Harold Lloyd

March 23, 2018 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Prepared by Daniel B Miller

Harold Clayton Lloyd Sr. (April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971) was an American actor, comedian, director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer who is best known for his silent comedy films.^[1]

Lloyd ranks alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as one of the most popular and influential film comedians of the silent film era. Lloyd made nearly 200 comedy films, both silent and “talkies“, between 1914 and 1947. He is best known for his bespectacled “Glasses” character,^[2]^[3] a resourceful, success-seeking go-getter who was perfectly in tune with 1920s-era United States.

His films frequently contained “thrill sequences” of extended chase scenes and daredevil physical feats, for which he is best remembered today. Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street (in reality a trick shot) in Safety Last! (1923) is one of the most enduring images in all of cinema.^[4]

Lloyd did many dangerous stunts himself, despite having injured himself in August 1919 while doing publicity pictures for the Roach studio. An accident with a bomb mistaken as a prop resulted in the loss of the thumb and index finger of his right hand^[5] (the injury was disguised on future films with the use of a special prosthetic glove, though the glove often did not go unnoticed).

Although Lloyd’s individual films were not as commercially successful as Chaplin’s on average, he was far more prolific (releasing 12 feature films in the 1920s while Chaplin released just four), and made more money overall ($15.7 million to Chaplin’s $10.5 million).^{[citation needed]}

[hide]

Early life

Harold Clayton Lloyd was born on April 20, 1893 in Burchard, Nebraska, the son of James Darsie Lloyd and Sarah Elisabeth Fraser. His paternal great-grandparents were Welsh.^[6]

In 1910, after his father had several business ventures fail, Lloyd’s parents divorced and his father moved with his son to San Diego, California. Lloyd had acted in theater since a child, but in California he began acting in one-reel film comedies around 1912.

Young Harold Lloyd

Career

Silent shorts and features

Lloyd worked with Thomas Edison‘s motion picture company, and his first role was a small part as a Yaqui Indian in the production of The Old Monk’s Tale.

Harold Lloyd in The Old Monk’s Tale (J.Searle Dawley, 1913)

At the age of 20, Lloyd moved to Los Angeles, and took up roles in several Keystone comedies. He was also hired by Universal Studios as an extra and soon became friends with aspiring filmmaker Hal Roach.^[7]

Lloyd began collaborating with Roach who had formed his own studio in 1913. Roach and Lloyd created “Lonesome Luke”, similar to and playing off the success of Charlie Chaplin films.^[8]

Hal Roach

Harold Lloyd as Lonesome Luke

Lloyd hired Bebe Daniels as a supporting actress in 1914; the two of them were involved romantically and were known as “The Boy” and “The Girl”. In 1919, she left Lloyd to pursue her dramatic aspirations. Later that year, Lloyd replaced Daniels with Mildred Davis, whom he would later marry. Lloyd was tipped off by Hal Roach to watch Davis in a movie. Reportedly, the more Lloyd watched Davis the more he liked her. Lloyd’s first reaction in seeing her was that “she looked like a big French doll”.^[9]

Bebe Daniels

Harold Lloyd and Bebe Daniels in Look Pleasant, Please (Alfred J Goulding, 1918)

The Rolin Film Company – 1915

Bebe Daniels (1rst row, middle), Harold Lloyd (2nd Row, middle – in Lonesome Luke costume), Snub Pollard to his left, Hal Roach (3rd row, middle)

Harold Lloyd and Bebe Daniels

By 1918, Lloyd and Roach had begun to develop his character beyond an imitation of his contemporaries. Harold Lloyd would move away from tragicomic personas, and portray an everyman with unwavering confidence and optimism.

The persona Lloyd referred to as his “Glass” character^[10] (often named “Harold” in the silent films) was a much more mature comedy character with greater potential for sympathy and emotional depth, and was easy for audiences of the time to identify with.

The “Glass” character is said to have been created after Roach suggested that Harold was too handsome to do comedy without some sort of disguise. To create his new character Lloyd donned a pair of lensless horn-rimmed eyeglasses but wore normal clothing;^[3] previously, he had worn a fake mustache and ill-fitting clothes as the Chaplinesque “Lonesome Luke”.

Harold Lloyd – The Glass Character

“When I adopted the glasses,” he recalled in a 1962 interview with Harry Reasoner, “it more or less put me in a different category because I became a human being. He was a kid that you would meet next door, across the street, but at the same time I could still do all the crazy things that we did before, but you believed them. They were natural and the romance could be believable.”

Unlike most silent comedy personae, “Harold” was never typecast to a social class, but he was always striving for success and recognition. Within the first few years of the character’s debut, he had portrayed social ranks ranging from a starving vagrant in From Hand to Mouth to a wealthy socialite in Captain Kidd’s Kids.

Harold Lloyd and Peggy Cartwright in From Hand to Mouth (Alfred J Goulding, Hal Roach, 1919)

Poster for Captain Kidd’s Kids (Hal Roach, 1919)

Lloyd’s career was not all laughs, however. In August 1919, while filming Haunted Spooks (Alfred J Goulding, Hal Roach, 1919) posing for some promotional still photographs in the Los Angeles Witzel Photography Studio, he was seriously injured holding a prop bomb thought merely to be a smoke pot.

It exploded and mangled his hand, causing him to lose a thumb and forefinger. The blast was severe enough that the cameraman and prop director nearby were also seriously injured.

Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis in Haunted Spooks (Alfred J Goulding, Hal Roach, 1919)

Lloyd was in the act of lighting a cigarette from the fuse of the bomb when it exploded, also badly burning his face and chest and injuring his eye. Despite the proximity of the blast to his face, he retained his sight. As he recalled in 1930, “I thought I would surely be so disabled that I would never be able to work again. I didn’t suppose that I would have one five-hundredth of what I have now. Still I thought, ‘Life is worth while. Just to be alive.’ I still think so.”^[11]

Beginning in 1921, Roach and Lloyd moved from shorts to feature-length comedies. These included the acclaimed Grandma’s Boy, which (along with Chaplin’s The Kid) pioneered the combination of complex character development and film comedy, the highly popular Safety Last!(1923), which cemented Lloyd’s stardom (and is the oldest film on the American Film Institute‘s List of 100 Most Thrilling Movies), and Why Worry? (1923).

Poster for Grandma’s Boy (Fred C Newmayer, 1922)

Harold Lloyd and Dick Sutherland in Grandma’s Boy (Fred C Newmayer, 1922)

Poster for Safety Last (Fred C Newmeyer, 1923)

Harold Lloyd in Safety Last (Fred C Newmeyer, 1923)

Harold Lloyd in Why Worry? (Fred C Newmeyer, 1923)

Lloyd and Roach parted ways in 1924, and Lloyd became the independent producer of his own films.

These included his most accomplished mature features Girl Shy, The Freshman (his highest-grossing silent feature), The Kid Brother, and Speedy, his final silent film. Welcome Danger (1929) was originally a silent film but Lloyd decided late in the production to remake it with dialogue.

All of these films were enormously successful and profitable, and Lloyd would eventually become the highest paid film performer of the 1920s.^[12] They were also highly influential and still find many fans among modern audiences, a testament to the originality and film-making skill of Lloyd and his collaborators. From this success, he became one of the wealthiest and most influential figures in early Hollywood.

Harold Lloyd and Jobyna Ralston (Fred C Newmeyer, 1924)

Poster for The Freshman (Fred C Newmeyer, 1925)

Harold Lloyd in The Freshman (Fred C Newmeyer, 1925)

Poster for The Kid Brother (Ted Wilde, Harold Lloyd, 1927)

Harold Lloyd and Jobyna Ralston in The Kid Brother (Ted Wilde, Harold Lloyd, 1927)

Lobby card for Speedy (Ted Wilde, 1928)

Harold Lloyd and Ann Christy in Speedy (Ted Wilde, 1928)

Poster for Welcome Danger (Clyde Bruckman, Malcolm St.Clair, 1929)

Harold Lloyd and Barbara Kent on the set of Welcome Danger (Clyde Bruckman, Malcolm St.Clair, 1929)

Talkies and transition

In 1924, Lloyd formed his own independent film production company, the Harold Lloyd Film Corporation, with his films distributed by Pathé and later Paramount and Twentieth Century-Fox. Lloyd was a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Harold Lloyd

Released a few weeks before the start of the Great Depression, Welcome Danger was a huge financial success, with audiences eager to hear Lloyd’s voice on film. Lloyd’s rate of film releases, which had been one or two a year in the 1920s, slowed to about one every two years until 1938.

Promotional poster for Welcome Danger (Clyde Bruckman, Malcolm St.Clair, 1929)

The films released during this period were: Feet First, with a similar scenario to Safety Last which found him clinging to a skyscraper at the climax; Movie Crazy with Constance Cummings; The Cat’s-Paw, which was a dark political comedy and a big departure for Lloyd; and The Milky Way, which was Lloyd’s only attempt at the fashionable genre of the screwball comedy film.

Lobby card for Feet First (Clyde Bruckman, Harold Lloyd, 1930)

Poster for Movie Crazy (Clyde Bruckman, Harold Lloyd, 1932)

Lobby card for The Cat’s Paw (Sam Taylor, Harold Lloyd, 1934)

Lobby card for The Milky Way (Leo McCarey, Ray McCarey, 1936)

To this point the films had been produced by Lloyd’s company. However, his go-getting screen character was out of touch with Great Depression movie audiences of the 1930s. As the length of time between his film releases increased, his popularity declined, as did the fortunes of his production company. His final film of the decade, Professor Beware, was made by the Paramount staff, with Lloyd functioning only as actor and partial financier.

Lobby card for Professor Beware (Elliott Nugent, 1938)

On March 23, 1937, Lloyd sold the land of his studio, Harold Lloyd Motion Picture Company, to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The location is now the site of the Los Angeles California Temple.^[13]

Lloyd produced a few comedies for RKO Radio Pictures in the early 1940s but otherwise retired from the screen until 1947. He returned for an additional starring appearance in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, an ill-fated homage to Lloyd’s career, directed by Preston Sturges and financed by Howard Hughes.

Lobby card for The Sin of Harold Diddlebock AKA Mad Wednesday (Preston Sturges, 1947)

This film had the inspired idea of following Harold’s Jazz Age, optimistic character from The Freshman into the Great Depression years. Diddlebock opened with footage from The Freshman (for which Lloyd was paid a royalty of $50,000, matching his actor’s fee) and Lloyd was sufficiently youthful-looking to match the older scenes quite well.

Lloyd and Sturges had different conceptions of the material and fought frequently during the shoot; Lloyd was particularly concerned that while Sturges had spent three to four months on the script of the first third of the film, “the last two thirds of it he wrote in a week or less”.

The finished film was released briefly in 1947, then shelved by producer Hughes. Hughes issued a recut version of the film in 1951 through RKO under the title Mad Wednesday. Such was Lloyd’s disdain that he sued Howard Hughes, the California Corporation and RKO for damages to his reputation “as an outstanding motion picture star and personality”, eventually accepting a $30,000 settlement.

German poster for The Sin of Harold Diddlebock AKA Mad Wednesday (Preston Sturges, 1947)

Radio and retirement

In October 1944, Lloyd emerged as the director and host of The Old Gold Comedy Theater, an NBC radio anthology series, after Preston Sturges, who had turned the job down, recommended him for it. The show presented half-hour radio adaptations of recently successful film comedies, beginning with Palm Beach Story with Claudette Colbert and Robert Young.

Rehearsing the script for “The Palm Beach Story” are Robert Young, Harold Lloyd and Claudette Colbert – The Old Gold Comedy Theatre

Some saw The Old Gold Comedy Theater as being a lighter version of Lux Radio Theater, and it featured some of the best-known film and radio personalities of the day, including Fred Allen, June Allyson, Lucille Ball, Ralph Bellamy, Linda Darnell, Susan Hayward, Herbert Marshall, Dick Powell, Edward G. Robinson, Jane Wyman, and Alan Young.

But the show’s half-hour format—which meant the material might have been truncated too severely—and Lloyd’s sounding somewhat ill at ease on the air for much of the season (though he spent weeks training himself to speak on radio prior to the show’s premiere, and seemed more relaxed toward the end of the series run) may have worked against it.

The Old Gold Comedy Theater ended in June 1945 with an adaptation of Tom, Dick and Harry, featuring June Allyson and Reginald Gardiner and was not renewed for the following season. Many years later, acetate discs of 29 of the shows were discovered in Lloyd’s home, and they now circulate among old-time radio collectors.

Harold Lloyd and Dick Powell – The Old Gold Comedy Theatre

Lloyd remained involved in a number of other interests, including civic and charity work. Inspired by having overcome his own serious injuries and burns, he was very active as a Freemason and Shriner with the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children.

