead scenes. Let’s use this lost time to get them out of the way. And that’s how I played those scenes of poignant pain in an empty studio, where the hammers are pounding in the background, with, only, a few vague extras around me. I had nothing to inspire me, nor the solemn pageantry of the set, nor my partner Mosjoukine. Just my imagination before the relentless objective of [cinematographer Joseph-Louis] Mundviller and the imperious and always demanding instructions of Volkoff…”

Source: Mon Ciné, Nr. 106, 28-2-1924 1924

You can see Hélène Darly channel her “internal tears” in THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY, on home video for the first time in a 3-disc DVD collection and available for pre-order today.

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Harry Langdon was a multi-gifted artist whose talents included acting, writing, directing, producing, musical skills and a flair for cartooning. He was a working performer for over 40 years and appeared in every type of show business entertainment from the turn of the century until his death in 1944. He is ranked as one of the four greatest silent film comedians along with Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. Langdon was briefly a superstar of motion pictures in the late 1920’s and continued to be an audience favorite up until the end. His reputation has continued to grow over the years and he is now acknowledged as a master film actor and one of the most unique personalities among the clowns of the screen.

I was first aware of him when I purchased some of his silent two-reel films on Super 8mm in the 1970’s. His performances quickly captivated me and I was astonished at what a weird and quirky presence he was. Langdon’s character was that of an innocent who wandered through his adventures with a bemused outlook on the antics which surrounded him. While his films had their share of humor, many times I wasn’t laughing so much as intrigued by this otherworldly person who was undefinable.  Sometimes he would seem to be a little boy or even an infant and at other times he would become a young man or a middle aged mature figure. This criss-crossing of his apparent ages was very interesting and I really became a lifelong fan. He was also very funny and a master of pantomime.

As film books began to appear in the 1970’s such as The Silent Clowns by Walter Kerr, Langdon had significant coverage and was hailed as a talent that briefly burst forth, then plummeted through his own ego and bad choices of vehicles. Frank Capra wrote many of Langdon’s early short subjects and helped to refine his character for the medium of film. In The Name Above the Title, Capra’s autobiography, he trashes Langdon as a simpleton who didn’t understand his character and, once famous, unintentionally sabotaged his career as a big star by refusing to heed his creative team. Due to Capra’s immense fame and stature as an outstanding director, this view became the gospel and was repeated in many books as time passed. Despite this negative legacy, Langdon’s films continued to be shown at film societies and at venues such as the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles and similar movie houses in New York.  Raymond Rohauer, who had rescued Buster Keaton’s films and exhibited them to critical acclaim, also showcased many of the best films of Langdon to similar reactions.

In the 1980’s into the 1990’s several of his silent and talkie shorts were released in various VHS compilations and continued to delight viewers. In the new millennium there were DVD releases of all of his extant silent films with musical accompaniment. His two reel talkie shorts for the Hal Roach Studio which were made in 1929-1930, were exhibited on TV in quality prints. Harry Langdon’s best work in film is available for any who might wish to see an amazingly talented actor and a skilled mime.

Langdon began a show business career as a stage performer at the beginning of the twentieth century. He started with medicine shows then moved to stock companies in which he acted, sang, danced and worked in all the capacities of theatre production. Langdon’s innocent character was in place almost from the beginning and he seems to have been accepted by audiences of the time. In the early teens he began to appear in the vaudeville circuits and was writing his own scripts for his acts. His reputation continued to grow and he was regarded as a competent and reliable performer. By the early teens he had teamed with his new wife and became very popular with an act called “Johnny’s New Car.” Langdon played a chauffeur who has trouble with both his automobile and a girlfriend who enjoys spending his money. This act, written by him, really propelled both Langdons into bigger theaters and eventually Broadway appearances. Langdon was a skilled cartoonist and would draw ads for the act among other assignments. He continued to write new acts both for himself and other performers.

In 1923 Langdon was signed by producer Sol Lesser to appear in comedic two-reel films. A few were made and released to limited acclaim. Lesser then loaned Langdon to Mack Sennett, who had seen him in live performance. Sennett hailed Langdon as a “second Chaplin”. Sennett’s comedy shorts were released with bountiful publicity and very soon Langdon was a huge hit with audiences and distributors. Several critics proclaimed him the “next Chaplin” and Harry Langdon became a star of the movies.

