Introduction: The History of the History of Silent Comedy
1. I need to attend to a matter of pedantry: technically The Circus came out in January 1928, not 1927. But c’mon—January 1928. That’s awfully close to 1927. And the film was delayed due to Chaplin’s breakdown. I don’t think I’m on thin ice lumping it in with the other 1927 features.
Slapstick While Black
1. By the by, the girl in question is played by Dorothy Morrison (also known as Dorothy Morrison Green). If this name pops out at you, good for you. For everyone else, just keep reading—in a few pages’ time you’ll encounter her older brother Ernie Morrison.
2. I would be remiss if I did not point out here that Moe and Shemp Howard got their start in show business with a blackface act. So … nothing’s ever just one thing, is it?
@RealCharlieChaplin
1. This is a potentially apocryphal anecdote. Take it with a grain of salt.
2. The big distribution outfits handled the entire United States, but there were also small-scale local distribution companies that handled individual territories. These were called “state’s rights” distributors.
Eureka
1. Shortly after directing this film, Jules White became the head of Columbia Pictures’ comedy shorts division, and as such was one of the key creative forces behind the Three Stooges. Other slapstick comedians who made talkie comedy shorts with Jules White at Columbia include Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, and Charley Chase.
What, What No Beer?
1. For anyone counting, this is his fourth appearance as someone named “Elmer” and his second as someone named “Elmer Butts.”
The Sin of Harold Lloyd
1. Although Laurel and Hardy beat him to theaters with Unaccustomed As We Are, a short film and the first time any silent comedian was heard to speak.
2. If you’ll forgive the digression, I discovered the 35mm nitrate of Lloyd’s Bliss was missing its finale thanks to nitrate decomposition, and that I personally owned the missing footage in a smaller gauge (9.5mm to be exact). So I arranged to have this and a few other Lloyd rarities on 9.5mm transferred to digital video for inclusion on one of my DVD collections. After doing so, I donated the video masters and the 9.5mm originals to Lloyd’s estate. I called them up to make arrangements, and they told me that somebody would be by my house “later that morning” to pick them up. This was absolutely baffling. I live in a Chicago suburb, I was calling Lloyd’s estate in California. How in the world were they going to have someone by my house in a few hours? Were there secret Harold Lloyd Black Ops agents in sleeper cells throughout the country? Turned out, a relative of Lloyd’s lived in an adjacent ’burb and was going to come by on her way to the grocery store.
The $30,000 Question
1. God bless this particular format war—Pathex was the world’s first home movie format. It was created by movie distributer Pathé, and during its exceptionally brief life served as a platform for the home-market release of a number of Pathé’s silent films. Then it was killed off by 8mm within a few years of its debut. Many of the Pathé rarities that were sold in this format were unceremoniously abandoned in attics when the projectors turned into obsolete relics. And so, a significant number of movies that are now officially “lost” in their original form actually survive in partial scraps on 9.5mm reels. A few chapters ago I mentioned an anecdote about donating some film to the Harold Lloyd Trust—that was 9.5mm film I’d bought at an estate sale.
Jean, Clara, Bombshell and It
1. I used to think the prevalence of smarmy European counts in screwball comedies was the result of filmmakers consciously modeling their pictures after It Happened One Night, but that fails to explain the presence of smarmy European counts in films that show no other obvious influence from It Happened One Night, much less something like this that was made before it.
Girls! Girls! Girls!
1. Don’t recognize the name Anita Loos? Then drop this book (or carefully set it down—your choice) and go read Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Slut Fabulous
1. You may notice I have not allocated a chapter to Bringing Up Baby, despite it being one of the most famous landmarks of the genre. Like It Happened One Night, it is a film of massive historical importance, but there are other lesser known gems that are more fun.