He was a Past Potentate of Al-Malaikah Shrine in Los Angeles, and was eventually selected as Imperial Potentate of the Shriners of North America for the year 1949–50.^[14] At the installation ceremony for this position on July 25, 1949, 90,000 people were present at Soldier Field, including then sitting U.S. President Harry S Truman, also a 33° Scottish Rite Mason.^[15] In recognition of his services to the nation and Freemasonry, Bro. Lloyd was invested with the Rank and Decoration of Knight Commander Court of Honour in 1955 and coroneted an Inspector General Honorary, 33°, in 1965.

Harold Lloyd in 1946, when he was appointed to the Shriners’ publicity committee

He appeared as himself on several television shows during his retirement, first on Ed Sullivan‘s variety show Toast of the Town June 5, 1949, and again on July 6, 1958. He appeared as the Mystery Guest on What’s My Line? on April 26, 1953, and twice on This Is Your Life: on March 10, 1954 for Mack Sennett, and again on December 14, 1955, on his own episode. During both appearances, Lloyd’s hand injury can clearly be seen.^[16]

Harold Lloyd on This is Your Life in 1950’s

Lloyd studied colors and microscopy, and was very involved with photography, including 3D photography and color film experiments. Some of the earliest 2-color Technicolor tests were shot at his Beverly Hills home (These are included as extra material in the Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection DVD Box Set).

Harold Lloyd’s 3 D Photography Album

He became known for his nude photographs of models, such as Bettie Page and stripper Dixie Evans, for a number of men’s magazines. He also took photos of Marilyn Monroe lounging at his pool in a bathing suit, which were published after her death. In 2004, his granddaughter Suzanne produced a book of selections from his photographs, Harold Lloyd’s Hollywood Nudes in 3D! (ISBN 1-57912-394-5).

Harold Lloyd’s 3 D Photography Album

Lloyd also provided encouragement and support for a number of younger actors, such as Debbie Reynolds, Robert Wagner, and particularly Jack Lemmon, whom Harold declared as his own choice to play him in a movie of his life and work.

Marilyn Monroe photographed by Harold Lloyd

Marilyn Monroe photographed by Harold Lloyd during a photo session with Philippe Halsman, 1952

Marilyn Monroe photographed by Harold Lloyd

Renewed interest

Lloyd kept copyright control of most of his films and re-released them infrequently after his retirement.

Lloyd did not grant cinematic release because most theaters could not accommodate an organist, and Lloyd did not wish his work to be accompanied by a pianist: “I just don’t like pictures played with pianos.

We never intended them to be played with pianos.” Similarly, his features were never shown on television as Lloyd’s price was high: “I want $300,000 per picture for two showings. That’s a high price, but if I don’t get it, I’m not going to show it. They’ve come close to it, but they haven’t come all the way up”.

As a consequence, his reputation and public recognition suffered in comparison with Chaplin and Keaton, whose work has generally been more available. Lloyd’s film character was so intimately associated with the 1920s era that attempts at revivals in 1940s and 1950s were poorly received, when audiences viewed the 1920s (and silent film in particular) as old-fashioned.

Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis in 1935

In the early 1960s, Lloyd produced two compilation films, featuring scenes from his old comedies, Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy and The Funny Side of Life.

The first film was premiered at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, where Lloyd was fêted as a major rediscovery. The renewed interest in Lloyd helped restore his status among film historians.

Throughout his later years he screened his films for audiences at special charity and educational events, to great acclaim, and found a particularly receptive audience among college audiences: “Their whole response was tremendous because they didn’t miss a gag; anything that was even a little subtle, they got it right away.”

Lobby cards for Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy (Harold Lloyd, 1962)

Poster for The Funny Side of Life (Harry Kerwin, 1963)

Following his death, and after extensive negotiations, most of his feature films were leased to Time-Life Films in 1974.

As Tom Dardis confirms: “Time-Life prepared horrendously edited musical-sound-track versions of the silent films, which are intended to be shown on TV at sound speed [24 frames per second], and which represent everything that Harold feared would happen to his best films”.^{[citation needed]}

Time-Life released the films as half-hour television shows, with two clips per show. These were often near-complete versions of the early two-reelers, but also included extended sequences from features such as Safety Last! (terminating at the clock sequence) and Feet First (presented silent, but with Walter Scharf‘s score from Lloyd’s own 1960s re-release).

Belgian poster for Safety Last (Fred C Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, 1923)

Time-Life released several of the feature films more or less intact, also using some of Scharf’s scores which had been commissioned by Lloyd. The Time-Life clips series included a narrator rather than intertitles. Various narrators were used internationally: the English-language series was narrated by Henry Corden.

The Time-Life series was frequently repeated by the BBC in the United Kingdom during the 1980s, and in 1990 a Thames Television documentary, Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius was produced by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, following two similar series based on Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.^[17] Composer Carl Davis wrote a new score for Safety Last! which he performed live during a showing of the film with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to great acclaim in 1993.^[18]

Harold Lloyd, The Third Genius (Kevin Brownlow, David Gill, 1990)

Harold Lloyd, The Third Genius (Kevin Brownlow, David Gill, 1990) – VHS Release

The Brownlow and Gill documentary was shown as part of the PBS series American Masters, and created a renewed interest in Lloyd’s work in the United States, but the films were largely unavailable.

In 2002, the Harold Lloyd Trust re-launched Harold Lloyd with the publication of the book Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian by Jeffrey Vance and Suzanne Lloyd^[19]^[20] and a series of feature films and short subjects called “The Harold Lloyd Classic Comedies” produced by Jeffrey Vance and executive produced by Suzanne Lloyd for Harold Lloyd Entertainment.

The new cable television and home video versions of Lloyd’s great silent features and many shorts were remastered with new orchestral scores by Robert Israel. These versions are frequently shown on the Turner Classic Movies(TCM) cable channel.

A DVD collection of these restored or remastered versions of his feature films and important short subjects was released by New Line Cinema in partnership with the Harold Lloyd Trust in 2005, along with theatrical screenings in the US, Canada, and Europe. Criterion Collection has subsequently acquired the home video rights to the Lloyd library, and have released Safety Last!,^[21] The Freshman,^[22] and Speedy.^[23]

Safety Last – Criterion Collection Blu Ray Special Edition

The Freshman – Criterion Collection – Dual Format Edition

The Freshman – Criterion Collection – Blu Ray Special Edition

In the June 2006 Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Silent Film Gala program book for Safety Last!, film historian Jeffrey Vance stated that Robert A. Golden, Lloyd’s assistant director, routinely doubled for Harold Lloyd between 1921 and 1927. According to Vance, Golden doubled Lloyd in the bit with Harold shimmy shaking off the building’s ledge after a mouse crawls up his trousers.^[24]

Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection – DVD Release

Personal life

Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis in a publicity photo for High And Dizzy (Hal Roach, 1920)

Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis and Douglas Fairbanks

They had two children together: Gloria Lloyd (1923-2012)^[26]^[27] and Harold Clayton Lloyd Jr. (1931–1971).^[28] They also adopted Gloria Freeman (1924—1986) in September 1930, whom they renamed Marjorie Elizabeth Lloyd but was known as “Peggy” for most of her life.

Lloyd discouraged Davis from continuing her acting career. He later relented but by that time her career momentum was lost. Davis died from a heart attack in 1969, two years before Lloyd’s death.

Though her real age was a guarded secret, a family spokesperson at the time indicated she was 66 years old. Lloyd’s son was gay and, according to Annette D’Agostino Lloyd (no relation) in the book Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian, Harold Sr. took this in good spirit. Harold Jr. died from complications of a stroke three months after his father.

Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis

The Lloyds in 1936. From left to right: Peggy and Harold Jr., Harold, Gloria, and Mildred

In 1925, at the height of his movie career, Lloyd entered into Freemasonry at the Alexander Hamilton Lodge No. 535 of Hollywood, advancing quickly through both the York Rite and Scottish Rite, and then joined Al Malaikah Shrine in Los Angeles. He took the degrees of the Royal Arch with his father. In 1926, he became a 32° Scottish Rite Mason in the Valley of Los Angeles, California. He was vested with the Rank and Decoration of Knight Commander Court of Honor (KCCH) and eventually with the Inspector General Honorary, 33rd degree.

Harold Lloyd and Freemasons

Harold Lloyd at Al Malaikah Shrine in Los Angeles

Lloyd’s Beverly Hills home, “Greenacres“, was built in 1926–1929, with 44 rooms, 26 bathrooms, 12 fountains, 12 gardens, and a nine-hole golf course. A portion of Lloyd’s personal inventory of his silent films (then estimated to be worth $2 million) was destroyed in August 1943 when his film vault caught fire. Seven firemen were overcome while inhaling chlorine gas from the blaze.

Lloyd himself was saved by his wife, who dragged him to safety outdoors after he collapsed at the door of the film vault. The fire spared the main house and outbuildings. After attempting to maintain the home as a museum of film history, as Lloyd had wished, the Lloyd family sold it to a developer in 1975.

Harold Lloyd house fire

Harold Lloyd Estate

The grounds were subsequently subdivided but the main house and the estate’s principal gardens remain and are frequently used for civic fundraising events and as a filming location, appearing in films like Westworld and The Loved One. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Greenacres was built in the 1920s in Beverly Hills, one of Los Angeles’ all-white planned communities.^[29] The area had restrictive covenants prohibiting non-whites (this also included Jews^[30]) from living there unless they were in the employment of a white resident (typically as a domestic servant).^[31]^:57

In 1940, Lloyd supported a neighborhood improvement association in Beverly Hills that attempted to enforce the all-white covenant in court after a number of black actors and businessmen had begun buying properties in the area.

However, in his decision, federal judge Thurmond Clarke dismissed the action stating that it was time that “members of the Negro race are accorded, without reservations or evasions, the full rights guaranteed to them under the 14th amendment.”^[32] In 1948 the United States Supreme Court declared in Shelley v. Kraemer that all racially restrictive covenants in the United States were unenforceable.^[33]

Death

Lloyd died at age 77 from prostate cancer on March 8, 1971, at his Greenacres home in Beverly Hills, California.^[12]^[34]^[35]

He was interred in a crypt in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.^[36] His former co-star Bebe Daniels died eight days after him and his son Harold Lloyd Jr.died three months after him.^{[citation needed]}

The crypt of Harold Lloyd, in the Great Mausoleum, Forest Lawn Glendale

Honors

In 1927, his was only the fourth concrete ceremony at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, preserving his handprints, footprints, and autograph, along with the outline of his famed glasses (which were actually a pair of sunglasses with the lenses removed).^[37]^[38] The ceremony took place directly in front of the Hollywood Masonic Temple, which was the meeting place of the Masonic lodge to which he belonged.^[39]

Harold Lloyd hand and foot prints

Lloyd was honoured in 1960 for his contribution to motion pictures with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 1503 Vine Street.^[40] In 1994, he was honoured with his image on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.^[41]^[42]

In 1953, Lloyd received an Academy Honorary Award for being a “master comedian and good citizen”. The second citation was a snub to Chaplin, who at that point had fallen foul of McCarthyism and had his entry visa to the United States revoked. Regardless of the political overtones, Lloyd accepted the award in good spirit.

Filmography

Early films

1913

The Old Monk’s Tale (1913) (uncredited debut)
The Twelfth Juror (1913) (uncredited)
Cupid in a Dental Parlor (1913) (unconfirmed)
Hulda of Holland (1913) (uncredited)
His Chum the Baron (1913) (unconfirmed)
A Little Hero (1913) (uncredited)
Rory o’ the Bogs (1913) (uncredited)

1914

Twixt Love and Fire (1914) – also starring Fatty Arbuckle
Sealed Orders (1914) (unconfirmed)
Samson (1914) (uncredited)
The Sandhill Lovers (1914) (as Hal Lloyd)
The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914) (uncredited)

1915

Beyond His Fondest Hopes (1915)
Pete, the Pedal Polisher (1915)
Close-Cropped Clippings (1915)
Hogan’s Romance Upset (1915) (uncredited)
Willie Runs the Park (1915)
Just Nuts (1915) – as Willie Work
Love, Loot and Crash (1915) (uncredited)
Their Social Splash (1915)
Miss Fatty’s Seaside Lovers (1915) – also starring Fatty Arbuckle
From Italy’s Shores (1915)
Court House Crooks, or Courthouse Crooks (1915) – as Young Man Out of Work (uncredited)
The Hungry Actors (1915)
The Greater Courage (1915)
A Submarine Pirate (1915) – as Cook

Lonesome Luke

1915

1916

Lonesome Luke Leans to the Literary (1916)
Luke Lugs Luggage (1916)
Lonesome Luke Lolls in Luxury (1916)
Luke, the Candy Cut-Up (1916)
Luke Foils the Villain (1916)
Luke and the Rural Roughnecks (1916)
Luke Pipes the Pippins (1916)
Lonesome Luke, Circus King (1916)
Luke’s Double (1916)
Them Was the Happy Days! (1916)
Luke and the Bomb Throwers (1916)
Luke’s Late Lunchers (1916)
Luke Laughs Last (1916)
Luke’s Fatal Flivver (1916)
Luke’s Society Mixup (1916)
Luke’s Washful Waiting (1916)
Luke Rides Roughshod (1916)
Luke, Crystal Gazer (1916)
Luke’s Lost Lamb (1916)
Luke Does the Midway (1916)
Luke Joins the Navy (1916)
Luke and the Mermaids (1916)
Luke’s Speedy Club Life (1916)
Luke and the Bang-Tails, or Luke and the Bangtails (1916)
Luke, the Chauffeur (1916)
Luke’s Preparedness Preparations (1916)
Luke, the Gladiator (1916)
Luke, Patient Provider (1916)
Luke’s Newsie Knockout (1916)
Luke’s Movie Muddle, also known as The Cinema Director (1916)
Luke, Rank Impersonator (1916)
Luke’s Fireworks Fizzle (1916)
Luke Locates the Loot (1916)
Luke’s Shattered Sleep (1916)

1917

Glasses character (“The Boy”)

1917

Over the Fence (1917)
Pinched (1917)
By the Sad Sea Waves (1917)
Bliss (1917)
Rainbow Island (1917)
The Flirt (1917)
All Aboard (1917)
Move On (1917)
Bashful (1917)
Step Lively (1917)
The Big Idea (1917)

Later short

Dogs of War (1923), an Our Gang comedy filmed alongside the feature film Why Worry?. Lloyd played himself.

