Movie Morlocks Article DON'T SEND IN THE CLOWNS

[Richard M Roberts]

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

[David Kalat]

Hello Richard!

Well, thanks for the shout out to the blog, and also thanks for the corrections--I didn't know a lot of that information (obviously) and I appreciate the feedback.

David

[David Kalat]

Of course, well, that being said...

the problem with my just agreeing with you is that it closes this thread off without much debate, and where's the fun in that?

So for the sake of keeping this going, I'll just stand firm on one point: Buster Keaton came from a stage act that involved dialect humor, and his debut feature was based on a stage play. Even when he fully established and creatively unencumbered, one of his best films was also adapted from a play (Seven Chances), and he dropped dialogue and sound-based gags into his silent films repeatedly. He was as balletic and athletic as they come, but I just can't bring myself to call him a clown.

[Richard M Roberts]

Hello Richard!

Well, thanks for the shout out to the blog, and also thanks for the corrections--I didn't know a lot of that information (obviously) and I appreciate the feedback.

David

Arrrrgh-----but----but---no, wait a minute, you're not supposed to agree with me, you're supposed to say I'm crazy and a mean and evil weeinie because I said you were wrong, then we argue for ten or twenty posts over minutae like whether Chester Conklin could really be called a "clown" because he only wore clown-white on half of his face when he performed on Thursdays and then the post count on the thread hit hundreds because the word "Chaplin" was mentioned and it gets all political, then personal, and fist fights are mentioned, and the moderators have to come in and start deleting posts because peoples feelers are hurt and they're using the crying emoticons-----(oh wait, I'm one of the moderators and we don't have emoticons---damn!).

Can't we at least make fun of Mark Cousins accent some more? He's the only film historian I know that sounds like an Irish Valley Girl.

That's the problem with Silent Comedy Mafia, we're all too sane, rational, and nice over here, and we actually learn something! I can't get banned over here for tryin'! Wait, I'm one of the moderators, I'll ban myself..........

Right Roberts, I'm banning you for the night! You have to get out of here and go do something fun like watch movies or do something actually productive. OUT!


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Richard M Roberts]

Of course, well, that being said...

the problem with my just agreeing with you is that it closes this thread off without much debate, and where's the fun in that?

So for the sake of keeping this going, I'll just stand firm on one point: Buster Keaton came from a stage act that involved dialect humor, and his debut feature was based on a stage play. Even when he fully established and creatively unencumbered, one of his best films was also adapted from a play (Seven Chances), and he dropped dialogue and sound-based gags into his silent films repeatedly. He was as balletic and athletic as they come, but I just can't bring myself to call him a clown.

Ah-ha! An arguement I can pounce on-------ah---damn again! I never call Buster Keaton a clown either, he's a comedian.

But he can play a clown damn well when he put his mind to it. There a memorable episode of the TV series THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH (1964) where Buster play a French Harlequin Clown (they even dub his voice with a French accent) and when he's called on to perform in that style, he completely pulls it out and does it, making it work by bringing in his own Keatonesque touches to it, it's another amazing and unsung Keaton TV appearance.


RICHARD M ROBERTS (Yeah, I unbanned him, we just don't do that sort of stuff over here)

[Gary Johnson]

Well, never one to leave a non-argument alone (you two will soon be sending flowers and candy to each other if this goes on any longer), I have a nit to pick with both of youse......what the hell is wrong with referring to comedians as 'clowns'? I love that term. I do it all the time.

In my mind 'Clown' doesn't carry any extra special correlation toward comedy. It doesn't have to refer only to red-nosed, brillo-haired mutes (hmm, relatives of Harpo??) who travel in miniature cars along with ten or thirty of their closest pals who all reek of sawdust and cotton candy. To me a 'clown' is of another world. An alien visitor who is not one of us but enjoys visiting now and then to entertain us with their flippant buffoonery. That describes Chaplin to a 'T' when he first crashed the gates of Keystone with his manic insolence, or Keaton when he moved on from Arbuckle's tutelage to create a series of brilliant and oddly unique shorts. Semon has always been a clown to me (until he began appearing in suit and tie in the late Twenties) -- as are Hamilton, Laurel & Hardy and especially Langdon.....along side of his fellow studio comrades at the time, Turpin and Bevan. They were all comedians but the majority of them could not pass themselves off as members of the local chambers of commerce if their life depended on it -- like Bob Hope did his entire film career. Nor should they had to. That's what made them special from the very beginning. In fact, one of my (minor) problems with the features made by many of these silent stars in the Twenties is their mania to be seen as normal human beings, in order for the audience to believe they are capable of winning the love interest at the end. It helps to build up great drama for the climax but it sure cuts down on the clowning.

