Movie Morlocks Article DON'T SEND IN THE CLOWNS
Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 11:01 am
David Kalat posted an interesting article on his TCM MovieMorlocks site regarding silent comedy, sound comedy, and clowning, please read before you go further here:
http://moviemorlocks.com/2013/09/21/don ... he-clowns/
Now, I love David, and there are some things in his piece that I agree with, especially in what he says about Mark Cousins THE STORY OF FILM, possibly the most annoying, nonsensical pompous, pretentious, and worst-narrated Documentary about the History of Film yet perpetrated, but I have to take to task a few things David discusses in the body of his article.
To begin with, I do agree that there is no difference or delineation between silent and sound comedy, they are the same animal continuing to evolve and change, but with a lot of the same players, which is why you hear me discussing THE COMEDY FILM INDUSTRY 1910-1945, but it is here in Kalat’s text that I start to disagree:
David writes:
“ The only meaningful tradition of “silent” comedy that predates the birth of the movies was the history of clowning. There is a line of thought that seeks to define the silent comedies of the 1910s and 1920s as a modern reinterpretation of clowning traditions. There is a respectable argument to made on this count, but you won’t find it from me.”
Agree with the second half of that statement but wrongo on the first half. To begin with, silent pantomime has a long tradition in British Music Hall, Italian Commedia Del Arte’, and American Vaudeville, Fred Karno presented silent pantomimes that both Chaplin Brothers, Stan Laurel, Jimmy Aubrey, Billie Reeves, all the former Karno players who became film comics were well immersed in. Both French and Italian Mime and Pantomime goes back centuries in history of performing. Much of what the Three Keatons did was silent pantomime, W. C. Fields began as a silent tramp juggler and performed his act completely mute for decades. Circus Clowning was far from the only meaningful tradition.
David continues:
“If silent comedy cinema was truly just a new medium by which to explore existing traditions of clowning, then you’d expect the great silent clowns to actually be clowns, to have come from a clowning background. You’d expect the filmmakers to be turning to the history of clowning for inspirations for their films. Basically, you’d expect exactly the opposite of what the history of slapstick actually was”
Well sorry, no. In fact, a number of silent and sound film comics had Circus backgrounds: Chester Conklin, Ford Sterling, Clark and McCullough, Toto, Rube Miller, Paddy McGuire, Poodles Hanneford certainly, Mark Jones, Clyde Cook, Wallace Beery, Billy Gilbert (the silent one), Joe E. Brown, Charlie Murray, John Rand, and George Davis come to mind just off the top of my head. I know of one historian who will remain nameless for now that is currently researching the ties that silent film comedy shares with the Circus, and his research is rather voluminous. So there was indeed much inspiration gleaned from the Big Top and Motion Picture Comedy.
The Vaudeville and Music Hall Stage was indeed important, but just as many comics came from the legitimate stage as well, and a number had backgrounds in other forms of popular live entertainments, including medicine shows, amusement parks, burlesque, wild west shows, the whole gamut that existed before movies, radio, and television began to slowly turn us away from watching live performing to dead performing. A number of silent comedy performers were also athletes, another of our mafia has been researching the considerable ties the movie industry had to the Boxing Business, and he should write a book on that.
David continues:
“If the defining feature of silent comedy is silence, then we are talking about a twenty year cycle firmly bounded at both ends by technological advances. But if we acknowledge that the key figures of silent comedy emerged from non-silent comic traditions, and that their silent work was in many ways an accident of history, we not only have the privilege of conflating silent and talkie comedies into a single history, we are also better situated to recognize just how astonishing their silent accomplishments really were.”
Again, Kalat has the right idea in the summation, but he is indeed incorrect in his assumption that the major Silent Film Comedians came primarily from non-silent backgrounds. The art of pantomime is indeed an old stage-bound tradition.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
http://moviemorlocks.com/2013/09/21/don ... he-clowns/
Now, I love David, and there are some things in his piece that I agree with, especially in what he says about Mark Cousins THE STORY OF FILM, possibly the most annoying, nonsensical pompous, pretentious, and worst-narrated Documentary about the History of Film yet perpetrated, but I have to take to task a few things David discusses in the body of his article.
To begin with, I do agree that there is no difference or delineation between silent and sound comedy, they are the same animal continuing to evolve and change, but with a lot of the same players, which is why you hear me discussing THE COMEDY FILM INDUSTRY 1910-1945, but it is here in Kalat’s text that I start to disagree:
David writes:
“ The only meaningful tradition of “silent” comedy that predates the birth of the movies was the history of clowning. There is a line of thought that seeks to define the silent comedies of the 1910s and 1920s as a modern reinterpretation of clowning traditions. There is a respectable argument to made on this count, but you won’t find it from me.”
Agree with the second half of that statement but wrongo on the first half. To begin with, silent pantomime has a long tradition in British Music Hall, Italian Commedia Del Arte’, and American Vaudeville, Fred Karno presented silent pantomimes that both Chaplin Brothers, Stan Laurel, Jimmy Aubrey, Billie Reeves, all the former Karno players who became film comics were well immersed in. Both French and Italian Mime and Pantomime goes back centuries in history of performing. Much of what the Three Keatons did was silent pantomime, W. C. Fields began as a silent tramp juggler and performed his act completely mute for decades. Circus Clowning was far from the only meaningful tradition.
David continues:
“If silent comedy cinema was truly just a new medium by which to explore existing traditions of clowning, then you’d expect the great silent clowns to actually be clowns, to have come from a clowning background. You’d expect the filmmakers to be turning to the history of clowning for inspirations for their films. Basically, you’d expect exactly the opposite of what the history of slapstick actually was”
Well sorry, no. In fact, a number of silent and sound film comics had Circus backgrounds: Chester Conklin, Ford Sterling, Clark and McCullough, Toto, Rube Miller, Paddy McGuire, Poodles Hanneford certainly, Mark Jones, Clyde Cook, Wallace Beery, Billy Gilbert (the silent one), Joe E. Brown, Charlie Murray, John Rand, and George Davis come to mind just off the top of my head. I know of one historian who will remain nameless for now that is currently researching the ties that silent film comedy shares with the Circus, and his research is rather voluminous. So there was indeed much inspiration gleaned from the Big Top and Motion Picture Comedy.
The Vaudeville and Music Hall Stage was indeed important, but just as many comics came from the legitimate stage as well, and a number had backgrounds in other forms of popular live entertainments, including medicine shows, amusement parks, burlesque, wild west shows, the whole gamut that existed before movies, radio, and television began to slowly turn us away from watching live performing to dead performing. A number of silent comedy performers were also athletes, another of our mafia has been researching the considerable ties the movie industry had to the Boxing Business, and he should write a book on that.
David continues:
“If the defining feature of silent comedy is silence, then we are talking about a twenty year cycle firmly bounded at both ends by technological advances. But if we acknowledge that the key figures of silent comedy emerged from non-silent comic traditions, and that their silent work was in many ways an accident of history, we not only have the privilege of conflating silent and talkie comedies into a single history, we are also better situated to recognize just how astonishing their silent accomplishments really were.”
Again, Kalat has the right idea in the summation, but he is indeed incorrect in his assumption that the major Silent Film Comedians came primarily from non-silent backgrounds. The art of pantomime is indeed an old stage-bound tradition.
RICHARD M ROBERTS