Feature-length films

Lloyd starred in a total of 18 feature-length motion pictures, consisting of 11 silent and 7 sound films. Lloyd also re-edited his material into 2 compilation features.

Silent features

No.	Title	Release date	Length	Director(s)	Character name	Character type	Leading lady	Story
1	A Sailor-Made Man	December 25, 1921	3846 ft.	Fred Newmeyer	The Boy	Rich Idler	Mildred Davis	Must prove worthy of girl, joins navy, rescues her from a maharajah in Middle Eastern city. Frenetic, like early short Films.
2	Grandma’s Boy	September 3, 1922	4841 ft.	Fred Newmeyer	The Boy (Sonny / Harold)	Meek Country Boy Granddaddy	Mildred Davis	Cowardly country boy gains courage from magic charm; Civil War flashback; delicate characterization. Lloyd’s favorite film.
3	Dr. Jack	November 23, 1922	4700 ft.	Fred Newmeyer	Dr. Jackson (Jack)	Successful Country Doctor	Mildred Davis	Small-town country doctor uses common sense to cure patients.
4	Safety Last!	April 1, 1923	6300 ft.	Fred Newmeyer Sam Taylor	Harold Lloyd	Industrious Go-Getter	Mildred Davis	Country boy goes to city to be a success, ends up climbing building as stunt. Most spectacular daredevil thrill comedy. Last film with Davis, whom he married.
5	Why Worry?	September 16, 1923	5500 ft.	Fred Newmeyer Sam Taylor	Harold Van Pelham	Wealthy Hypocondriac	Jobyna Ralston	Hypochondriac goes to South America for rest, lands in revolution. Funniest for sheer number of gags. Last Lloyd film produced by Hal Roach.
6	Girl Shy	March 28, 1924	7457 ft.	Fred Newmeyer Sam Taylor	The Poor Boy (Harold Meadows)	Shy Dreamer	Jobyna Ralston	Shy stutterer writes book on lovemaking; must rescue girl from marrying wrong man. Terrific race sequence at end.
7	Hot Water	October 26, 1924	4899 ft.	Sam Taylor Fred Newmeyer	Hubby	Hen-Pecked Husband	Jobyna Ralston	Family situation comedy; episodic; live turkey on trolley, madcap car ride, haunted-house finale.
8	The Freshman	September 30, 1925	6883 ft.	Sam Taylor Fred Newmeyer	Harold Lamb	College Go-Getter	Jobyna Ralston	Popularity-conscious student tries to be “Big Man on Campus”; finally wins big football game and girl. Best topical satire.
9	For Heaven’s Sake	April 5, 1926	5356 ft.	Sam Taylor	The Updown Boy (J. Harold Mannors)	Debonaire Millionaire	Jobyna Ralston	Rich man aids slum mission; must get drunks to wedding on time.
10	The Kid Brother	January 17, 1927	7654 ft.	Ted Wilde J.A. Howe Lewis Milestone(uncredited) Harold Lloyd (uncredited)	Harold Hickory	Bashful Farm Boy	Jobyna Ralston	Son of sheriff must prove his manhood; captures crook, returns stolen money, wins girl. Best integration of all Lloyd’s key elements.
11	Speedy	April 7, 1928	7776 ft.	Ted Wilde	Harold “Speedy” Swift	Carefree City Boy	Ann Christy	Baseball-crazed city boy can’t keep job, upsets mobsters’ plans to ruin old man’s business. New York location; Babe Ruthappearance; great chase.

Sound features

No.	Title	Release date	Length	Director(s)	Character name	Character type	Leading lady	Story
1	Welcome Danger	October 12, 1929	10297 ft. 115 min.	Mal St. Clair Clyde Bruckman	Harold Bledsoe	Industrious Detective	Barbara Kent	Botanist-turned-sleuth thwarts Chinese hoods in San Francisco. Lloyd’s first talkie.
2	Feet First	November 8, 1930	8130 ft. 90 min.	Clyde Bruckman	Harold Horne	Ambitious Fumbler	Barbara Kent	Shoe salesman pretends to be successful businessman. Gags on boat; big-thrill building climb at end. Episodic.
3	Movie Crazy	September 23, 1932	8852 ft. 98 min.	Clyde Bruckman	Harold Hall	Meek Fumbler	Constance Cummings	Boy tries to make good in Hollywood. Some good gags and action; complex love interest.
4	The Cat’s-Paw	August 7, 1934	9157 ft. 102 min.	Sam Taylor	Ezekiel Cobb	Missionary turned Reformer	Una Merkel Grace Bradley	Accidentally elected mayor, naive reformer takes brunt of political machine. Oriental setting, strange political overtones.
5	The Milky Way	March 25, 1936	8010 ft. 89 min.	Leo McCarey	Burleigh Sullivan	Milkman turned Prizefighter	Verree Teasdale Helen Mack Dorothy Wilson	Quick-paced verbal comedy with top supporting cast. Fixed fights send weakling to championship fight.
6	Professor Beware	July 29, 1938	8550 ft. 93 min.	Elliott Nugent	Prof. Dean Lambert	Fumbling Professor	Phyllis Welch	Egyptologist searches for missing tablets.
7	The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (original release title)	April 4, 1947	8010 ft. 89 min.	Preston Sturges	Harold Diddlebock	Clerk turned Promotor	Frances Ramsden	Man’s first drink changes him into live wire; thrill on high building again. Recut by Howard Hughes.
7	Mad Wednesday (re-issue title)	October 28, 1950	6930 ft. 76 min.	Preston Sturges	Harold Diddlebock	Clerk turned Promotor	Frances Ramsden

Compilations

No.	Title	Release date	Description
1	Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy	1962	An anthology of comedy sequences, mostly from Safety Last, The Freshman, Hot Water, Why Worry?, Girl Shy, Professor Beware, Movie Crazy, and Feet First.
2	The Funny Side of Life	1963	Another compilation, produced and edited by Lloyd. Not generally distributed in the United States.

As producer only

Harold Lloyd also produced, but did not star in, two feature films.

No.	Title	Release date	Director(s)	Stars
1	A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob	1941	Richard Jones	Lucille Ball, George Murphy, Edmund O’Brien, and Franklin Pangborn
2	My Favorite Spy	1942	Norman Z. McLeod	Kay Kyser, Ellen Drew, Jane Wyman, Robert Armstrong, and William Demerest

References

Jump up^ Obituary Variety, March 10, 1971, page 55.
Jump up^ Austerlitz, Saul (2010). Another Fine Mess: A History of American Film Comedy. Chicago Review Press. p. 28. ISBN 1569767637.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b D’Agostino Lloyd, Annette. “Why Harold Lloyd Is Important”. haroldlloyd.com. Retrieved November 12, 2013.
Jump up^ Slide, Anthony (September 27, 2002). Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses. Univ. Press of Kentucky. p. 221. ISBN 978-0813122496.
Jump up^ An American Comedy; Lloyd and Stout; 1928; page 129
Jump up^ “Comedy in the 1920’s – 1950’s”. alphadragondesign.com. Retrieved April 13,2015.
Jump up^ “Encyclopedia of the Great Plains – Lloyd, Harold (1893-1971)”. unl.edu. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
Jump up^ “Hal Roach article”. Silentsaregolden.com. Retrieved 2016-07-21.
Jump up^ Pawlak, Debra Ann (January 15, 2011). Bringing Up Oscar: The Story of the Men and Women Who Founded the Academy. New York: Pegasus Books. p. 62. ISBN 978-1605981376.
Jump up^ “Harold Lloyd biography”. haroldlloyd.com. Retrieved November 12, 2013.
Jump up^ Hall, Gladys (October 1930). “Discoveries About Myself”. Motion Picture Magazine. New York: Brewster Publications. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b “Died”. Time. March 22, 1971. Retrieved June 8, 2008. Harold Lloyd, 77, comedian whose screen image of horn-rimmed incompetence made him Hollywood’s highest-paid star in the 1920s; of cancer; in Hollywood. He usually played a feckless Mr. Average who triumphed over misfortune. ‘My character represented the white-collar middle class that felt frustrated but was always fighting to overcome its shortcomings,’ he once explained. Lloyd usually did his own stunt work, as in Safety Last (1923), in which he dangled from a clock high above the street; he was protected only by a wooden platform two floors below.
Jump up^ “Los Angeles California Temple”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Retrieved June 8, 2008. The land for the Los Angeles California Temple was purchased from Harold Lloyd Motion Picture Company on March 23, 1937.
Jump up^ “Harold LLoyd” Archived January 22, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. “In 1949, Harold’s face graced the cover of TIME Magazine as the Imperial Potentate of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, their highest-ranking position. He devoted an entire year to visiting 130 temples across the country giving speeches for over 700,000 Shriners. The last twenty years of his life he worked tirelessly for the twenty-two Shriner Hospitals for Children and in the 1960s, he was named President and Chairman of the Board.”
Jump up^ Lloyd, Harold. “Phoenix Masonry Masonic Museum”. Masonic Research. Phoenix Masonry. Retrieved July 29, 2012.
Jump up^ “Harold Lloyd”. IMDB. Retrieved June 8, 2008.
Jump up^ Documentary: Harold Lloyd — The Third Genius.
Jump up^ https://issuu.com/fm_fortissimo/docs/faber_silents_catalogue_2016
Jump up^ Loos, Ted (2002-07-21). “Books in Brief – Nonfiction – A Matter of Attitude”. New York Times. Retrieved 2016-07-21.
Jump up^ “Behind the Laughter”. latimes. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
Jump up^ “Safety Last!”. The Criterion Collection. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
Jump up^ “The Freshman”. The Criterion Collection. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
Jump up^ “Speedy”. The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 2017-05-19.
Jump up^ “”Safety Last!: Notes on the Making of the Film” : Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Silent Film Gala program book, June 3, 2006 revised and reprinted as “Safety Last!” San Francisco Silent Film Festival program book, July 18–21, 2013″. Silentfilm.org. Retrieved 2016-07-21.
Jump up^ Los Angeles, California, County Marriages 1850-1952
Jump up^ “Gloria Lloyd, daughter of Harold Lloyd, dies”. Variety. February 11, 2012. Retrieved 2012-02-11.
Jump up^ Brownlow, Kevin (27 February 2012). “Obituaries: Gloria Lloyd: Actress who had a gilded life as Harold Lloyd’s daughter”. The Independent. Retrieved 2015-09-30.
Jump up^ “Harold Lloyd Jr. Dies. Actor, Son of Comedy Star”. The New York Times. June 10, 1971. Retrieved June 8, 2008.
Jump up^ James W. Loewen (September 29, 2005). Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism. The New Press. p. 112. ISBN 978-1-59558-674-2. Retrieved August 19, 2012.
Jump up^ Andrew Wiese (December 15, 2005). Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century. University of Chicago Press. p. 42. ISBN 978-0-226-89625-0. Retrieved August 19, 2012.
Jump up^ Michael Gross (November 1, 2011). Unreal Estate: Money, Ambition, and the Lust for Land in Los Angeles. Random House Digital, Inc. ISBN 978-0-7679-3265-3. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
Jump up^ Stephen Grant Meyer (October 1, 2001). As Long As They Don’t Move Next Door: Segregation and Racial Conflict in American Neighborhoods. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-8476-9701-4. Retrieved August 19, 2012.
Jump up^ Steve Sheppard (April 1, 2007). The History of Legal Education in the United States: Commentaries And Primary Sources. The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. p. 948n. ISBN 978-1-58477-690-1. Retrieved August 19, 2012.
Jump up^ “Harold Lloyd, Bespectacled Film Comic, Dies of Cancer at 77”. Los Angeles Times. March 9, 1971. Retrieved June 8, 2008. Comedian Harold Lloyd, 77, who bumbled through more than 300 films as a bespectacled victim of life’s difficulties, died of cancer Monday at his Beverly Hills home.
Jump up^ Illson, Murray (March 9, 1971). “Horn-Rims His Trademark; Harold Lloyd, Screen Comedian, Dies at 77”. The New York Times. Retrieved June 8, 2008. A pair of inexpensive, horn-rimmed eyeglass frames without lenses, the shy expression of a somewhat bewildered adolescent and a single-track ambition made Harold Clayton Lloyd the highest-paid screen actor in Hollywood’s golden age of the nineteen twenties.
Jump up^ Harold Lloyd at Find a Grave
Jump up^ “Harold Lloyd’s Prints At Mann’s Chinese Theatre”. Getty Images. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
Jump up^ Bengtson, John (2011-05-21). “Harold Lloyd – lasting impressions at Grauman’s Chinese”. Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd film locations (and more). Retrieved 2017-06-27.
Jump up^ Ridenour, Al (2002-05-02). “A Chamber of Secrets”. Los Angeles Times. pp. 1–2. ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
Jump up^ “Harold Lloyd | Hollywood Walk of Fame”. http://www.walkoffame.com. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
Jump up^ Hirschfeld, Al (2015). The Hirschfeld Century: Portrait of an Artist and His Age. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 291, 293. ISBN 9781101874974. OCLC 898029267.
Jump up^ McAllister, Bill (1994-04-15). “Hirschfeld’s ‘Silent’ Stars”. The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2017-06-27.

