Johnny Salvo

[Gregg Rickman]

Hi – long time reader, first time poster.

Does anyone have a line on this individual? Here’s an Exhibitors Herald review of SAY IT WITH FLOWERS:

The first reel of this comedy has nothing to do with flowers. It does take a lot of the stunts used by Buster Keaton, the elevator stuff, the sad face, loose trousers, etc. – and by many repetitions endeavors to squeeze a laugh out of the old situations. Johnny Salvo is the Keaton imitator. The second reel is about a bouquet of flowers, filled with ants by a mischievous youngster (recall Jackie Coogan in ‘Peck’s Bay [sic] Boy’) and everyone who dances with the young lady gets covered with ants. To pad it out to the required two reels a man with a leaky gasoline can starts a chase with the usual explosions every hundred feet. The subtitles are on a par with the story. It was directed by Al Herman. (10/8/21, page 67)

Salvo isn’t on IMDB (although a couple of John/Johnny Salvos turn up in the 1960s and later). Herman started out as an actor in Snakeville/ Broncho Billy films in the teens. His first directing credit is a co-directing credit with Eddie Cline on THE GOLFER (Fox, 1921), which is intriguing due to Cline’s work with Keaton over the preceding year. The “elevator stuff” is probably a reference to the elevator gags in THE GOAT (which Cline did not co-direct.) SAY IT WITH FLOWERS was Herman’s second (and first solo) directing credit. He directed at Fox into the mid-1920s, then freelanced for the Weiss Brothers and others through the rest of the decade before directing Mickey McGuire shorts in 1928-31. He wound up directing B westerns in the 1930s-40s.

[Richard M Roberts]

Hi – long time reader, first time poster.

Does anyone have a line on this individual? Here’s an Exhibitors Herald review of SAY IT WITH FLOWERS:

The first reel of this comedy has nothing to do with flowers. It does take a lot of the stunts used by Buster Keaton, the elevator stuff, the sad face, loose trousers, etc. – and by many repetitions endeavors to squeeze a laugh out of the old situations. Johnny Salvo is the Keaton imitator. The second reel is about a bouquet of flowers, filled with ants by a mischievous youngster (recall Jackie Coogan in ‘Peck’s Bay [sic] Boy’) and everyone who dances with the young lady gets covered with ants. To pad it out to the required two reels a man with a leaky gasoline can starts a chase with the usual explosions every hundred feet. The subtitles are on a par with the story. It was directed by Al Herman. (10/8/21, page 67)

Salvo isn’t on IMDB (although a couple of John/Johnny Salvos turn up in the 1960s and later). Herman started out as an actor in Snakeville/ Broncho Billy films in the teens. His first directing credit is a co-directing credit with Eddie Cline on THE GOLFER (Fox, 1921), which is intriguing due to Cline’s work with Keaton over the preceding year. The “elevator stuff” is probably a reference to the elevator gags in THE GOAT (which Cline did not co-direct.) SAY IT WITH FLOWERS was Herman’s second (and first solo) directing credit. He directed at Fox into the mid-1920s, then freelanced for the Weiss Brothers and others through the rest of the decade before directing Mickey McGuire shorts in 1928-31. He wound up directing B westerns in the 1930s-40s.

Hey There Gregg, welcome to the Group!

I think we're talking about Jimmy Savo here.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Steve Massa]

Hi guys
Jimmy Savo was a popular stage clown in vaudeville, Broadway revues, nightclubs, etc. He was small, big-eyed, with a round face and dressed in oversized clothes and a bowler hat. Really only dabbling in films, he made a few shorts for Fox and appeared in occasional features, one of which was the strange political fantasy ONCE IN A BLUE MOON ('35) written and directed by Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur. Probably his biggest stage success was the 1939 Rogers & Hart show THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE. His career wound down after he lost a leg, and he died in 1960.

Steve

[Louie Despres]

In 2007, Cinefest showed "Once In A Blue Moon" and I must say that Jimmy was INCREDIBLY frightening throughout the movie and the story was pretty terrible.

[Gregg Rickman]

Thanks for the imput -- and the welcome.
Do any of Savo's Fox shorts survive? And was he always directed (in the early 1920s) to imitate Keaton?
IMDB has two of his Foxes posted - both directed by Slim Summerville. (SAY IT WITH FLOWERS was also a Fox.) His films don't seem to have been promoted by Fox in trade paper ads the way Fox were promoting Al St. John and Clyde Cook at the time.

[Richard M Roberts]

Thanks for the imput -- and the welcome.
Do any of Savo's Fox shorts survive? And was he always directed (in the early 1920s) to imitate Keaton?
IMDB has two of his Foxes posted - both directed by Slim Summerville. (SAY IT WITH FLOWERS was also a Fox.) His films don't seem to have been promoted by Fox in trade paper ads the way Fox were promoting Al St. John and Clyde Cook at the time.

I do not know of any of them to survive.I've seen a still or two from them, and it didn't look like he was doing an obvious Keaton impression.Savo apparently had little interest in doing motion pictures. His later silent feature CARRY ON SERGEANT (1928) does survive, and he's certainly not doing Buster Keaton in that. An early talkie short he did for RKO also exists. But Savo is one of those "Broadway Legends" whose appeal does not really translate to the motion picture medium. I guess one had to see him live.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Steve Massa]

About a year after Savo's comedies Fox made a few with another stage name, Poodles Hanneford, and didn't promote him either. ROUGH SAILING (11/18/1923) and THE RIDING MASTER (12/16/1923) are two of Poodle's Fox shorts, where he doesn't seem to have been named in reviews or advance material. I was able to i.d. him from the first reel of ROUGH SAILING which survives at MoMA, and from Motion Picture News photos of THE RIDING MASTER (which almost goes out of its way to not identify him). Maybe this was because he was appearing in Educational Tuxedo comedies (directed on the quiet by Roscoe Arbuckle) at the same time. Like Savo's shorts both of the above were directed by Slim Summerville.

Steve

[Frank Flood]

Other Savo titles from Fox's 1921-22 Sunshine group include PARDON ME, TRY AND GET IT and HOLD THE LINE. He was also in one of the Lambs Club comedies that Columbia released in 1932-33.

And other than Al St. John, Clyde Cook and Lupino Lane, the Fox Sunshines didn't promote no one, no how. We know more about the inner workings of the North Korean government than we do about the Fox comedies.

Frank

[Rob King]

I think Jimmy Savo was also scheduled to star in a Roach feature in the mid-1930s, but ended up being switched for Jack Haley. I'm guessing the picture was Mr. Cinderella?

[Ian Elliot]

According to contemporary papers a feature was partly shot at the Roach studios in the fall of 1935 starring Savo, announced title, THREE ON A BENCH. Don't know if this became the Haley film.

Circa 1945 Jimmy Savo helped make a hit out of “One Meat Ball”, in a strange dawdling rendition that completely creeped me out when I heard it as a child.