Skilled Sennett personnel such as Director Harry Edwards, writer Arthur Ripley and a young gagman named Frank Capra created a team that really understood Langdon’s somewhat fragile personality and refined his on-screen character. Successful shorts were regularly released and Langdon’s fame increased to being on the same level with Chaplin and Lloyd. Langdon left Sennett for a better offer with First National Pictures and released his initial feature Tramp, Tramp, Tramp. It was a success and a second feature The Strong Man, with Capra now directing, followed to even greater acclaim.

Around this time, Langdon did develop an ego, as did Capra, and on the next film, Long Pants, Capra was fired supposedly for going over budget.  Yet Langdon had already made the decision to direct his own films and it was this, plus time constraints, a possessive and controlling girlfriend and increasing pressure from First National that caused the rift with Capra. Langdon directed his next three features to increasingly bad reviews and lesser box office appeal. He had been a faddish phenomenon and quickly fell from the public’s fancy. By the end of the 1920’s Langdon’s superstar years were over.

Luckily, Langdon was a resilient survivor who performed on the stage to delighted audiences and was soon offered a film contract by the Hal Roach Studio to make talkie sound shorts. Unlike many of his contemporaries who floundered in sound films, Langdon had a voice perfectly suited to his on-screen character. In the early to mid-1930’s he performed in shorts for Roach and Educational Studios. While these were low budget shorts, he was good in them and was welcomed by audiences. Langdon’s various talents ensured that he could always find work. He wrote scripts for others, composed songs and did some live performances.

In the late 1930’s, in part due to his friendship with Stan Laurel, Langdon was back at the Roach Studios and co-wrote some of the Laurel and Hardy feature films. He acted in new shorts for Columbia Studios and had remarried with a young son. Langdon also made some low budget features and was still enjoyed by moviegoers. In the early 1940’s he appeared in shorts, had roles in feature films and was steadily employed doing what he loved to do. While his stardom had certainly dimmed, audiences still responded warmly whenever they saw him on the screen. Langdon literally worked right up until the end and after a day of filming a musical sequence for a film in 1944, felt unwell and died shortly thereafter of a brain hemorrhage. Harry Langdon performed for decades, made many people happy with his talent and truly is one of the great clowns of film.

The origin of Little Elf: A Celebration of Harry Langdon began in a very strange manner. One of the nice things about living in the Los Angeles area is that many motion picture performers are buried here; therefore it is possible to visit the gravesites and pay last respects to favored stars. In November of 2010 I decided to go and pay my respects to Harry Langdon. I drove to a cemetery in Glendale on a Sunday afternoon and upon arriving had quite a shock. The front gates were padlocked and when I looked through them I discovered that the cemetery was in disarray. There was overgrown grass and some of the headstones appeared to be broken.  I noticed a sign on the gate which had a phone number to call for information. As I was very puzzled by this odd situation, I called the number and found out the reason for the cemetery’s closure. It seems that a few years earlier the owners of the burial place were discovered doing many illegal procedures. As a result there were several lawsuits and the cemetery was closed. However, due to complaints from people who had relatives interred there, it was open for a few hours on Sundays.

I went back the following Sunday, and with the help of a volunteer, was taken to the mausoleum that contained Langdon’s ashes. We could barely get the door open and the interior was very dirty with cobwebs and debris. There was no electricity but with aid of available light from the windows I found Langdon’s resting place. The faceplate on his area containing the ashes was worn and discolored. After paying my respects, I drove home and thought about this terrible situation. I contacted a long-time friend and fellow author Michael J. Hayde, and informed him as to my tragic discovery. He suggested that we do a blog on Langdon to preserve his memory. We began to do this and then almost simultaneously agreed to collaborate on a book. BearManor Media offered us a contract and we began to work on the tome. As I was in Los Angeles, I spent many hours at the Motion Picture Academy Library and acquired a mountain of material. Michael, based in Northern Virginia, spent a lot of  time at the Library of Congress and also uncovered much information. We both contacted Langdon fans and collectors who very willingly provided wonderful material in the matter of stills, reviews, ads and more. Michael and I were both appreciative and touched by the outpouring of cooperation and over the next year and a half accumulated amazing material.