Roscoe ”Fatty” Arbuckle

March 22, 2018 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Prepared by Daniel B Miller

Roscoe Conkling “Fatty” Arbuckle (March 24, 1887 – June 29, 1933) was an American silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter.

Starting at the Selig Polyscope Company he eventually moved to Keystone Studios, where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd. He mentored Charlie Chaplin and discovered Buster Keaton and Bob Hope. Arbuckle was one of the most popular silent stars of the 1910s, and soon became one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood, signing a contract in 1920 with Paramount Pictures for US$1 million (equivalent to approximately $14,000,000 in 2017 dollars^[1]).

Between November 1921 and April 1922, Arbuckle was the defendant in three widely publicized trials for the rape and manslaughter of actress Virginia Rappe. Rappe had fallen ill at a party hosted by Arbuckle at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco in September 1921; she died four days later. Arbuckle was accused by Rappe’s acquaintance of raping and accidentally killing Rappe. After the first two trials, which resulted in hung juries, Arbuckle was acquitted in the third trial and received a formal written statement of apology from the jury.

Roscoe Arbuckle Trial – Chicago Herald Examiner Newspaper Coverage

Despite Arbuckle’s acquittal, the scandal has mostly overshadowed his legacy as a pioneering comedian. Following the trials, his films were banned and he was publicly ostracized. Although the ban on his films was lifted within a year, Arbuckle only worked sparingly through the 1920s. He later worked as a film director under the alias William Goodrich. He was finally able to return to acting, making short two-reel comedies in 1932 for Warner Bros.

He died in his sleep of a heart attack in 1933 at age 46, reportedly on the same day he signed a contract with Warner Brothers to make a feature film.^[2]

Early life

Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle was born on March 24, 1887 in Smith Center, Kansas, one of nine children of Mary E. “Mollie” Gordon (d. February 19, 1898) and William Goodrich Arbuckle.^[3] He weighed in excess of 13 lb (5.9 kg) at birth and, as both parents had slim builds, his father believed the child was not his. Consequently, he named the baby after a politician (and notorious philanderer) whom he despised, Republican senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. The birth was traumatic for Mollie and resulted in chronic health problems that contributed to her death 12 years later.^[4] When Arbuckle was nearly two his family moved to Santa Ana, California.^[5]

Young Roscoe Arbuckle

Arbuckle had a “wonderful” singing voice and was extremely agile. At the age of eight, with his mother’s encouragement, he first performed on stage with Frank Bacon’s company during their stopover in Santa Ana.^[5]

Arbuckle enjoyed performing and continued on until his mother’s death in 1899 when he was 12.

Young Roscoe Arbuckle in his stage performance outfit

His father, who had always treated him harshly,^[6] now refused to support him and Arbuckle got work doing odd jobs in a hotel. Arbuckle was in the habit of singing while he worked and was overheard by a customer who was a professional singer.

The customer invited him to perform in an amateur talent show. The show consisted of the audience judging acts by clapping or jeering with bad acts pulled off the stage by a shepherd’s crook. Arbuckle sang, danced, and did some clowning around, but did not impress the audience. He saw the crook emerge from the wings and to avoid it somersaulted into the orchestra pit in obvious panic. The audience went wild, and he not only won the competition but began a career in vaudeville.^[4]

Roscoe Arbuckle – from vaudeville to motion pictures

Career

In 1904, Sid Grauman invited Arbuckle to sing in his new Unique Theater in San Francisco, beginning a long friendship between the two.^[7]^[8] He then joined the Pantages Theatre Group touring the West Coast of the United States and in 1906 played the Orpheum Theater in Portland, Oregon in a vaudeville troupe organized by Leon Errol. Arbuckle became the main act and the group took their show on tour.^[9]

The Pantages Theatre Group at the Savoy Theatre, Palace Grand Theatre, Yukon

On August 6, 1908, Arbuckle married Minta Durfee (1889–1975), the daughter of Charles Warren Durfee and Flora Adkins.

Durfee starred in many early comedy films, often with Arbuckle.^[10]^[11] They made a strange couple, as Minta was short and petite while Arbuckle tipped the scales at 300 lbs.^[4] Arbuckle then joined the Morosco Burbank Stock vaudeville company and went on a tour of China and Japan returning in early 1909.^[12]

Roscoe Arbuckle and Minta Durfee in a promotional photo for an early Mack Sennett film

Roscoe Arbuckle and Minta Durfee in Fatty’s Chance Acquaintance (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1915)

Arbuckle began his film career with the Selig Polyscope Company in July 1909 when he appeared in Ben’s Kid.

Arbuckle appeared sporadically in Selig one-reelers until 1913, moved briefly to Universal Pictures and became a star in producer-director Mack Sennett‘s Keystone Cops comedies (However, according to the Motion Picture Studio Directory for 1919 and 1921, Arbuckle began his screen career with Keystone in 1913 as an extra for $3 a day (equivalent to approximately $74 in 2017 dollars^[1]), working his way up through the acting ranks to become a lead player and director.)

Roscoe Arbuckle in Mack Sennett’s Keystone Cops

Although his large size was undoubtedly part of his comedic appeal Arbuckle was self-conscious about his weight and refused to use it to get “cheap” laughs. For example, he would not allow himself to be stuck in a doorway or chair.^{[citation needed]}

Arbuckle was a talented singer. After famed operatic tenor Enrico Caruso heard him sing, he urged the comedian to “…give up this nonsense you do for a living, with training you could become the second greatest singer in the world.”^[13]

Roscoe Arbuckle in Mack Sennett’s Keystone Cops

Screen comedian

Despite his physical size, Arbuckle was remarkably agile and acrobatic. Director Mack Sennett, when recounting his first meeting with Arbuckle, noted that he “skipped up the stairs as lightly as Fred Astaire“; and, “without warning went into a feather light step, clapped his hands and did a backward somersault as graceful as a girl tumbler”.

His comedies are noted as rollicking and fast-paced, have many chase scenes, and feature sight gags. Arbuckle was fond of the “pie in the face“, a comedy cliché that has come to symbolize silent-film-era comedy itself. The earliest known pie thrown in film was in the June 1913 Keystone one-reeler A Noise from the Deep, starring Arbuckle and frequent screen partner Mabel Normand.

Roscoe Arbuckle and Mabel Normand in A Noise from the Deep (Mack Sennett, 1913)

Roscoe Arbuckle and Mabel Normand in Fatty’s Wine Party (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1914)

In 1914, Paramount Pictures made the then-unheard-of offer of US$1,000-a-day plus 25% of all profits and complete artistic control to make movies with Arbuckle and Normand. The movies were so lucrative and popular that in 1918 they offered Arbuckle a three-year, $3 million contract (equivalent to about $49,000,000 in 2017 dollars^[1]).^[14]

Roscoe Arbuckle and Mabel Normand in Fatty and Mabel Adrift (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1916)

By 1916, Arbuckle was experiencing serious health problems. An infection that developed on his leg became a carbuncle so severe that doctors considered amputation. Although Arbuckle was able to keep his leg, he became addicted to the pain killer morphine.

Following his recovery, Arbuckle started his own film company, Comique, in partnership with Joseph Schenck. Although Comique produced some of the best short pictures of the silent era, in 1918 Arbuckle transferred his controlling interest in the company to Buster Keaton and accepted Paramount’s $3 million offer to make up to 18 feature films over three years.^[4]

Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton in Good Night, Nurse! (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1918)

Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton in Coney Island (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1917)

Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton in The Garage (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1920)

Arbuckle disliked his screen nickname. “Fatty” had also been Arbuckle’s nickname since school; “It was inevitable”, he said. He weighed 185lb (13st 3lb, 84kg) when he was 12. Fans also called Roscoe “The Prince of Whales” and “The Balloonatic”.

However, the name Fatty identifies the character that Arbuckle portrayed on-screen (usually a naive hayseed)—not Arbuckle himself. When Arbuckle portrayed a female, the character was named “Miss Fatty”, as in the film Miss Fatty’s Seaside Lovers.

Arbuckle discouraged anyone from addressing him as “Fatty” off-screen, and when they did so his usual response was, “I’ve got a name, you know.”^[15]

Roscoe Arbuckle in Miss Fatty’s Seaside Lovers (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1915)

Scandal

This 1922 Vanity Fair caricature by Ralph Barton^[16] shows the famous people who, he imagined, left work each day in Hollywood; use cursor to identify individual figures.

On September 5, 1921, Arbuckle took a break from his hectic film schedule and, despite suffering from second-degree burns to both buttocks from an accident on set, drove to San Francisco with two friends, Lowell Sherman and Fred Fishback.

Lowell Sherman

Fred Fishbach (on the left) with Fred Hibbard and Edith Roberts

The three checked into three rooms at the St. Francis Hotel: 1219 for Arbuckle and Fishback to share, 1221 for Sherman, and 1220 designated as a party room.

Several women were invited to the suite. During the carousing, a 26-year-old aspiring actress named Virginia Rappe was found seriously ill in room 1219 and was examined by the hotel doctor, who concluded her symptoms were mostly caused by intoxication, and gave her morphine to calm her. Rappe was not hospitalized until two days after the incident.^[2]

Virginia Rappe

Suite 1221 of St. Francis Hotel shortly after Arbuckle’s party

Virginia Rappe suffered from chronic cystitis,^[17] a condition that liquor irritated dramatically. Her heavy drinking habits and the poor quality of the era’s bootleg alcohol could leave her in severe physical distress.

She developed a reputation for over-imbibing at parties, then drunkenly tearing at her clothes from the resulting physical pain. But by the time of the St. Francis Hotel party, her reproductive health was a greater concern. Despite reports trying to paint her in a bad light, the autopsy revealed she never had any abortion nor was pregnant.

At the hospital, Rappe’s companion at the party, Bambina Maude Delmont, told Rappe’s doctor that Arbuckle had raped her friend.

Roscoe Arbuckle Trial

Police photos of Roscoe Arbuckle

The doctor examined Rappe but found no evidence of rape. Rappe died one day after her hospitalization of peritonitis, caused by a ruptured bladder. Delmont then told police that Arbuckle raped Rappe, and the police concluded that the impact Arbuckle’s overweight body had on Rappe eventually caused her bladder to rupture.^[2]

Rappe’s manager Al Semnacker (at a later press conference) accused Arbuckle of using a piece of ice to simulate sex with her, which led to the injuries.^[18] By the time the story was reported in newspapers, the object had evolved into being a Coca-Cola or champagne bottle, instead of a piece of ice. In fact, witnesses testified that Arbuckle rubbed the ice on Rappe’s stomach to ease her abdominal pain. Arbuckle denied any wrongdoing. Delmont later made a statement incriminating Arbuckle to the police in an attempt to extort money from Arbuckle’s attorneys.^[19]

Newspaper coverage of the Arbuckle trial

Arbuckle’s trial was a major media event; William Randolph Hearst‘s nationwide newspaper chain exploited the situation with exaggerated and sensationalized stories.

The story was fueled by yellow journalism, with the newspapers portraying him as a gross lecher who used his weight to overpower innocent girls. Hearst was gratified by the profits he accrued during the Arbuckle scandal, and later said that it had “sold more newspapers than any event since the sinking of the Lusitania.“^[20]Morality groups called for Arbuckle to be sentenced to death. The resulting scandal destroyed Arbuckle’s career and his personal life.

Newspaper coverage of the Arbuckle trial and sensationalist reporting

Arbuckle was regarded by those who knew him closely as a good-natured man who was shy with women; he has been described as “the most chaste man in pictures”.^[4] However, studio executives, fearing negative publicity by association, ordered Arbuckle’s industry friends and fellow actors (whose careers they controlled) not to publicly speak up for him.

