Harry Langdon and Charlie Chase

[kndy]

For those who have read books or researched information on Harry Langdon or Charlie Chase, I was wondering if during the peak of their careers, were their films and their stardom ever close to reaching the heights of Chaplin, Keaton or Lloyd?

And for those of you today, do you hold these two talents in high regard?

[Gagman 66]

Charley Chase was reputedly the number one Star of Two-reel comedies in the movies for about 4 or 5 years there. I'm not exactly sure how long. So He was very popular in some respect's. Harry Langdon is kind of hard to figure out, from what I have read, He really seemed to be more of a favorite with the critics then He was the general public? As far as the fans, Raymond Griffith was probably more popular than Langdon was. For that matter, Reginald Denny was probably more popular than Harry was too. Were any of these guys in Lloyd's league during the 20's? Not even close.

[Jim Reid]

Langdon had a 3-4 year run as a huge star, then it all went through the floor. Various reasons have been given. Depends on whether you believe Frank Capra or not.

Chase was always very popular in shorts from about 1923 on. Being big in short subjects was very different than being big in features at a major studio.

I'm not sure Raymond Griffith ever hit the heights that Langdon did.

[kndy]

Thanks guys. By any chance are there any good books on Langdon or Chase? Or documentaries?

Jim, I looked up the Capra reason, that you mentioned. Very interesting!

http://www.silentsaregolden.com/article ... ticle.html

For Chase, I read that it was pretty much the sound era and that hurt him and he later turned to alcoholism.

But it's very cool to see Landon had worked with Capra and Chase with Leo McCarey and how these two filmmakers were often compared later in their careers.

[silentfilm]

Smile When the Raindrops Fall is the book to get on Charley Chase...
http://www.amazon.com/Smile-When-Raindr ... 286&sr=8-3

Chase was an alcoholic all his life, but in the sound era his drinking and poor health became a drag on his career.

Griffith was stuck at Paramount and while they block-booked his films, he never had the creative control or the time that Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and Langdon had. In 1925-26 his films were getting great reviews in newspapers, but I doubt that he was a big draw like Chaplin and Lloyd were.

[Brooksie]

By the mid 1930s, Langdon was touring Australia in our first local production of `Anything Goes' (which, based on my preliminary research, seems to have been massively hyped but not very well regarded).

I will freely admit that in those days, touring Australia was generally (though not always) seen as easy money for someone big whose career had hit the skids. If contemporary audiences did see him as one of the `big four', it's a pretty far way to fall in ten years.

[pickfair14]

I just finished reading "Harry Langdon - His Life and Films" the 2nd Edition, written by William Schelly and thought it was very good. He debunks alot of what Capra said, and the arguments he presents are sound are sound.

He points out Harry was as popular as the 'other 3' for a brief time, maybe 1926 & 27 before he began slipping. The talented team around him (which once included Capra and director Harry Edwards) was gone, and Harry doing things himself didn't work out.

I'm sure you'll find the book at Amazon. While I was reading it, at the same time, I re-watched his films from the "Lost and Found" Langdon collection. The two together, really show how he got to the top, and then dropped off

Rob

[Chris Snowden]

In 1925-26 his films were getting great reviews in newspapers, but I doubt that he was a big draw like Chaplin and Lloyd were.

Certain performers appealed more to urban audiences (Raymond Griffith, Adolphe Menjou, Pola Negri), and others appealed more to small town and rural audiences (Charles Ray, Hoot Gibson).

The "How the Picture Did for Me" reports in the trade papers often tell of small-town audiences being baffled and irritated by performers like Raymond Griffith and W. C. Fields, though there are positive reports too.

[pickfair14]

to illustrate how short Harry's perch at the top was, I found a few quotes from the William Schelly book I mentioned above. On page 74, he quotes a critic commenting on 'Strong Man' released 9.19.26

"Harry Langdon's second laugh-provoker firmly establishes the wistful comedian in the front ranks of the screen's mirth-makers. Watch out Charlie and Harold."

then on page 116, just 18 months later, on the release of 'The Chaser' on 2.12.28 he mentions a review in the New York Times

"It was not so long ago, that a number of us were heralding Mr. Langdon ...as virtually the legitimate successor of the mighty Mr. Chaplin. Today, unfortunately, we are forced to rush about in quest of alibis for our former ecstasy"

ouch, seems by this time, Harry's 15 minutes were up

[kndy]

Hi Pickfair,

I take it that Langdon had the ego trip that he was a star and then when he went to strike it on his own, it was disastrous? I wonder if there were any candid interviews with him about his career after everything was over? Was he happy, bitter?