The result was Little Elf: A Celebration of Harry Langdon released by BearManor Media. This large book contains:

1. Hundreds and hundreds of illustrations.
2. An in-depth and complete filmography with credits, critique, plot synopses, contemporary critic reviews and exhibitor reviews.
3. Original fan magazine articles about Langdon from the 1920’s and 1930’s.
4. Original scripts written by Langdon as used in stage career.
5. A chronological chapter-by-chapter overview of his life and career.

The final result was a massive 689-page book that Michael and I are very proud of.  It was warmly received by many people and our Amazon reviews were most heartwarming.

When I received copies of the book I went back to the cemetery on the next available day and with book in hand again paid my respects to Harry Langdon.

Harry Langdon was a great artist with a very interesting career and life and this can all be found in our BearManor Media release.

Little Elf: A Celebration of Harry Langdon is available in paperback at Amazon.com.

There is a hardback edition which can be found at CoverOut.com.

On the recently released Flicker Alley release THE MACK SENNETT COLLECTION, VOL. ONE (Blu-ray), three of Harry Langdon’s best two reel comedies are featured. Included are His Marriage Wow (1925), Fiddlesticks (1927) and Saturday Afternoon (1926) which features commentary by my co-author. It’s a great set and I highly recommend it.

My personal thanks to Kimberly Bastin at Flicker Alley for the opportunity to say some good things about Harry Langdon and the book.

As a postscript it looks as if the cemetery is being restored to its former good condition.  I’m heartened to know that Harry Langdon’s resting place will receive the same care and attention that has been given to his movie legacy.

Yours in love of Silent Film Comedy,

Chuck Harter – Los Angeles near Culver City

You can see Harry Langdon’s early shorts in THE MACK SENNETT COLLECTION, VOL. ONE.

For more exclusive essays like this one, plus film preservation news and special discounts, sign up for the Flicker Alley Newsletter.

Chaplin & Numa in The Circus. ©Roy Export S.A.S.

One of the more memorable scenes in Chaplin’s 1928 classic The Circus occurs when the Tramp, chased by a mule, accidentally locks himself in a lion’s cage. Chaplin’s co-star in this scene was “Numa,” a famous screen lion who had already appeared in several other films, including The Extra Girl with Mabel Normand and The Missing Link with Charlie’s half-brother Syd Chaplin.

Numa, named after a lion in the Tarzan books, was a resident of Gay’s Lion Farm in El Monte, CA. The farm was operated from 1919 to 1942 by former circus performers Charles and Muriel Gay. (Another famous resident of the farm was “Slats,” the original MGM logo lion.) Mr. Gay trained his animals not only to do tricks but also to obey commands and express annoyance or rage. Evidently Numa was one of his best trained and most trusted lions.

Numa in a postcard for Gay’s Lion Farm

No human being is totally safe with a lion so Charles Gay made sure that actors understood that his lions were not completely tame. There was always a certain amount of risk involved when working with a wild animal. Even so, actors wore no protection. In fact, during the lion cage sequence, Chaplin wore a leather legging under his pants to protect himself from a dog who bites at his leg, but nothing to protect himself from Numa. Mr. Gay later remembered the big responsibility he felt when protecting the “King of Comedy” from his lion:

“There I stood while Numa put his nose in the stomach of the world’s greatest comedian. It was a terrific responsibility. Here was a man worth ten million dollars. Suppose Numa had decided to become disagreeable. Not all the Chaplin millions could have saved him.”¹

Gay also recalled how Chaplin once practiced a dangerous stunt with a young lion on his farm, a stunt that even he himself would never have dared to attempt. In this sequence the lion was supposed to sidle up to Chaplin and paw at his stomach. Chaplin simply lied down and let the lion do it. Gay said that even if he were as wealthy as Chaplin, nothing could have induced him to let that lion paw his stomach. “Chaplin may not be a big man,” he said, “but he is either a very brave one… or a foolish one.”²

Chaplin, Numa, and trainer Charles Gay. ©Roy Export S.A.S.