Charlie Chaplin, who was in Britain at the time, told reporters that he could not (and would not) believe Roscoe Arbuckle had anything to do with Virginia Rappe’s death; having known Arbuckle since they both worked at Keystone in 1914, Chaplin “knew Roscoe to be a genial, easy-going type who would not harm a fly.”^[21]

Roscoe Arbuckle and Charles Chaplin

Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton reportedly did make one public statement in support of Arbuckle’s innocence which earned him a mild reprimand from the studio where he worked.

Film actor William S. Hart, who had never met or worked with Arbuckle, made a number of damaging public statements in which he presumed that Arbuckle was guilty. Arbuckle later wrote a premise for a film parodying Hart as a thief, bully, and wife beater, which Keaton purchased from him.

The following year in 1922, Keaton co-wrote, directed and starred in The Frozen North, the resulting film, and as a result, Hart refused to speak to Keaton for many years.^[22]^[23]

William S Hart

Buster Keaton in The Frozen North (Edward F Cline and Buster Keaton, 1922)

Trials

The prosecutor, San Francisco District Attorney Matthew Brady, an intensely ambitious man who planned to run for governor, made public pronouncements of Arbuckle’s guilt and pressured witnesses to make false statements. Brady at first used Delmont as his star witness during the indictment hearing.^[2]

The defense had also obtained a letter from Delmont admitting to a plan to extort payment from Arbuckle. In view of Delmont’s constantly changing story, her testimony would have ended any chance of going to trial.

Ultimately, the judge found no evidence of rape. After hearing testimony from one of the party guests, Zey Prevon, that Rappe told her “Roscoe hurt me” on her deathbed, the judge decided that Arbuckle could be charged with first-degree murder. Brady had originally planned to seek the death penalty. The charge was later reduced to manslaughter.^[2]

First trial

On September 17, 1921, Arbuckle was arrested and arraigned on the charges of manslaughter, but arranged bail after nearly three weeks in jail.

The trial began November 14, 1921, in the city courthouse in San Francisco.^[2] Arbuckle’s defense lawyer was Gavin McNab, a professional and competent local attorney that Arbuckle hired as his lead defense counsel.

The principal witness was Ms. Zey Prevon, a guest at the party.^[24] At the beginning of the trial Arbuckle told his already-estranged wife, Minta Durfee, that he did not harm Rappe; she believed him and appeared regularly in the courtroom to support him. Public feeling was so negative that she was later shot at while entering the courthouse.^[20]

Brady’s first witnesses during the trial included Betty Campbell, a model, who attended the September 5 party and testified that she saw Arbuckle with a smile on his face hours after the alleged rape occurred; Grace Hultson, a local hospital nurse who testified it was very likely that Arbuckle raped Rappe and bruised her body in the process; and Dr. Edward Heinrich, a local criminologist who claimed he found Arbuckle’s fingerprints smeared with Rappe’s blood on room 1219’s bathroom door.

Dr. Arthur Beardslee, the hotel doctor who had examined Rappe, testified that an external force seemed to have damaged the bladder. During cross-examination, Betty Campbell, however, revealed that Brady threatened to charge her with perjury if she did not testify against Arbuckle. Dr. Heinrich’s claim to have found fingerprints was cast into doubt after McNab produced the St. Francis hotel maid, who testified that she had cleaned the room before the investigation even took place and did not find any blood on the bathroom door.

Dr. Beardslee admitted that Rappe had never mentioned being assaulted while he was treating her. McNab was furthermore able to get Nurse Hultson to admit that the rupture of Rappe’s bladder could very well have been a result of cancer, and that the bruises on her body could also have been a result of the heavy jewelry she was wearing that evening.^[2] During the defense stage of the trial, McNab called various pathology experts who testified that although Rappe’s bladder had ruptured, there was evidence of chronic inflammation and no evidence of any pathological changes preceding the rupture; in other words, there was no external cause for the rupture.^{[citation needed]}

Roscoe Arbuckle and his defence team in the Courtroom

On November 28, Arbuckle testified as the defense’s final witness. Arbuckle was simple, direct, and unflustered in both direct and cross examination. In his testimony, Arbuckle claimed that Rappe (whom he testified that he had known for five or six years) came into the party room (1220) around noon that day, and that some time afterward Mae Taub (daughter-in-law of Billy Sunday) asked him for a ride into town, so he went to his room (1219) to change his clothes and discovered Rappe in the bathroom vomiting in the toilet.

Arbuckle then claimed Rappe told him she felt ill and asked to lie down, and that he carried her into the bedroom and asked a few of the party guests to help treat her. When Arbuckle and a few of the guests re-entered the room, they found Rappe on the floor near the bed tearing at her clothing and going into violent convulsions. To calm Rappe down, they placed her in a bathtub of cool water. Arbuckle and Fischbach then took her to room 1227 and called the hotel manager and doctor. After the doctor declared that Rappe was just drunk, Arbuckle then drove Taub to town.

During the whole trial, the prosecution presented medical descriptions of Rappe’s bladder as evidence that she had an illness. In his testimony, Arbuckle denied he had any knowledge of Rappe’s illness. During cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Leo Friedman aggressively grilled Arbuckle over the fact that he refused to call a doctor when he found Rappe sick, and argued that he refused to do so because he knew of Rappe’s illness and saw a perfect opportunity to rape and kill her.

Arbuckle calmly maintained that he never physically hurt or sexually assaulted Rappe in any way during the September 5 party, and he also claimed that he never made any inappropriate sexual advances against any woman in his life. After over two weeks of testimony with 60 prosecution and defense witnesses, including 18 doctors who testified about Rappe’s illness, the defense rested. On December 4, 1921, the jury returned five days later deadlocked after nearly 44 hours of deliberation with a 10–2 not guilty verdict, and a mistrial was declared.^[2]

Arbuckle’s attorneys later concentrated their attention on one woman named Helen Hubbard who had told jurors that she would vote guilty “until hell freezes over”. She refused to look at the exhibits or read the trial transcripts, having made up her mind in the courtroom. Hubbard’s husband was a lawyer who did business with the D.A.’s office,^[25] and expressed surprise that she was not challenged when selected for the jury pool.

Roscoe Arbuckle Trial – Newspaper Coverage

While much attention was paid to Hubbard after the trial, some other jury members felt Arbuckle was guilty but not beyond a reasonable doubt, and various jurors joined Hubbard in voting to convict, including – repeatedly at the end – Thomas Kilkenny.

Arbuckle researcher Joan Myers describes the political climate and the media attention to the presence of women on juries (which had only been legal for four years at the time), and how Arbuckle’s defense immediately singled out Hubbard as a villain; Myers also records Hubbard’s account of the jury foreman August Fritze’s attempts to bully her into changing her vote. While Hubbard offered explanations on her vote whenever challenged, Kilkenny remained silent and quickly faded from the media spotlight after the trial ended.^[26]

Second trial

The second trial began January 11, 1922, with a new jury, but with the same legal defense and prosecution as well as the same presiding judge.

The same evidence was presented, but this time one of the witnesses, Zey Prevon, testified that Brady had forced her to lie. Another witness who testified during the first trial, a former security guard named Jesse Norgard, who worked at Culver Studios where Arbuckle worked, testified that Arbuckle had once shown up at the studio and offered him a cash bribe in exchange for the key to Rappe’s dressing room. The comedian supposedly said he wanted it to play a joke on the actress. Norgard said he refused to give him the key.

Roscoe Arbuckle Trial – Second Trial Jury

During cross-examination, Norgard’s testimony was called into question when he was revealed to be an ex-convict who was currently charged with sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl, and who was also looking for a sentence reduction from Brady in exchange for his testimony. Further, in contrast to the first trial, Rappe’s history of promiscuity and heavy drinking was detailed. The second trial also discredited some major evidence such as the identification of Arbuckle’s fingerprints on the hotel bedroom door: Heinrich took back his earlier testimony from the first trial and testified that the fingerprint evidence was likely faked. The defense was so convinced of an acquittal that Arbuckle was not called to testify. Arbuckle’s lawyer, McNab, made no closing argument to the jury. However, some jurors interpreted the refusal to let Arbuckle testify as a sign of guilt. After over 40 hours of deliberation, the jury returned February 3, deadlocked with a 10–2 not guilty verdict, resulting in another mistrial.^[2]

Third trial

By the time of the third trial, Arbuckle’s films had been banned, and newspapers had been filled for the past seven months with stories of alleged Hollywood orgies, murder, and sexual perversion. Delmont was touring the country giving one-woman shows as “The woman who signed the murder charge against Arbuckle”, and lecturing on the evils of Hollywood.

Roscoe Arbuckle Trial – Third Trial

The third trial began March 13, 1922, and this time the defense took no chances. McNab took an aggressive defense, completely tearing apart the prosecution’s case with long and aggressive examination and cross-examination of each witness. McNab also managed to get in still more evidence about Virginia Rappe’s lurid past and medical history. Another hole in the prosecution’s case was opened because Zey Prevon, a key witness, was out of the country after fleeing police custody and unable to testify.^[2]

As in the first trial, Arbuckle testified as the final witness and again maintained his denials in his heartfelt testimony about his version of the events at the hotel party. During closing statements, McNab reviewed how flawed the case was against Arbuckle from the very start and how District Attorney Brady fell for the outlandish charges of Maude Delmont, whom McNab described as “the complaining witness who never witnessed”.

The jury began deliberations April 12, and took only six minutes to return with a unanimous not guilty verdict—five of those minutes were spent writing a formal statement of apology to Arbuckle for putting him through the ordeal; a dramatic move in American justice. The jury statement as read by the jury foreman stated:

Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel that a great injustice has been done him. We feel also that it was only our plain duty to give him this exoneration, under the evidence, for there was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime. He was manly throughout the case and told a straightforward story on the witness stand, which we all believed. The happening at the hotel was an unfortunate affair for which Arbuckle, so the evidence shows, was in no way responsible. We wish him success and hope that the American people will take the judgment of fourteen men and woman who have sat listening for thirty-one days to evidence, that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame.

Roscoe Arbuckle in Court

After the reading of the apology statement, the jury foreman personally handed the statement to Arbuckle who kept it as a treasured memento for the rest of his life. Then, one by one, the entire 12-person jury plus the two jury alternates walked up to Arbuckle’s defense table where they shook his hand and/or embraced and personally apologized to him. The entire jury even proudly posed in a photo op with Arbuckle for photographers after the verdict and apology.

Some experts later concluded that Rappe’s bladder might also have ruptured as a result of an abortion she might have had a short time before the September 5 party. Rappe’s organs had been destroyed and it was now impossible to test for pregnancy. Because alcohol was consumed at the party, Arbuckle was forced to plead guilty to one count of violating the Volstead Act, and had to pay a $500 fine. At the time of his acquittal, Arbuckle owed over $700,000 (equivalent to approximately $10,200,000 in 2017 dollars^[1]) in legal fees to his attorneys for the three criminal trials, and he was forced to sell his house and all of his cars to pay some of the debt.^[2]

The scandal and trials had greatly damaged his popularity among the general public, and in spite of the acquittal and the apology, his reputation was not restored, and the effects of the scandal continued. Will H. Hays, who served as the head of the newly formed Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) Hollywood censor board, cited Arbuckle as an example of the poor morals in Hollywood. On April 18, 1922, six days after Arbuckle’s acquittal, Hays banned Roscoe Arbuckle from ever working in U.S. movies again. He had also requested that all showings and bookings of Arbuckle films be cancelled, and exhibitors complied.

Will Hays – On April 18, 1922, six days after Arbuckle’s acquittal, Hays banned Roscoe Arbuckle from ever working in U.S. movies again

In December of the same year, under public pressure, Hays elected to lift the ban. However, Arbuckle was still unable to secure work as an actor.^[2] Most exhibitors still declined to show Arbuckle’s films, several of which now have no copies known to have survived intact.

