Nitrateville Nonsense: VITAGRAPH COMEDIES

[Richard M Roberts]

Well, of course over at Nitwitvile there’s been whining about Kino Lorber’s new Vitagraph Comedies set:

https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic. ... 5&start=60

I guess three discs of rare Vitagraph Comedies most have never seen (outside of a few we showed at Slapsticon) is not enough for them, things do not correspond to the specifications of the screaming voices in their heads so they cannot be happy.

To begin with, I’ve never gotten the folk who can’t stand John Bunny or John Bunny comedies, he may not be the greatest comedian of all times, but he undoubtedly has a camera presence and displays a naturalness before the camera not seen much in the early teens, and Flora Finch is a delightful comedienne and they work well together. Vitagraph definitely excelled in comedies of manners and situations in the early teens, and their films are always well shot, with closer and more interesting camera angles, not just head-on long shots. Larry Trimble and George D. Baker are both very underrated and neglected early comedy Directors who, along with Sidney Drew who directed most of his own Vitagraph Comedies, created that situation comedy style.

And there are some great Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew comedies included, especially THE PROFESSIONAL SCAPEGOAT, which was a big Slapsticon hit, and other Vitagraph Comedians like Hughey Mack, Billy Quirk and Frank Daniels are well represented.
When Larry Semon joins the studio and becomes their head-comedy director, the Hughey Mack comedies go from polite comedy to not-so-polite wild slapstick. One Nitwivile nitwit whines that there is not enough Jimmy Aubrey and to this I must concur, Aubrey does get short shrift, and Bruce Calvert’s retort “And if you truly believe that Jimmy Aubrey comedies are funny then I'd like to hear why, because Aubrey's alleged comedies are the worst...” says, well, he hasn’t really seen that many Jimmy Aubrey comedies.

I have to admit, being one that was partially responsible for getting out the Jimmy Aubrey hate years ago on my WEISS-O-RAMA commentaries, that the more I see of Aubrey’s silent comedies, the more he has made me laugh, at Vitagraph he is terrific early on in Larry Semon-directed comedies like BULLIES AND BULLETS (Jimmy’s one appearance on the Kino set), RIPS AND RUSHES and WORRIES AND WOBBLES, and later Vitagraph shorts like THE BACKYARD and THE DECORATOR. And his comedies get even better when he moves to Standard Cinema, shorts like THE LOBBYGOW(1924), HYPNOTIZED (1925) and THE BOX CAR LIMITED (1925) are actually pretty good. Aubrey was a Karno-trained comic, he has the Karno moves and can do well when he has good material (I even do say he is if funny in the Weiss-Brother comedies when he loses that ugly moustache’). Jimmy Aubrey is no Al Joy or Jimmy Callahan.

And there is whining that the more well-known Larry Semon comedies take up the third disc of the set, and that my indeed be because much of the rarer Semon footage housed at LOC is in the Rohauer Collection and it is unlikely Cohen Media Group would have allowed them to be used without extra hoops and expense involved. It is unfortunate that it appears to be the same decomposing print of SCHOOL DAYS with missing footage that Blackhawk put out years ago (unfortunate because there are complete prints of SCHOOL DAYS around, I have one myself), but at least he is well represented in some of his better comedies. To complain about that, especially considering the rare riches on view in the first two discs, shows the usual ungratefulness we can expect from the NItwitvile ninnies who can never be satisfied, even if they couldn’t put out one of these sets if they bothered to try. Any release that gets SWEENEY’S CHRISTMAS BIRD out to the public can’t be all bad.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[William Ferry]

I haven't bought it yet; I was a victim of the low pre-order price fiasco at Target.com. However, the set is on my wish list. Some people are never happy unless they're carping about something. I say, thank you to the set's archivists and producers for letting us enjoy nice things.