During the filming of The Circus, Director Chaplin occasionally had difficulty getting Numa to cooperate. In one scene he wanted the lion to lie down in the cage and pretend to be sleeping. However, Numa did not want to sleep as it was not his nap time. Gay was able to make the animal lie down and stretch out but it refused to stay in that position. “Wait a minute,” Chaplin said, “I have an idea… Now all you fellows be still.” He then seated himself at an organ that was just off-camera and proceeded to play a weird, low piece of music suggestive of India or the jungle. Numa soon settled down and Chaplin quickly (and quietly) re-entered the cage and managed to finish the scene as planned.³

Chaplin attempts to calm Numa with some organ music. ©Roy Export S.A.S.

Then the lion was removed so Chaplin could practice in the cage with himself portraying the lion and Harry Crocker (who played Rex, the tightrope walker, in the film) standing in for Chaplin as the Tramp. British journalist L’Estrange Fawcett, who was actually present on the set that very day, described the action:

Every movement has to be worked out in angles and inches. The lion’s jump and Chaplin’s jump must be calculated exactly, for we cannot afford to lose the world’s greatest comedian. There is a moment’s respite, while calculations are made. Suddenly a shout from the cage, “Look, I’ll show you what we want,” and Chaplin is lying on the floor of the cage imitating the lion. He hunches his back, grunts, roars, moves restlessly round on all fours, rolls over in the dust, and rubs his body artfully against the bars, growling and baring his teeth. Crocker “plays” him with a boathook and a whip, but the “lion” is in no mood for being prodded, and lashes out at the “trainer,” putting him to flight through the door.

Over the bold legend across the bottom of the cage–“Keep Away, Dangerous”–Chaplin stands in characteristic pose, arms through the bars and folded, weight on one foot, the other leg crossed over and resting on the point of a disreputable boot, his compelling smile spread over his face. “Come on,” says the lion; “I’ve got a new idea. Couldn’t we…”

The next pause found Chaplin reciting “To be or not to be, that is the question,” in devilish mockery of John Barrymore, and then burlesquing himself in his own part in The Circus. He knows a good deal more Shakespeare than he is given credit for. Now he has some comic bit to do himself. He shakes himself, takes a turn up and down the cage, and says to the camera-man, “Wait a moment till I get funny.” Then he returns glowing with smiles. “Now let’s really mean it this time–steady; camera,” and the handle turns. The scene is shot. “That’s going to be good,” says the protagonist.⁴

Later on the whole business was repeated, this time with Mr. Chaplin and the lion in the cage. The trainer assures us it is quite safe, but I don’t believe Mr. Chaplin enjoyed the experience very much. None of the spectators did. Everyone sighed with relief when he came out safe and sound. After all, one doesn’t let a lion breathe on one for fun, and Chaplin declared the lion’s breath was hot!⁵

Numa died of cancer in 1930 at the age of 16. He was stuffed and put on display at Gay’s Lion Farm until it closed in 1942.

—

¹Louella O. Parsons, “Movie Lion Farm Interesting Place Of Many Thrills,” Waco News-Tribune, May 1, 1927
²Buffalo Courier-Express, January 2, 1927
³A.L. Wooldridge, “Numa Earns A Fortune,” Picture-Play, January 1927
⁴L’Estrange Fawcett, Film Facts & Forecasts, 1927
⁵L’Estrange Fawcett, “Chaplin At Work on Comic Scenes Described By British Journalist” New York Times, Sept. 5,
1926

Jessica Buxton is a Charlie Chaplin aficionado and researcher from Paris, KY. Her site, Discovering Chaplin, is devoted not only to Chaplin’s long and unique film career but to his fascinating life offscreen as well. Comprised of off-the-beaten path stories and photos, this site will hopefully help fans discover something new and interesting about cinema’s first genius.

You can see Charlie Chaplin develop his ‘Little Tramp’ character in CHAPLIN’S MUTUAL COMEDIES and see Mabel Normand act with Numa in THE EXTRA GIRL, part of THE MACK SENNETT COLLECTION, VOL. ONE.

For more exclusive essays like this one, plus film preservation news and special discounts, sign up for the Flicker Alley Newsletter.