One of Arbuckle’s feature-length films known to survive is Leap Year, which Paramount declined to release in the United States due to the scandal.^[27] It was eventually released in Europe.^[28] With Arbuckle’s films now banned, in March 1922, Buster Keaton signed an agreement to give Arbuckle 35 percent of all future profits from his company, Buster Keaton Productions, to ease his financial situation.^[23]

Roscoe Arbuckle in Leap Year (James Cruze/Roscoe Arbuckle, 1924)

Similar concurrent scandals

Although it was regarded as Hollywood’s first major scandal,^[2] the Arbuckle case was one of five major Paramount-related scandals of the period. In 1920, silent film actress Olive Thomas died after accidentally drinking mercury bichloride, which her husband, matinee idol Jack Pickford, had been using as a topical treatment for syphilis; there were rumors that it had been a suicide.^[29]

Olive Thomas

Jack Pickford

In February 1922, the murder of director William Desmond Taylor severely damaged the careers of actresses Mary Miles Minter and former Arbuckle screen partner Mabel Normand. In 1923, actor/director Wallace Reid‘s dependency on morphine resulted in his death.^[30] In 1924, actor/writer/director Thomas H. Ince died mysteriously, aboard William Randolph Hearst’s yacht.^[31]

William Desmond Hurst

Mary Miles Minter

Mabel Normand

Wallace Reid

Thomas H Ince

Aftermath

After the trials, Hollywood shunned Arbuckle, and he could no longer find work. A secondary effect, for archive history, was the determined destruction of copies of films starring Arbuckle.^[32]

In November 1923, Minta Durfee filed for divorce, charging grounds of desertion.^[33] The divorce was granted the following January.^[34]

Minta Durfee, Roscoe Arbuckle’s first wife

They had been separated since 1921, though Durfee always claimed he was the nicest man in the world and that they were still friends.^[35] After a brief reconciliation, Durfee again filed for divorce, this time while in Paris, in December 1924.^[36]

Arbuckle married Doris Deane on May 16, 1925.^[37]

Roscoe Arbuckle and Doris Deane wedding ceremony

Arbuckle tried returning to filmmaking, but industry resistance to distributing his pictures continued to linger after his acquittal.

He retreated into alcoholism. In the words of his first wife, “Roscoe only seemed to find solace and comfort in a bottle”. Buster Keaton attempted to help Arbuckle by giving him work on his films. Arbuckle wrote the story for a Keaton short called Daydreams (1922).

Daydreams (Edward S Cline/Buster Keaton, 1922)

Arbuckle allegedly co-directed scenes in Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. (1924), but it is unclear how much of this footage remained in the film’s final cut.

In 1925, Carter Dehaven made the short Character Studies. Arbuckle appeared alongside Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, and Jackie Coogan.^[38]

Character Studies (Carter Dehaven,1926)

The same year, in Photoplay‘s August issue, James R. Quirk wrote “I would like to see Roscoe Arbuckle make a comeback to the screen.” He also said “The American nation prides itself upon its spirit of fair play. We like the whole world to look upon America as the place where every man gets a square deal. Are you sure Roscoe Arbuckle is getting one today? I’m not.”^[39]

William Goodrich pseudonym

Eventually, Arbuckle worked as a director under the alias William Goodrich. According to author David Yallop in The Day the Laughter Stopped (a biography of Arbuckle with special attention to the scandal and its aftermath), Arbuckle’s father’s full name was William Goodrich Arbuckle.

Another tale credited Keaton, an inveterate punster, with suggesting that Arbuckle become a director under the alias “Will B. Good”. The pun being too obvious, Arbuckle adopted the more formal pseudonym “William Goodrich”.^[40] Keaton himself told this story during a recorded interview with Kevin Brownlow in the 1960s.^[41]

Roscoe Arbuckle as William Goodrich

Between 1924 and 1932, Arbuckle directed a number of comedy shorts under the pseudonym for Educational Pictures, which featured lesser-known comics of the day. Louise Brooks, who played the ingenue in Windy Riley Goes Hollywood (1931), told Kevin Brownlow of her experiences in working with Arbuckle:

He made no attempt to direct this picture. He just sat in his director’s chair like a dead man. He had been very nice and sweetly dead ever since the scandal that ruined his career. But it was such an amazing thing for me to come in to make this broken-down picture, and to find my director was the great Roscoe Arbuckle. Oh, I thought he was magnificent in films. He was a wonderful dancer—a wonderful ballroom dancer, in his heyday. It was like floating in the arms of a huge doughnut—really delightful.^[20]

Windy Riley Goes Hollywood (William Goodrich – Roscoe Arbuckle, 1931)

Among the more visible directorial projects under the Goodrich pseudonym was the Eddie Cantor feature Special Delivery (1927), which was released by Paramount and co-starred William Powell and Jobyna Ralston. His highest-profile project was arguably The Red Mill, also released in 1927, a Marion Davies vehicle.

Special Delivery (William Goodrich – Roscoe Arbuckle, 1927)

The Red Mill (William Goodrich – Roscoe Arbuckle, 1927)

Second divorce and third marriage

In 1929, Doris Deane sued for divorce in Los Angeles, charging desertion and cruelty.^[42]

On June 21, 1931, Roscoe married Addie Oakley Dukes McPhail (later Addie Oakley Sheldon, 1905–2003) in Erie, Pennsylvania.^[43]

Roscoe Arbuckle and Addie McPhail after their wedding ceremony

Brief comeback and death

In 1932, Arbuckle signed a contract with Warner Bros. to star under his own name in a series of six two-reel comedies, to be filmed at the Vitagraph studios in Brooklyn.

These six short films constitute the only recordings of his voice. Silent-film comedian Al St. John (Arbuckle’s nephew) and actors Lionel Stander and Shemp Howard appeared with Arbuckle. The films were very successful in America,^[43] although when Warner Bros. attempted to release the first one (Hey, Pop!) in the United Kingdom, the British Board of Film Censors cited the 10-year-old scandal and refused to grant an exhibition certificate.^[44]

Hey, Pop! (Alfred J.Goulding, 1932)

On June 28, 1933, Arbuckle had finished filming the last of the two-reelers (four of which had already been released). The next day he signed a contract with Warners to star in a feature-length film.^[45] That night he went out with friends to celebrate his first wedding anniversary and the new Warner contract when he reportedly said: “This is the best day of my life.”

He suffered a heart attack later that night and died in his sleep.^[9] He was 46. His widow Addie requested that his body be cremated as that was Arbuckle’s wish.^[46]

Roscoe Arbuckle’s death report

Legacy

Many of Arbuckle’s films, including the feature Life of the Party (1920), survive only as worn prints with foreign-language inter-titles. Little or no effort was made to preserve original negatives and prints during Hollywood’s first two decades.

The Life of the Party (Joseph Henabery, 1920)

By the early 21st century, some of Arbuckle’s short subjects (particularly those co-starring Chaplin or Keaton) had been restored, released on DVD, and even screened theatrically. Arbuckle’s early influence on American slapstick comedy is widely recognised.^[47]

For his contributions to the film industry, Arbuckle has a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6701 Hollywood Boulevard.^[48]

Roscoe Arbuckle – Walk of Fame

In popular culture

The James Ivory film The Wild Party (1975) has been repeatedly but incorrectly cited as a film dramatization of the Arbuckle–Rappe scandal.

In fact it is loosely based on the 1926 poem by Joseph Moncure March.^[49] In this film, James Coco portrays a heavy-set silent-film comedian named Jolly Grimm whose career is on the skids, but who is desperately planning a comeback.

Raquel Welch portrays his mistress, who ultimately goads him into shooting her. This film was loosely based on the misconceptions surrounding the Arbuckle scandal, yet it bears almost no resemblance to the documented facts of the case.^[50]

The Wild Party (James Ivory, 1975)

In Ken Russell‘s 1977 biopic Valentino, Rudolph Nureyev as a pre-movie star Rudolph Valentino dances in a nightclub before a grossly overweight, obnoxious, and hedonistic celebrity called “Mr. Fatty” (played by William Hootkins), a caricature of Arbuckle rooted in the public view of him created in popular press coverage of the Rappe rape trial.

In the scene, Valentino picks up starlet (Jean Acker played by Carol Kane) off a table in which she is sitting in front of Fatty and dances with her, enraging the spoiled star, who becomes apoplectic.^[51]

Valentino (Ken Russel, 1977)

The caricature of Arbuckle as a boor continued to be promulgated in the seventies by film writers such as Kenneth Anger in his seminal work Hollywood Babylon.

In an episode of the Mathnet segment of the children’s public-television television series Square One Television (Season 2, Episode 1, “The Case of the Willing Parrot,” presented in five sections over the course of a week of the overall show), fictitious deceased celebrity Roscoe “Fatty” Tissue was written as a parody of Arbuckle.

Before his death in 1997, comedian Chris Farley expressed interest in starring as Arbuckle in a biography film. According to the 2008 biography The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts, Farley and screenwriter David Mamet agreed to work together on what would have been Farley’s first dramatic role.^[52]

In 2007, director Kevin Connor planned a film, The Life of the Party, based on Arbuckle’s life. It was to star Chris Kattan and Preston Lacy.^[53] However the project was shelved.^[54] Like Farley, comedians John Belushi and John Candy also considered playing Arbuckle, but each of them died before a biopic was made. Farley’s film was signed with Vince Vaughn as his co-star.^[55]

In 2005, jazz trumpet player Dave Douglas released the album “Keystone”, dedicated to the work of Roscoe Arbuckle. It contains a DVD which features the movie Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916/ Keystone – Triangle), starring Roscoe Arbuckle, Mable Normand, Al St. John, and Luke the Dog.

Dave Douglas, Keystone (2005)

In April and May 2006, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City mounted a 56-film, month-long retrospective of all of Arbuckle’s known surviving work, running the entire series twice.^[56]

Arbuckle is the subject of a 2004 novel titled I, Fatty by author Jerry Stahl. The Day the Laughter Stopped by David Yallop and Frame-Up! The Untold Story of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle by Andy Edmonds are other books on Arbuckle’s life.^[57] The 1963 novel, Scandal in Eden by Garet Rogers,^[58] is a fictionalized version of the Arbuckle scandal.

The Day the Laughter Stopped (David Yallop, 1976)

Fatty Arbuckle’s was an American-themed restaurant chain in the UK prominent during the 1980s and named after Arbuckle.

Stoneface, a 2012 play by Vanessa Claire Stewart about Buster Keaton, depicts Keaton’s and Arbuckle’s friendship and professional relationship.

Arbuckle is played by actor Brett Ashy in the motion picture Return to Babylon (2013).

The scandal is described during the climax of the film Middle Man.

Filmography

Actor

The Gangsters. 1913. Approx. 10 min.
Fatty Joins the Force. 1913. Approx. 14:30 min.
Fatty’s New Role. 1915. Approx. 10 min.
The Waiters’ Ball. 1916. With Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
A Noise from the Deep. 1913. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 10 min.
Mabel’s New Hero. 1913. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 10 min.
His Sister’s Kids. 1913. With Minta Durfee. Approx. 10 min.
A Flirt’s Mistake. 1914. With Edgar Kennedy. Approx.10 min.
Mabel’s Blunder. 1914. With Mabel Normand. Approx 13:30 min.
A Bath House Beauty. 1914. With Minta Durfee. Approx. 10 min.
Those Country Kids. 1914. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 10 min.
The Rounders. 1914. With Charles Chaplin. Approx. 10 min.
Tango Tangles. 1914. With Charles Chaplin, Ford Sterling, and Minta Durfee. Approx. 12 min.
Lover’s Luck. 1914. With Minta Durfee. Approx. 10 min.
Fatty’s Jonah Day. 1914. With Norma Nichols. Approx. 10 min.
Mabel and Fatty’s Simple Life (Fatty and Mabel’s Simple Life). 1915. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 20 min.
Mabel, Fatty and the Law. 1915. (Fatty’s Spooning Days). Approx. 11 min.
Wished on Mabel. 1915. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 10 min.
Mabel and Fatty’s Married Life (Fatty and Mabel’s Married Life). 1915. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 10 min.
Miss Fatty’s Seaside Lovers. 1915. With Harold Lloyd. Approx. 10 min.
Fatty’s Tintype Tangle. 1915. With Louise Fazenda, Edgar Kennedy. Approx. 20 min.
Fatty’s Reckless Fling. 1915. Approx. 10 min.
Fatty’s Plucky Pup. 1915. 6:35 min.
Fatty’s Faithful Fido. 1915. With Luke the dog. Approx. 10 min.
That Little Band of Gold. 1915. With Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling. Approx. 20 min.
He Did and He Didn’t. 1916. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 20 min.
Fatty and Mabel Adrift. 1916. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 30 min.
His Wife’s Mistake. 1916. With Minta Durfee. Approx. 20 min.
A Reckless Romeo. 1917. With Al St. John. Approx. 20 min
A Creampuff Romance. 1917. Approx. 22 min.
The Butcher Boy. 1917. With Buster Keaton (film debut) and Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
The Rough House. 1917. With Buster Keaton. Approx. 20 min.
His Wedding Night. 1917. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
Coney Island. 1917. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
Out West. 1918. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
Moonshine. 1918. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
A Scrap of Paper. 1918. With Al St. John. Approx. 5 min.
Good Night, Nurse. 1918. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
The Cook. 1918. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
The Hayseed. 1919. With Buster Keaton, Jack Coogan, Sr. Approx. 20 min.
Back Stage. 1919. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
The Round-Up. 1920. With Tom Forman, Jean Acker, Wallace Beery. Approx. 70 min.
Camping Out. 1919. With Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
Love. 1919. With Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
Life of the Party. 1920. With Viora Daniel, Roscoe Karns. Approx. 50 min.
The Garage. 1920. With Buster Keaton. Approx 20 min.
Leap Year. 1921. Directed by James Cruze, with Lucien Littlefield and Mary Thurman. Approx 56 min.
Gasoline Gus. 1921. Directed by James Cruze, with Lila Lee.