Of course one didn't need to be a true 'clown' (I'm getting awfully tired of apostrophe-ing that word) in order to succeed in the world of slapstick (just ask Lloyd or Chase). It just helped. One of the great pluses when talkies came into being is that 'clowning' (Damn!! I did it again!) made a return as the talkie comedians were no longer required to be the love interest anymore. Laurel and Hardy and W.C. Fields could go about their business all the while looking after their young charges. It gave them heart, even as they totaled up big laughs while trying to park cars, elude the law and blow up apartment buildings. Wheeler and Woolsey liked to pretend they were in the same league as Clark Gable but their romances were always half-assed and fodder for a joke.

And then there were the comedians who began as clowns but evolved into set-pieces. Chaplin leads the list here. His set pieces from THE GOLD RUSH to GREAT DICTATOR are hilarious but we miss the sassy irrelevance that use to punctuate all of the in-between time. The Marx Bros came to Paramount as great clowns (anything for a laugh) but after their moved to MGM they slowly dwindled down to comedians-for-hire with three or four 'special moments' per film. They deserved more than 'special moments' per film.

Webster defines 'clown' (last time) as a circus performer, a boorish sort and a jester -- so even they couldn't settle on one true definition. For me it all comes down to George Carlin who says, "It's only words." And when I watch Chaplin furiously sweeping up a room only to try to sweep up a piece of rope lying in the middle of the room, and after finally sweeping it in a straight line he walks across it as if on a tightrope (using the broom as a balance stick). Well, the only word I can use to describe such a moment is "pure clowning".

[Michael J Hayde]

Can't we at least make fun of Mark Cousins accent some more? He's the only film historian I know that sounds like an Irish Valley Girl.

Mark Cousins responds (softly):

“Speakinngg? as the most coldly unemotionalll? filmmmm historiannn? on two-and-a-half planetsss?, I am highly insulted by thisss?, notwithstandinnngg the fact? that I don’t know what a ‘Valley Girl’ is?

“I would bannn youuu? from watching the ressst? of ‘Odyssey’?, except you’d probably welcome it?”

[Richard M Roberts]

To Gary Johnson:


Hmmmm, if we are going to argue the nomenclature of comic classification, I’ll have to refer you to the rather silly Slapsticonian Drew the Dramatic Fool:






Who, when I once introduced him to someone as Drew the Clown, looked me very dangerously in the eyes like I had questioned his first born’s legitimacy and in a low tone resembling Jack Palances warned me, “I’m not a clown, I’m a FOOL.”.

“Glad to hear you passed your certifications.” I replied.

I believe the chain of comic command is, you start as an twerp, work your way up to an idiot (though Monty Python proved that there is still a successful call for Village Idiots in much of rural England, in America they’re put into Congress or given a reality show) , progress to a buffoon, first or second class, with branchings into darker territories like creep or jerk or more positive positions like simpleton or airhead, then one can graduate to varying levels of lunatic.

Once you’ve gotten your Bachelors, you can move towards Jester if you live in a Country run by Royalty and you’re into servitude and willing to wear tights, or humorist if you work in a more literate vein, but the brass ring on that merry-go-round is Clown, which then if you do the dissertations leads you to Fool, and after your Doctorate, Comic, first, second, or third degree. Then after five years of certified public performance and rigorous examinations, you become a Comedian, and the World is yours (though Robert Klein told of the dangers of listing your former occupation as “comedian” on your Army enlistment forms, as your sergeants will endlessly exclaim, “Hey Comedian, go clean out the latrines and be funny about it!”.

In other words, yeah, it’s all just friggin words, but Walter Kerr called them THE SILENT CLOWNS, which was fine until he got into silly classifications like “The Demi-Clowns” (which immediately made my mind veer off towards “ semi-clowns”, “quasi-clowns” “the British half-clown”, “quarter-clowns”, “mini-clowns”, “micro-clowns”, The Incredible Shrinking Clown”, etc.).


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Richard M Roberts]

Can't we at least make fun of Mark Cousins accent some more? He's the only film historian I know that sounds like an Irish Valley Girl.

Mark Cousins responds (softly):

“Speakinngg? as the most coldly unemotionalll? filmmmm historiannn? on two-and-a-half planetsss?, I am highly insulted by thisss?, notwithstandinnngg the fact? that I don’t know what a ‘Valley Girl’ is?

“I would bannn youuu? from watching the ressst? of ‘Odyssey’?, except you’d probably welcome it?”

I banned myself from the rest of it after the first twenty minutes.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Gary Johnson]

I always turn to Richard for all of my Medieval Social caste classification questions.

Now pardon me, I have to go clean the stable.......or be flogged to death!