CHAPTER 27 of “Edendale/1912″

Morning fogs in. Mabel’s trapped at the beach forever. I track Limey to the dressing room he shares with Fatty and Swain. They never pick up the place, nobody else does neither. Clothes and props and makeup spread all over a sofa and a busted club chair, like a twister hit. Fatty and Swain and Chester sit around a card table on toothpick chairs, playing pinochle. No Limey.

“Come on, Flicker,” Chester says, “ten points a penny.”

“I’m looking for Limey.”

“He’s too cheap to play,” Fatty says.

“So where is he?”

“He thinks you’re here to can him,” Chester says. “Where you think he is?”

“We got work.”

Nobody buys it. “It’s too dark,” Swain says.

“Got work anyhow.”

Swain looks at Chester. Chester looks at Fatty. Fatty flattens his cards against his tank chest and points at the closet.

I stomp for the dressing-room door, talk loud. “You see him, you say Mabel needs him, now or never.”

Loud card-table chorus. “So long, Flicker.”

I slam the door like I’m gone.

Closet opens. Limey’s pale little face pokes his nose out, a rat holed up in all the garbage, sees me still here. “What’s on the little darling’s mind?” Limey steps out, scratching his back. Mack’s right about the smell.

“Mabel thinks maybe she wants you for her picture,” I say.

“Do I want her?”

“That depends if you want your job.” I see why he ticks people off. “She gotta see a new look, she don’t like the frock coat and the stovepipe.”

“That’s my music-hall persona with Mack’s picture adjustments.”

“Mabel don’t like it. She wants not so tight, so you can move better, and not so old. And she hates that phony aristo. Someone people see themselves in.” That part was me, but what the hell.

He looks at me like I’m a bellboy stole his suitcase. “You are telling me how to dress?”

“I’m telling you how not to dress.”

“How old are you?”

“If I’m old enough to can you, I’m old enough to tell you how not to dress.” The card table yuks that up. Limey freezes ’em with a hard smile.

“Creating a character is complicated and delicate work,” he says. “You may tell Miss Normand that I shall call on her in a few days when I have pulled something together.”

“We shoot tomorrow,” I say. “If it don’t work, I need to know now.”

“Bingo, a character? That’s outrageous.”

“Character can wait. I’m talking about a costume.”

“There is a teensy-weensy connection.” Limey holds up thumb and finger like he holds a fly, like he knows all along I’m the village idiot, and now he got proof.

“So yes or no?”

Limey appeals to the table. “Will you explain to this yobbo the intricacies of creating a character?”

The three card players look at each other, shake their heads like one person, a undertaker.

“Canned theater.” Limey sighs big, like he’s in the land of the nincompoops, and looks at me like I’m nincompoop-in-chief. “What, dear sir, is the part I am to play?”

“You’ll have to ask Mabel.”

“And where is Miss Normand?”

“At the beach.” Truth is, she don’t know neither.

“So I’m creating a character on the spot for a part that doesn’t exist.”

“Whatever you wanta call it.” I am one inch from canning the guy. “I just need it now.”

“This stupid business has no art. Why does anybody want to see a shadow on a screen when they can see the real thing?” Limey punches himself in the hips, waits for the end of pictures.

His head disappears under a tent. “Hey Limey, here’s not so tight,” Fatty says, and everybody laughs, Fatty’s high hard cackle on top. Limey pulls his head out from under Fatty’s trousers.

“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie!” He shouts at Fatty for the rest of ’em. Nobody calls him Limey to his face but Mack.

“Just clean ’em when you’re done, for God’s sake, Charlie.”

Limey stares at the pants. His little mouth pulls down to cry. He got a choice. He can spit on ’em, throw ’em back at Fatty, tell the pictures kiss his vaudeville ass, march on back to music hall, or not. His hands shake, he wants so bad to stuff it. I’m sure we’re done with him. Then I see something I never seen before, except in me. Limey stares at the pants and stops not crying. His face blanks out. He turns ’em back to front, pokes his arm in a leg, pulls at the seat. Like a automaton, he drops his trousers and pulls up Fatty’s. Trousers on, Limey wakes up. He grabs a fistful of waist and pirouettes like a dancer at the makeup mirror. He moves different in Fatty’s tent, every which way, cause nothing holds him back. He gives a little mule kick at the end.

