Slapstick Sundays

Fiddlesticks (1926) Directed by Harry Edwards, written by Frank Capra and Arthur Ripley

Mr. Harry Langdon. Traditionally, one of the great cautionary tales of Hollywood, the quintessential story of the popular star who destroyed his career through his own hubris. Granted, in retrospect firing Frank Capra seems to have been a mistake, and that’s being charitable. Blame that darn Charles Chaplin: the guy was one star who guided his own destiny, built his own films soup to nuts, and got richer than rich. What screen comic wouldn’t want to snag THAT brass ring? You’re satisfied with just “making a nice living” you end up with Billy Gilbert’s career. In any case, Langdon was into his 40s when he found screen fame, so it’s our guess that his shelf life in that “man-child” persona of his was going to get flat quicker than an open can of Pepsi anyway.

Langdon’s life story  began in Capraesque fashion; born in 1884 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, at age 12 he ran away to join the circus and never looked back. Eventually, a vaudeville routine about the problems with one o’ them new-fangled horseless carriages brought him fame and by the mid-1920s he was one of Mack Sennett’s shining stars in short comedies. He signed a six-picture deal with First National for features; the first three, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, The Strong Man, and Long Pants, are comedy classics, but Langdon then took over the director’s chair himself, and directed himself right out of a job. He was hired by Hal Roach for a series of 2-reel talkies, but after one season (8 shorts) he was fired. The films I’ve seen in that series are painful to watch, something I've never said about any other films with Thelma Todd in 'em. Langdon spent the rest of his career bouncing around various studios, writing gags for Hal Roach and others, and starring in a series of shorts for Columbia that, as usual for that studio, are hit and miss but which on average are pretty good (c'mon Sony, give us a boxed set). Langdon had two more noteworthy feature appearances in him, though: in 1933 he supplied comic relief to Al Jolson in Hallelujah I’m a Bum and in 1939 he subbed for a snubbed Stan Laurel with Oliver Hardy in Hal Roach’s Zenobia. When Langdon died in 1944, few in Hollywood remembered that he had once briefly been ranked up there with Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd.

In 2007, All Day Entertainment released the quintessential comedy compilation The Harry Langdon Collection: Lost and Found, with nearly 2 dozen shorts, the 1927 feature His First Flame, a feature-length documentary on Langdon, and many rarities and bonus featurettes. The scores supplied for the silent films in this collection are amongst the best you'll find, and are a constant delighOne of our favorite shorts in that collection is called Fiddlesticks, which matches Harry up with frequent foil Vernon Dent, twice.

Harry is the fourth brother in the Hogan Family, and Dad and his burly siblings are tired of Harry’s loafing about as a musician while they bring home the proverbial bacon. Harry’s music teacher, Prof. Von Tempo (Dent), receiving death threats from the neighbors, finally graduates Harry (“If I guess what you’re playing, you get a diploma”). Harry first tries to join the Professor’s All Nations Band (“Two Germans, an Italian, and a Democrat”) but eventually finds success as a street musician – irate listeners throw so many household items out of their tenement windows at him that the junkman (Dent again) is making a killing, and pays Harry accordingly. Langdon tries to augment his income by adding a piano to the act, but when he accidentally runs over it with a street paver the construction company – not following the plot and not knowing that Harry ran over the instrument himself – gives him $300 in restitution. Harry returns home a rich man and earns the respect of his father. (Hey, if I’d ever come home with $300 my dad would’ve respected ME, too. Well, he still would’ve called the cops, but he would’ve acknowledged my initiative in finding a trade, even a presumed illegal one.)

Langdon's best silent films are tough to describe; they do have "gags", but mainly they're character studies with a lead character that seems to have dropped in from some other planet and does his best to simulate human behavior without understanding it. In this film, for example, he washes his hands by rubbing them under water, and -- lacking a towel -- "dries" them by holding them in front of a breezy window for a couple of seconds. They're not clean and they're not dry, but by gosh, he did SOMETHING to them.

All Day Entertainment was due to release a boxed set of Charley Chase films this month, but alas, they report that sales on the Harry Langdon Collection and the American Slapstick Vol. 2 set were disappointing, so that set has been postponed (scroll down to our review of Limousine Love for more info). We’re urging all Balconeers to make sure you support the fine work done by this company (and help give us, big fans of Charley’s, that Chase set) by making sure your DVD collection includes all the hours of enjoyment you’re going to get from the All Day wares. Here are links to purchase the discs from Amazon.com. Tell ‘em In The Balcony sent ya, and thanks!

Harry Langdon Collection: Lost and Found

American Slapstick Vol. 1

American Slapstick Vol. 2

PREVIOUS SLAPSTICK SUNDAYS OFFERINGS...