Director

Special Delivery. 1922. With Al St. John, Vernon Dent. Approx. 20 min.
No Loafing. 1923. With Poodles Hanneford, Joe Roberts. (a surviving fragment of a two-reel short) Approx. 8 min.
Stupid, But Brave. 1924. With Al St. John, George Davis. Approx. 20 min.
The Movies. 1925. With Lloyd Hamilton. Approx. 20 min.
Curses!. 1925. With Al St. John, Bartine Burkett. Approx. 20 min.
The Iron Mule. 1925. With Al St. John, Glen Cavender. Approx. 20 min.
Dynamite Doggie. 1925. With Al St. John, Pete the Pup. Approx. 20 min.^{[citation needed]}
His Private Life. 1926. With Lupino Lane, George Davis. Approx. 20 min.
Home Cured. 1926. With Johnny Arthur, Virginia Vance. Approx. 20 min.
Fool’s Luck. 1926. With Lupino Lane, George Davis. Approx. 20 min.
My Stars. 1926. With Johnny Arthur, Virginia Vance, Florence Lee. Approx. 20 min.
The Red Mill. 1927. With Marion Davies, Owen Moore, Louise Fazenda, George Siegmann. Approx. 70 min.
Special Delivery. 1927. With Eddie Cantor, Jobyna Ralston, William Powell. Approx. 60 min.
Bridge Wives. 1932. With Al St. John, Fern Emmett. Approx. 10 min.

Vitagraph shorts

Hey, Pop! 1932. With Billy Hayes. Approx. 20 min.
In the Dough. 1932. With Lionel Stander and Shemp Howard. Approx. 20 min.
Close Relations. 1933. With Charles Judels, Harry Shannon, and Shemp Howard. Approx. 20 min.
Buzzin’ Around. 1933. With Al St. John and Pete the Pup. Approx. 20 min.
How’ve You Bean? 1933. With Fritz Hubert. Approx. 20 min.
Tomalio. 1933. With Charles Judels. Approx. 20 min.

References

^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Community Development Project. “Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–”. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m Noe, Denise. “Fatty Arbuckle and the Death of Virginia Rappe”. Crime Library at truTV. Archived from the original on September 17, 2008. Retrieved July 3, 2008.
Jump up^ “Year: 1900; Census Place: Santa Clara, Santa Clara, California; Roll: 111; Page: 7A; Enumeration District: 0077; FHL microfilm: 1240111”. Ancestry.com. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Ellis, Chris & Julie (April 10, 2005). The Mammoth Book of Celebrity Murder: Murder played out in the spotlight of maximum publicity. Constable & Robertson. ISBN 978-0786715688. Retrieved 2015-01-30. (Subscription required (help)).
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Lowrey, Carolyn (1920). The First One Hundred Noted Men and Women of the Screen. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co. p. 6. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ “Roscoe Always Jolly But Weak: Stepmother”. San Jose: The Evening News. September 12, 1921. pp. 1–2. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Saperstein, Susan. “Grauman’s Theaters”. San Jose, California Guides. Retrieved June 5, 2011.
Jump up^ “She Must Use 7 Mirrors”. The Evening News. January 31, 1905. p. 3. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b “Dies in His Sleep. Film Comedian, Central Figure in Coast Tragedy in 1921, Long Barred From Screen. On Eve of his Comeback. Succumbs at 46 After He and Wife Had Celebrated Their First Wedding Anniversary”. The New York Times. June 30, 1933. Retrieved January 30, 2015. (Subscription required (help)). Roscoe C. (Fatty) Arbuckle, film comedian, died of a heart attack at 3 o’clock … Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle was born at Smith Centre, Kansas, on March 24, 1887.
Jump up^ “Minta Durfee, actress, 85, Dies; Former Wife of Fatty Arbuckle”. The New York Times. September 12, 1975. Retrieved January 30, 2015. (Subscription required (help)). Minta Durfee, the actress who was married to Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle and became Charlie Chaplin’s first motionpicture leading lady, died Tuesday in Woodland Hills, a Los Angeles suburb.
Jump up^ Del Olmo, Frank (September 12, 1975). “Fatty Arbuckle’s First Wife Dies”. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 3, 2008.
Jump up^ Long, Bruce (April 1995). “Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle”. Taylorology. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Nichols, Peter M. (April 13, 2001). “HOME VIDEO; Arbuckle Shorts, Fresh and Frisky”. The New York Times. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Rosenberg, Jennifer. “Fatty Arbuckle Scandal”. About.com. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ “Interesting facts about Roscoe Arbuckle”. Arbucklemania. Retrieved January 30, 2015. Alice Lake called him Arbie. To Mabel Normand he was Big Otto, after an elephant in the Selig Studio Zoo near Keystone. Buster Keaton called him Chief. Fred Mace called him Crab. And for some unexplained reason fellow comic Charlie Murray referred to him as My Child the Fat. His three wives always called him Roscoe
Jump up^ “When the Five O’Clock Whistle Blows in Hollywood”. Vanity Fair. September 1922. Retrieved 27 June 2017.
Jump up^ “Testify Regarding Early Life of Virginia Rappe”. The Lewiston Daily Sun. October 31, 1921. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Hopkins, Ernest J. (September 25, 1921). “Miss Rappe’s Manager Tells Worst He Knows of Arbuckle”. The Pittsburgh Press. p. 3. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Sheerin, Jude (September 4, 2011). “‘Fatty’ Arbuckle and Hollywood’s first scandal”. BBC News. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c Felix, Wanda (Fall 1995). “Fatty”. The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities (4). Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Chaplin, Charles: My Autobiography, p. 270 (Simon and Schuster, 1964).
Jump up^ Neibaur, James (2013). Buster Keaton’s Silent Shorts: 1920–1923. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 185–186. ISBN 978-0810887411. (Subscription required (help)).
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Meade, Marion (August 22, 1997). Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase. Chapter 12 “Cops”: DaCapo Press. ISBN 978-0306808029. (Subscription required (help)).
Jump up^ Daily Mirror headlines, October 1, 1921
Jump up^ Fine, Gary Allen (April 1, 2001). Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial. University of Chicago Press. p. 151. ISBN 978-0226249414.
Jump up^ Myers, Joan (March 18, 2009). “The Case of the Vanishing Juror”. Feminism 3.0. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Oderman 2005, p. 199.
Jump up^ Edmonds, Andy (January 1991). Frame-Up!: The Untold Story of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. William Morrow & Co. p. 302. ISBN 978-0688091293. (Subscription required (help)).
Jump up^ Whitfield, Eileen (August 31, 2007). Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood. University Press of Kentucky. p. 224. ISBN 978-0813191799. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Braudy, Leo (March 15, 2011). The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon. Yale University Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0300156607. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Mikkelson, Barbara (August 18, 2007). “Give Louella An Ince; She’ll Take A Column”. Snopes.com. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Humphreys, Sally; Humphreys, Geraint (February 1, 2011). Century of Scandal. Haynes Publishing. ISBN 978-1-844259-50-2.
Jump up^ “Milestones: November 12, 1923”. Time. November 12, 1923. Retrieved January 30, 2015. (Subscription required (help)).
Jump up^ “Milestones: January 7, 1924”. Time. January 7, 1924. Retrieved January 30,2015. (Subscription required (help)).
Jump up^ “Excerpts of Interview with Minta Durfee Arbuckle by Don Schneider and Stephen Normand”. The Movie Museum. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ “Milestones: December 8, 1924”. Time. June 29, 1931. Retrieved January 30,2015.
Jump up^ Donnelley, Paul (2003). Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries. Music Sales Group. p. 37. ISBN 978-1849382465. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Leider, Emily W. (May 6, 2003). Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 198. ISBN 978-0374282394. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Quirk, James R. (August 1925). “Speaking of Pictures”. Photoplay. New York: Photoplay Publishing Company. Retrieved August 20, 2015.
Jump up^ Oderman 2005, p. 201.
Jump up^ Sweeney, Kevin W. (2007). Buster Keaton Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. pp. 192–193. ISBN 1578069637.
Jump up^ “Milestones September 8, 1929”. Time. September 30, 1929. Retrieved January 30, 2015. Sued for Divorce. By Mrs. Doris Deane Arbuckle minor cinemactress, Roscoe Conkling (“Fatty”) Arbuckle, onetime cinema funnyman; at Los Angeles; for the second time. Grounds: desertion, cruelty.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Oderman 2005 p.212
Jump up^ Liebman, Roy (1998). From Silents To Sound: A Biographical Encyclopedia Of Performers Who Made the Transition To Talking Pictures. McFarland. p. 5. ISBN 978-0786403820. (Subscription required (help)).
Jump up^ “Arbuckle, Star Film Comedian, Dies in Sleep”. St. Petersburg Times. Associated Press. July 1, 1933. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Chermak, Steven M.; Bailey, Frankie Y., eds. (October 30, 2007). Crimes and Trials of the Century: From the Black Sox scandal to the Attica prison riots, Volume 1. Glenwood. p. 69. ISBN 978-0313341106.
Jump up^ Eagan, Daniel (November 26, 2011). “More on Fatty Arbuckle: His Films and His Legacy”. Smithsonian. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ King, Susan; Welkos, Robert (April 12, 2001). “Hollywood Star Walk: Roscoe Arbuckle”. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Long, Robert Emmet (December 11, 2006). James Ivory in Conversation: How Merchant Ivory Makes Its Movies. University of California Press. p. 126. ISBN 978-0520249998.
Jump up^ Mayo, Mike (February 1, 2008). American Murder: Criminals, Crimes and the Media. Visible Ink Press. p. 12. ISBN 978-1578591916. Retrieved January 30,2015.
Jump up^ “Valentino. 1977. Rudolph Nureyev Dances”. YouTube. Retrieved December 24,2014.
Jump up^ Farley, Tom; Colby, Tanner (May 6, 2008). The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts. Penguin. p. 262. ISBN 978-1616804589. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ King, Susan (November 15, 2007). “Screening Room”. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
Jump up^ Schanie, Andrew (2010). Movie Confidential: Sex, Scandal, Murder and Mayhem in the Film Industry. Clerisy Press. p. 19. ISBN 978-1578603541.
Jump up^ Bovsun, Mara (September 1, 2012). “Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, acquitted for murder of Virginia Rappe in 1922, never recovered from all the bad press”. Daily News. Retrieved August 12, 2015.
Jump up^ “Rediscovering Roscoe: The Careers of “Fatty” Arbuckle”. moma.org.
Jump up^ Paulus, Tom; King, Rob, eds. (April 21, 2010). Slapstick Comedy. Routledge. p. 86. ISBN 978-0415801799.
Jump up^ Rogers, Garet (1963). Scandal in Eden. Dial Press. Retrieved May 15, 2015.

Charley Chase

March 19, 2018 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Prepared by Daniel B Miller

Charley Chase (born Charles Joseph Parrott, October 20, 1893 – June 20, 1940) was an American comedian, actor, screenwriter and film director, best known for his work in Hal Roach short film comedies. He was the older brother of comedian/director James Parrott.

Hal Roach

James Parrot 1

James Parrot – Film Director and Charley Chase’s brother

Life and career

Born Charles Joseph Parrott in Baltimore, Maryland, Charley Chase began performing in vaudeville as a teenager and started his career in films by working at the Christie Film Company in 1912.

He then moved to Keystone Studios, where he began appearing in bit parts in the Mack Sennett films, including those of Charlie Chaplin.

Poster for His New Profession (Charles Chaplin, 1914) with Charles Chaplin and Charley Chase

His New Profession (Charles Chaplin, 1914) with Charles Chaplin and Charley Chase

By 1915 he was playing juvenile leads in the Keystones, and directing some of the films as Charles Parrott. His Keystone credentials were good enough to get him steady work as a comedy director with other companies; he directed many of Chaplin imitator Billy West‘s comedies, which featured a young Oliver Hardy as villain.

Charley Chase, Billy West and Oliver Hardy in The Hobbo (Arvid L Gillstrom, 1917)

Charley Chase, Billy West and Oliver Hardy in Playmates (Charley Chase, 1918)

He worked at L-KO Kompany during its final months of existence. Then in 1920, Chase began working as a film director for Hal Roach Studios.

Among his notable early works for Roach was supervising the first entries in the Our Gang series, as well as directing several films starring Lloyd Hamilton; like many other silent comedians, Chase is reported to have regarded Hamilton’s work as a major influence on that of his own. Chase became director-general of the Hal Roach studio in late 1921, supervising the production of all the Roach series except the Harold Lloyd comedies.

Charley Chase and Our Gang 1920s – Hal Roach Studios

Moonshine (Charley Chase, 1920) Charley Chase with Lloyd Hamilton

Following Lloyd’s departure from the studio in 1923, Chase moved back in front of the camera with his own series of shorts, adopting the screen name Charley Chase.