“Not bad,” Chester says, and means it.

“That jacket of yours that’s too tight, Chester, would you mind?” Limey pulls the belt off his own pants and cinches Fatty’s. Chester got a gag jacket a couple sizes too small.

“On the sofa.” Chester feels bad, maybe, about the piss-war zapping. “Same deal as Fatty, you wear it, you clean it.”

Limey pulls on the little jacket. It fits him tight under the pecs like a corset, but cut so short he got plenty movement, like a Spanish dancer. Limey flexes his shoulders, beats his arms. The jacket holds him like a suit of armor made of little rings, holds him up and guards him. Guarded makes him stronger and faster.

“Tight on top, loose on bottom, that’s good,” Swain says. “But you gotta follow through.” Swain burrows around his corner of the room and pulls out beat-up balloon shoes. “My fifteens. You can have ’em. They died long ago.” Limey steps in, laces ’em up, and steps right out. Too damn big. He switches feet, they stay on. He pulls a graceful skip and a clumsy trip, soft-shoes the mirror. They finish off the pants perfect.

“Not bad,” he says.

“I got just the lid.” Fatty flips him a beat-up bowler. “My father-in-law wore it out.” Limey clamps it on and it fits good, just enough too tight. He turns himself in a circle, wiggles the bowler from the back so it says hello. Fatty and Swain and Chester clap and laugh good laughs. Limey twiddles his tony gentleman’s cane.

“Gimme a sec,” I say.

I pump myself up the writers’ stairs of doom. Sir Meltman’s in place by the window. “Flicker, so sorry it didn’t work out.” Sir Meltman phony mourns, cane waves so sorry. I grab it.

Back at the dressing room, I toss the cane at Limey. “Here. I’m just sayin’ it’s funny is all.”

Limey leans his weight and likes how the bamboo gives. “Have to cut it down.” He spins it, likes how it stops sudden in the hand. He flips it behind so it tips his derby my direction. “This just might do.” Like maybe, just maybe, I ain’t the village idiot.

You can meet Jon in person at Larry Edmunds Bookshop, where he and Brent Walker (producer of THE MACK SENNETT COLLECTION, VOL. ONE and author of Mack Sennett’s Fun Factory) will discuss and sign their books and view silent film shorts. Wednesday, August 27, 7:30 pm in Hollywood, CA.

Though I have a long and intimate connection with the movies, doing all the jobs my narrator Jack does in my novel, Mabel and Me, except swab out the lab vats, silent pictures and slapstick in particular held no attraction for me. Then, a few years ago, I was drafted to tell the history of the movies, as a first pass for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’s nascent movie museum. I went in search of lives that told the story of the movies. The lives that leapt out were the pioneers, the ones who made something from nothing. Our Era of the Image began with the movies, and movies began in Echo Park with Mabel Normand and a ladder, as Charlie Chaplin said.

When I read a biography of Mabel Normand, I fell in love with her. She was a pioneer woman, in a tough man’s world. She had courage. She was honest. Charlie Chaplin called her and the slapstick boys “Beauty and the Beasts.” She didn’t rest on her beauty, though, she inhabited it. I also saw that her brief, tumultuous life contained the whole story of the movies in America. Not just metaphorically. Movie years were dog years back then. Mabel lived the first turn of the wheel that’s been turning ever since. Seeing her life, I could see things to come. She brought to life the magic, the mystery, and the unfulfilled promises of the silver screen.

To tell a larger truth, a novelist needs space for invention. For a life lived under Klieg lights, we know remarkably little about Mabel Normand. Betty Fussell, her principal biographer, makes much of this. So Mabel was an ideal lens onto that vanished world. We don’t know precisely what ended her engagement to Mack, or exactly what transpired with Sam Goldwyn. We don’t even know who threw the first pie in pictures. But Mabel is the odds-on favorite. She was a canny, elusive interview subject, who knew how to flatter and confuse reporters, spicing banalities with the absurd. Her Variety obituary has her three years too young (or as Mabel once put it, “three years younger than Mary Pickford”).