45 Minutes from Hollywood (1926) Directed by Fred Guiol

Part of our intent of Slapstick Sundays is to review the Laurel & Hardy comedies in chronological order; several of them – including this week’s 2-reeler – have never before been seen by us (some other time, we’ll explain how it is that there are Laurel & Hardy films we’ve never seen before). Over the years, we’ve heard nothing good about this week’s slapstick offering, so we were pleasantly surprised to discover that it’s quite worthwhile.

In 1925 Oliver Hardy was a busy comic on the Hal Roach lot, usually playing a comic heavy, which sounds like a weak pun but which is accurate so we’ll let it be. Stan Laurel had been working as a gag man and director (including a couple of Hardy’s pictures) but Roach – desperate for comics once Harold Lloyd left the lot – put him back in front of the camera. Eventually, the two of them would have to appear in the same Roach film, and that event came to pass in the Glen Tryon film 45 Minutes from Hollywood, released in late 1926.

Tryon is a country rube who is off to Hollywood (“I want to see ‘em feed the actors”) to pay the mortgage on the family farm. (Originally, Grandpa was going to go, but the family didn’t trust him ‘round all those beautiful starlets – “He had visions of bowling with Gloria Swanson on Mary Pickford’s lawn with Pola Negri setting up the pins.”) After good advice from Mom (“Look out for confidence men and assistant directors”), our hero is off to Tinseltown and the best shot in the movie… “Hollywood – A quiet morning” the title tells us, followed by dozens of a wacky animated scene of the sky filled with aerocraft while thousands of extras zoom about below and the cameraman cranks away. Hollywood naturally has its stars, too, and they just happen to be Roach players, including Vivien Oakland, the Our Gang kids, and Theda Bara (yep, she was reduced to Roach films by the end of her career). Eventually, Tryon finds himself mixed up with a bank robber who is dressed in drag, which leads to a hotel detective having to contend with a jealous wife, and don’t ask me how the plot got there, we don’t have all day. Suffice to say that the hotel detective is Oliver Hardy, and that when his wife finds him in the bedroom with a “beautiful woman” he gives her that “guilty child” look that we all know so well and one hopes that director Guiol or maybe Roach or maybe Leo McCarey said, “Babe, that look is HILARIOUS – don’t ever lose it.” Eventually, Tryon’s tussle with the villain lands him in the bed of a “starving actor too hungry to work” – Stan Laurel, who is made up, for some reason, to look like James Finlayson. Why? Well, why not? I wouldn’t mind being made up to look like James Finlayson – would beat spending a movie dressed in drag (or wrapped in a sheet, as Hardy is here). There’s conjecture that Laurel was in “disguise” because he was still under contract to another studio, but I suspect it was either a joke or that Finlayson himself was supposed to play the part and had to drop out at the last second so they kept his “look” because, frankly, Stan Laurel in bed in a nightshirt with two men fighting on top of him isn’t nearly as funny as James Finlayson in the same predicament. As for Tryon… Well, he’s no Harold Lloyd, folks. He’s not even Theda Bara.

45 Minutes from Hollywood is available on the Lost Films of Laurel & Hardy, Vol. 6 or on the Oliver Hardy Collection from Kino and it’s humorous to note that somebody at Kino thought that actually was Finlayson playing Finlayson; the packaging erroneously credits Laurel as the thief in drag.

Limousine Love (1928) Directed by Fred Guiol)

Charley Chase (1893-1940) is underappreciated in the world of comedy and we’re tired of hearing him proclaimed as being “ripe for rediscovery”: let’s rediscover him already! Although he died relatively young (a heart attack, but it was actually alcohol that did him in), he was a solid and valuable part of the Hal Roach Studios’ annual short subject output throughout the 1920s and 1930s and then starred in a popular series for Columbia Pictures. Behind the camera, he was in charge of Our Gang in their formative years, and a valuable gag man and director (including helming some of the Three Stooges’ best shorts). He was also a talented singer and musician, and the musical numbers in his films are always a special treat. This week, In The Balcony’s Slapstick Sundays offering is our favorite Chase film and a huge laugh-getter whenever we show it, Limousine Love.

Charley shines brightest in his “embarrassment” comedies; he’s trapped in a circumstance beyond his making and coping with it the best he can as things invariably get worse. As our film opens, he’s rushing to his wedding when his chauffer (Bull Montana) causes a minor fender-bender leading to an afternoon of major calamity. Charley berates the chauffer, who quits, leaving Charley to drive himself to the church. He runs out of gas, and abandons his car while he goes off to secure a few gallons (which he does, courtesy of a convenient gas truck and his own wedding hat). While he’s away, however, a beautiful young woman (frequent Laurel & Hardy foil Viola Richards) has a fight with her husband (well, what was she thinking, marrying surly ol’ Edgar Kennedy, anyway?) and ends up in a mud puddle. Spotting Charley’s abandoned vehicle, she climbs into the back, disrobes, and hangs her wet clothes on a branch to dry. Therein hangs not only her skimpies, but our tale.