Chase was a master of the comedy of embarrassment, and he played either hapless young businessmen or befuddled husbands in dozens of situation comedies. His screen persona was that of a pleasant young man with a dapper mustache and ordinary street clothes; this set him apart from the clownish makeups and crazy costumes used by his contemporaries. His earliest Roach shorts cast him as a hard-luck fellow named “Jimmie Jump” in one-reel (10-minute) comedies.

Charley Chase as Jimmy Jump in April Fool (Ralph Ceder, 1924)

The first Chase series was successful and expanded to two reels (20 minutes); this would become the standard length for Chase comedies, apart from a few three-reel featurettes later.

Direction of the Chase series was taken over by Leo McCarey, who in collaboration with Chase formed the comic style of the series—an emphasis on characterization and farce instead of knockabout slapstick. Some of Chase’s starring shorts of the 1920s, particularly Mighty Like a Moose, Crazy Like a Fox, Fluttering Hearts, and Limousine Love, are often considered to be among the finest in silent comedy.

Chase remained the guiding hand behind the films, assisting anonymously with the directing, writing, and editing.

Mighty Like A Moose (Leo McCarey, 1926) with Charley Chase, and Vivien Oakland

Crazy Like A Fox (Leo McCarey, 1926) Charley Chase with Martha Sleeper

Crazy Like A Fox (Leo McCarey, 1926) Charley Chase with William Blaisdell

Fluttering Hearts (James Parrot, 1927) Charley Chase with Oliver Hardy and Martha Sleeper

Fluttering Hearts (James Parrot, 1927) Charley Chase with Martha Sleeper and Eugene Paltette

Limousine Love (Fred Guiol, 1928) Charley Chase with Viola Richard

Limousine Love (Fred Guiol, 1928) Charley Chase

Chase moved with ease into sound films in 1929, and became one of the most popular film comedians of the period.

He continued to be very prolific in the talkie era, often putting his fine singing voice on display and including his humorous, self-penned songs in his comedy shorts. The two-reeler The Pip from Pittsburg, released in 1931 and co-starring Thelma Todd, is one of the most celebrated Charley Chase comedies of the sound era.

The Pip From Pittsburg (James Parrott, 1931) Charley Chase with Thelma Todd

The Pip From Pittsburg (James Parrott, 1931) Charley Chase with Dorothy Granger and Carlton Griffin

Throughout the decade, the Charley Chase shorts continued to stand alongside Laurel and Hardy and Our Gang as the core output of the Roach studio. Chase was featured in the Laurel and Hardy feature Sons of the Desert; Laurel and Hardy made cameo appearances as hitchhikers in Chase’s On the Wrong Trek.

Sons of the Desert (William A Seiter, 1933) Charley Chase with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy

On the Wrong Trek was supposed to be the final Charley Chase short subject; by 1936 producer Hal Roach was now concentrating on making ambitious feature films.

On the Wrong Treck (Charley Chase and Harold Law, 1936) Charley Chase with Rosina Lawrence

Chase played a character role in the Patsy Kelly feature Kelly the Second, and starred in a feature-length comedy called Bank Night, lampooning the popular Bank Night phenomenon of the 1930s.

Chase’s feature was plagued with a host of production problems and legalities, and the film was drastically edited down to two reels and finally released as one last Charley Chase short, Neighborhood House. Chase was then dismissed from the Roach studio.

Kelly the Second (Gus Meins, 1936) Poster

Neighborhood House (Charley Chase and Harold Law 1936) Charley Chase

Later years and death

In 1937, Chase began working at Columbia Pictures, where he spent the rest of his career starring in his own series of two-reel comedies, as well as producing and directing other Columbia comedies, including those of The Three Stooges and Andy Clyde.

He directed the Stooges’ classic Violent Is the Word for Curly (1938); although he is often credited with writing the film’s song “Swinging the Alphabet“,^[4] the tune actually originates with 19th-century songwriter Septimus Winner.

Violent is the Word For Curly (Charley Chase, 1938) Charley Chase with Three Stooges

Recent research asserts that the Chase family’s maid introduced the song to Chase and taught it to his daughters. Chase’s own shorts at Columbia favored broader sight gags and more slapstick than his earlier, subtler work, although he does sing in two of the Columbias, The Grand Hooter and The Big Squirt (both 1937).

Many of Chase’s Columbia short subjects were strong enough to be remade in the 1940s with other comedians; Chase’s The Heckler (1940) was remade with Shemp Howardas Mr. Noisy (1946) while The Nightshirt Bandit (1938) was remade with Andy Clyde as Go Chase Yourself (1948) and again in 1956 as Pardon My Nightshirt.

Charley Chase promotional material 1920s

Chase reportedly suffered from depression and alcoholism for most of his professional career, and his tumultuous lifestyle began to take a serious toll on his health. His hair had turned prematurely gray, and he dyed it jet-black for his Columbia comedies.

His younger brother, comedy writer-director James Parrott, had personal problems resulting from a drug treatment, and died in 1939. Chase was devastated. He had refused to give his brother money to support his drug habit, and friends knew he felt responsible for Parrott’s death.

James Parrott with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy

He coped with the loss by throwing himself into his work and by drinking more heavily than ever, despite doctors’ warnings. The stress ultimately caught up with him; just over a year after his brother’s death, Charley Chase died of a heart attack in Hollywood, California on June 20, 1940. He is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery near his wife Bebe Eltinge in Glendale, California. Brother James Parrott is also interred at Forest Lawn.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Charley Chase received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6630 Hollywood Boulevard on February 8, 1960.

Renewed interest

Since the 1990s, there has been a revival of interest in the films of Charley Chase, due in large part to the increased availability of his comedies. An extensive website researching his life and work, The World of Charley Chase, was created in 1996, and a biography, Smile When the Raindrops Fall, was published in 1998.

Smile When The Raindrops Fall was the theme song of Whispering Whoopee, a two-reeler from 1930, starring Charley Chase

Chase’s sound comedies for Hal Roach were briefly televised in the late 1990s on the short-lived American cable network the Odyssey Channel. Retrospectives of Chase’s work organized by The Silent Clowns Film Series were held in 1999, 2001, 2006, and 2008 in New York City.

A marathon of selected Charley Chase shorts from the silent era was broadcast in 2005 on the American cable television network Turner Classic Movies. In late 2006, Turner Classic Movies began to air Charley Chase’s sound-era comedies. In January 2011, several of his sound shorts were featured during Turner Classic Movies’ tribute to Hal Roach Studios.

In 2007, Mighty Like a Moose (1926) was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry, solidifying its reputation as one of the most celebrated comedies of the silent era and cementing Chase’s status as a pioneer of early film comedy.

Kino International released two Charley Chase DVD volumes in 2004 and 2005 for their Slapstick Symposium series. The films came from archives and collectors around the world. In July 2009, VCI Entertainment released Becoming Charley Chase, a DVD boxed set of Charley Chase’s early silent films.

Kino Lorber Charley Chase Collection on DVD

Columbia Pictures has prepared digital restorations of its twenty Charley Chase shorts, in the same manner as its Buster Keaton DVD restorations. On January 1, 2013 Sony Home Entertainment released Charley Chase Shorts Volume 1, part of its “Columbia Choice Collection” MOD DVD-R library. The 1-disc release contains eight of Chase’s starring shorts, and one Smith & Dale short which he directed, A Nag in the Bag (1938). On November 5, 2013 Sony Home Entertainment released Charley Chase Shorts Volume 2, another in their MOD DVD-R series, which contained the remaining twelve Chase shorts.

Charley Chase MGM promotional photo

Selected filmography

The Masquerader (1914)
Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914) as Detective in movie theatre (uncredited)
All Wet (1924)
Looking for Sally (1925)
Isn’t Life Terrible? (1925)
Dog Shy (1926)
Mighty Like a Moose (1926)
Crazy Like a Fox (1926)
Bromo and Juliet (1926)
Call of the Cuckoo (1927)
Fluttering Hearts (1927)
Limousine Love (1928)
The Pip From Pittsburgh (1931)
Arabian Tights (1933)^[12]
Sons of the Desert (1933)
Public Ghost#1 (1935)
On the Wrong Trek (1936)
Life Hesitates at 40 (1936)
The Heckler (1940)

Release poster for Why Men Work (Leo McCarey, 1924)

References

Jump up^ Anthony, Brian and Edmonds, Andy (1998). Smile When the Raindrops Fall: The Story of Charley Chase. The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 23. ISBN 0-8108-3377-8
Jump up^ Lahue, Kalton C. and Gill, Samuel (1970). Clown Princes and Court Jesters. A.S. Barnes and Company, 94.
Jump up^ Solan, Yair. “Many Big Squawks.” The World of Charley Chase. “Archived copy”. Archived from the original on 2010-01-26. Retrieved 2009-07-12.
Jump up^ Okuda, Ted and Watz, Edward (1986). The Columbia Comedy Shorts: Two-Reel Hollywood Film Comedies, 1933–1958. McFarland & Company, Inc., 27. ISBN 0-7864-0577-5.
Jump up^ Finegan, Richard. “Swingin’ the Alphabet Composer Finally Identified.” The Three Stooges Journal (Winter 2005): 4.
Jump up^ “Charley Chase (1893–1940) – Find A Grave Memorial”. http://www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2016-06-28.
Jump up^ “BeBe Chase (1888–1948) – Find A Grave Memorial”. http://www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2016-06-28.
Jump up^ “James Parrott (1897–1939) – Find A Grave Memorial”. http://www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2016-06-28.
Jump up^ “Charley Chase | Hollywood Walk of Fame”. http://www.walkoffame.com. Retrieved 2016-06-28.
Jump up^ “Charley Chase”. latimes.com. Retrieved 2016-06-28.
Jump up^ “National Film Registry 2007.” https://www.loc.gov/film/nfr2007.html
Jump up^ “ARABIAN TIGHTS(1933)“, Turner Classic Movies

Announcements, Documentary Film, Experimental Film, Film Noir, Home, Pre Code Films

Classic Films Streaming on Film Dialogue Channel

March 1, 2018 Film Dialogue 1 Comment

We have some exciting news to share with all of our readers!

Last month we had successfully tested a new platform on Watch2Gether which will enable us to screen a variety of classic films in real time.

In addition to our already popular Cinematheque Live, from 1st of March 2018 we will be screening a selection of classic films. They will be streamed in our Film Dialogue Room on Watch2Gether.

https://www.watch2gether.com/users/4os9hiz43tysl7c1-basic

Please note that we no longer stream films on Rabbit, as the company ceased trading in July 2019.

We love watching, discussing and analysing films and for the first time, our screenings will give us an opportunity to discuss everything in real time. You will need to have your audio/video enabled in order to participate.

Our screenings will be scheduled and organised in a Film Season format.

Our current Film Seasons are:

Pre Code Films
Film Noir
Silent Classics
Classic Comedy
Animation Greats
Experimental Films
Film History Documentaries

Some of our screenings will have special guests, introductions and post-screening discussions.

Let us know if there are any other Film Seasons that you may wish to see. Also if there are any particular films that you would like to watch and discuss with us.

We hope you will enjoy our new format for watching and discussing films! See you in our Film Dialogue Room very soon!

To join us for the scheduled screenings please click on the link below:

https://www.watch2gether.com/users/4os9hiz43tysl7c1-basic

You can also watch our Film Seasons on Film Dialogue Cinematheque Channel. Visit our Daily Playlists for instant access to our seasons.

Film Dialogue Cinematheque – Daily Playlists:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-7oly3vWjf3TZBpIO1mUVA?

Daniel B Miller

Film Dialogue

$Tex Avery 1$

Contents

Early life

Career

Silent shorts and features

Harold Lloyd and Jobyna Ralston (Fred C Newmeyer, 1924)

Harold Lloyd and Jobyna Ralston (Fred C Newmeyer, 1924)

Talkies and transition

Radio and retirement

Renewed interest

Personal life

Death

Honors

Filmography

Early films

1913

1914

1915

Lonesome Luke

1915

1916

1917

Glasses character (“The Boy”)

1917

1918

1919

1920

Later short

Feature-length films

Silent features

Sound features

Compilations

As producer only

See also

References

Further reading

Share this:

Contents

Early life

Career

Screen comedian

Scandal

Trials

First trial

Second trial

Third trial

Similar concurrent scandals

Aftermath

William Goodrich pseudonym

Special Delivery (William Goodrich – Roscoe Arbuckle, 1927)

Second divorce and third marriage

Brief comeback and death

Legacy

In popular culture

Filmography

Actor

Director

Vitagraph shorts

See also

References

Further reading

Share this:

Hal Roach

James Parrot – Film Director and Charley Chase’s brother

Contents

Life and career

Kelly the Second (Gus Meins, 1936) Poster

Neighborhood House (Charley Chase and Harold Law 1936) Charley Chase

Later years and death

Renewed interest

Charley Chase MGM promotional photo

Selected filmography

Release poster for Why Men Work (Leo McCarey, 1924)

See also

References

Share this:

Share this:

Film Dialogue is a forum for anyone with interest in cinema and film history