Reminiscences by her contemporaries, written decades later by veteran self-promoters who made up stories for a living, are rich with anecdote and profoundly unreliable. These include Mack Sennett of course, and Anita Loos, Sam Goldwyn, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Cecil B. DeMille. For the Mabel interludes, their biographers tend to rely on the autobiographical accounts. Few of the spear-carriers are heard. Cameramen Fred Balshofer and Arthur Miller come to life in One Reel a Week. The Director’s Guild of America has a valuable Oral History Project, where lesser knowns reminisce. Their voices helped bring my narrator to life. My narrator, Jack, a composite of so many of the real people I came to know through my research, told the story he remembered, the story he lived.

Few of Mabel’s movies remain; her later pictures, including Joan of Plattsburg, are mostly gone. Now, thanks to Flicker Alley, we have a better view of many of them. The Mack Sennett Archives at the Motion Picture Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library provide a tantalizing window into their creation. It includes the earliest Sennett scripts, before there were writers. They were transcribed after shooting, as a guide for the editor.

Click here to read an excerpt from Mabel & Me: A Novel About the Movies.

About Jon Boorstin: His first novel, Pay or Play, was called “the definitive send­ up of Hollywood” by Publishers Weekly in a coveted starred review. His second, The Newsboys’ Lodging-­House, won the New York Society Library Award for Historical Fiction. Boorstin has also written a book of practical film theory, Making Movies Work, which is used in film schools all over the world. The work of an Oscar® nominated documentary filmmaker and longtime screenwriter and producer, Mabel and Me is the culmination of Boorstin’s lifelong affair with the Movies.

You can see Mabel Normand in many of the 50 short films of THE MACK SENNETT COLLECTION, VOL. ONE, now available on Blu-ray.

For more exclusive interviews like this one, plus film preservation news and special discounts, sign up for the Flicker Alley Newsletter.

As I explain in my book Silent Traces, Charlie Chaplin’s landmark short film Easy Street (1917) contains scenes filmed on extant Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles (see below), where he would return a few years later to film his re-union with Jackie Coogan in The Kid (1921) (see The Kid post HERE). The Easy Street “T” intersection exterior set (left), was built in Hollywood within the NE corner of Cahuenga and Romaine at the tiny Lone Star Studio backlot, the same spot where Buster Keaton, after taking over the studio in 1920 for his own productions, would build a similar “T”-shaped tenement set for his short film Neighbors (1920).

Should I stay or should I go? Charlie at the doorway. Postcard Tommy Dangcil

Despite reportedly spending $10,000 building his Easy Street set, Chaplin used a real police station (above) to film the scene where Charlie deliberates whether to join the force. His movements are a tour de force, showing the audience, through his physicality, his inner turmoil as he summons the courage to enter the building in order to enlist, then balks at the threshold, halting mid-step, then regains his nerve, marches towards the door, only to hesitate yet again. The scene was likely filmed in December 1916.

Eric Campbell chases Charlie onto the Plaza de Los Angeles in Easy Street.  USC Digital Library

Chaplin fashioned his tenement set for Easy Street after Methley Street, in his boyhood London neighborhood  Lambeth.  To add greater realism, he also filmed at the Plaza de Los Angeles (above), and nearby Olvera Street, a slum alley that is today a popular Mexican market and tourist attraction.

 Chaplin used the same slum alley for both films.

Above, four views of Olvera Street, a dingy slum alleyway at the time Chaplin filmed The Kid and Easy Street, reminiscent of his boyhood home (see more on The Kid at this post HERE).  Today Olvera Street is one of LA’s most popular tourist spots.

Read the full article on the Silent Locations Blog to discover the connection between Chaplin’s EASY STREET police station and other classic Hollywood stars including Douglas Fairbanks, Harry Langdon, Stan Laurel, Lloyd Hamilton, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton.

You can see EASY STREET newly-restored in CHAPLIN’S MUTUAL COMEDIES, now available in a Blu-ray/DVD Limited Edition SteelBook.

For more articles like this one, plus film preservation news and special discounts, sign up for the Flicker Alley Newsletter.

Enjoy the slide show below of images from glass slides theaters used to promote Charlie Chaplin Mutual films during their original release. Courtesy of Matt Vogel.

Click the icon on the bottom-right to view in full screen.