As you have guessed, Charley returns, gasses up the vehicle, and is off to the church before the shocking discovery that he’s got Lady Godiva in the back. Luckily, a hitchhiker on the road snickeringly offers to help Charley obtain some clothing for the woman; unluckily, it’s her murderously jealous husband, Kennedy. A series of incidents ensue, first with a traffic cop looking for booze runners, and then – when Charley finally makes it to the church – with the various male guests, all of whom are more than eager to help Charley out with his “problem”. Pretending to be members of a lodge called “The Horsefeathers”, the group forms a tight little cadre with Mrs. Kennedy in the middle and attempts to find her a spot to change. The various “lodge ceremonies” the group invents in an attempt to keep the future Mrs. Chase from discovering the truth are positively sidesplitting.

Currently, the only available print of this classic that we know of is as a bonus film on the German Laurel & Hardy DVD Dick und Doof als Einbrecher u.a. (Night Owls). There are two highly-recommended Charley Chase silent film collections available in the U.S. from Kino, and both All Day Entertainment (more silents) and Sony (the Columbia 2-reelers) plan Chase compilations in 2009. The All Day set, early films called Becoming Charley Chase, was scheduled for Jan. 27 release but has been postponed because... well, here's what it says on their website.

Here's the deal: we made certain sales projections for our silent comedy projects based on the popularity and success of the first volume of AMERICAN SLAPSTICK, released through Image in 2006. But both HARRY LANGDON LOST AND FOUND and AMERICAN SLAPSTICK VOLUME 2 have fallen far short of those goals, and until we can sort out why, it looks like BECOMING CHARLEY CHASE is also destined for undeserved osbcurity. Our immediate goal is to redouble efforts to promote the existing catalog of silent comedy titles and prove that there is a viable market for this set, otherwise it must remain mothballed. So... if you know of someone who hasn't got either LANGDON or AMERICAN SLAPSTICK 2 but who might enjoy it, go remind them to stock up!

Here In The Balcony, we've very favorably reviewed both the Harry Langdon set (one our Top Ten releases of last year) and the American Slapstick Vol. 2 release... So buy 'em already! You can order them from Amazon or from All Day at http://www.alldayentertainment.com/.

More great Chase stuff... Brian Anthony and Andy Edmonds have written a fine bio of Chase, Smile when the Teardrops Fall (taking its title from one of Charley’s songs); its available from Amazon or other online retailers. Also, Yair Solan has a terrific website with all the information you need to know about Charley and his world, www.charley-chase.com. What th' heck... let's make 2009 the year Charley gets rediscovered! Wouldn't THAT be a darb!

The Lucky Dog (released 1921, maybe) starring Stan Laurel, with Oliver Hardy. Directed by Jess Robbins.

One of the more interesting stories in the annals of Hollywood history is how Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy appeared in several films for Hal Roach Studios in the 1920s before their official debut as what would become the most beloved comedy team in movie history. Well, didja know that before THAT, their paths first crossed professionally in a film that still today gives us more questions than answers? It's true, and although information about The Lucky Dog is scarce, at least the film itself still exists for our viewing entertainment.

Randy Skretvedt, whose book Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies is the single greatest book ever written on Stan and Ollie, devotes several pages to this film in an attempt to lift the shroud of history/mystery. His best guess is that the film was made somewhere between December 1920 and February 1921 for distribution by Reelcraft; there's a notation that it passed the Ohio Censorship Board in late 1921, only a month before Reelcraft went out of business, so The Lucky Dog saw few if any theatrical bookings at the time.

As the film begins, Stan is a broke young man being physically booted from his rooming house by the surly landlady. He has a run-in with a series of streetcars that seemingly have it in for him, and attracts the attention of a cute li'l dog not named Laughing Gravy. Said cute li'l dog attracts the attention of a cute li'l woman, and Stan attempts to crash a society dog show to be near her. He fails, but manages to spring the dogs. Along the line, he also attracts the attention of a burly robber (Oliver Hardy), who accidentally puts his ill-gotten loot in Stan's pocket. When the woman's jealous boyfriend needs a burly, heavily-armed fellow to exact revenge against Mr. Laurel, why, Mr. Hardy will do just fine.

Not much of what we'd come to know as "Classic L&H Comedy" here, although as with many of these early films, there are bits of business that will portend the legend to come. In this film, for example, Stan has a sequence in which he can't get his hat to behave. Bits in which Stan gets his fingers stuck in a brandy carafe, and helpfully tries to clear a jammed gun for the fellow who's trying to shoot him, are hints of the daffy Stan we'd come to know and love. (There's also topical humor about Bolsheviks and Prohibition and the War Debt.)

In the grand scheme of things, this isn't one of the funnier Laurel and Hardy pairings, but everybody has to start somewhere. In the U.S., it's available on The Lost Films of Laurel & Hardy, Vol. 3 (Image Entertainment) and on DVDs from public domain specializing companies, too.