Because even though his career came crashing in 1928, many other talents and their careers came crashing around that time or a few years later.

[pickfair14]

apparently, yes he had an ego, wanting to be like Chaplin. Once he lost his team, and tried to do it all on his own, it fell apart. But his career didn't end by 1928, just his peak. He actually made more sound films than silent. he worked right up to his death in 1944

at one point when Stan Laurel was fighting his studio, Harry was paired with Oliver Hardy in a film called Zenobia. I think his best sound film

[gjohnson]

.....I think not.

He was far funnier in his 2 minute walk-on the year previously in Roach's There Goes My Heart.

Gary J.

[pickfair14]

.....I think not.

He was far funnier in his 2 minute walk-on the year previously in Roach's There Goes My Heart.

Gary J.

I haven't seen that one, but now I'll have to look for it

[Chris Snowden]

apparently, yes he had an ego, wanting to be like Chaplin.

I'm not sure that Langdon's ego was any larger than that of most movie stars. But in 1926-1927 there were a lot of comparisons to Chaplin in the press, and when giving interviews, Langdon (like Chaplin) tended to be serious and reserved, rather than genial and chatty, and that can come across as egotistical. He did acquire a reputation in the business for having an ego, but whether that was fair or not is hard to say.

It's also hard to say how much of Langdon's public image was crafted by First National. I've seen fawning articles in the trade papers that really have the public-relations mens' fingerprints all over them. It was in FN's best interest to present their new star as a comedy genius in the Chaplin mold. His old boss Mack Sennett pronounced him even greater than Chaplin. This only set him up for failure later, raising expectations to an unreasonably high level.

Once he lost his team, and tried to do it all on his own, it fell apart.

He lost one director and fired another, but half of his team was still intact, including its most important member by far (himself). Langdon's swift fall from grace is something we all have different opinions about. From what I've seen, reviews began going south with the release of an older Sennett comedy, His First Flame, which had been held back for a year or so, followed by Langdon's own unusually dark comedy Long Pants. Then came Three's a Crowd, much of which had a melancholy tone that rubbed some people the wrong way. After that point, his films just didn't get a lot of attention from critics anymore. It was almost as if everyone lost interest in him just as he was doing his most original and personal work.

Another factor is that his early First National films ran way over budget, leaving less and less money available for the later films. I enjoy The Chaser, but it looks like a film that was made quickly and cheaply, and it was. That's not the way Langdon wanted to make those last two or three films, but those were the circumstances he was stuck with.

It's important to remember that Langdon was never a huge star with a universal appeal. Near his peak, he was the most unique up-and-coming star, of whom there were high expectations, but none of his films grossed the way Chaplin's, Lloyd's or Keaton's did. And even today there are fans of silent films who would like to embrace Langdon the way many of us do, but they just find him strange, creepy and unfunny.

But nearly all of us would agree that Langdon was one of the most original talents of the entire silent era, and many of us love the body of work he left behind.

[Harold Aherne]

I've been reading Joseph McBride's biography Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success and just got to the Sennett-Langdon chapter this evening. McBride provides a very thorough and thought-provoking account of Langdon's years with Capra and provides some interesting, surprising insights.

Did Langdon have an ego problem? Maybe, but if so it didn't spring from nowhere after the success of his first two features: one concession that he demanded, and got, from First National in his September 1925 contract was the primacy of his "judgment, management, supervision and control, solely, exclusively and uninterruptedly exercised by him at any and all times and places and in the manner determined by him alone". This power extended, of course, to the "employment, discharge, control, direction and action of directors". I can't get inside Langdon's head, but it's not impossible that he was planning to direct on his own all along while Edwards and Capra guided his initial success as a feature comedian.

Something else that I can see from McBride's box-office discussion is that latter-day accounts of the Langdon-Capra features' success have been overestimated. Tramp, Tramp, Tramp was a solid hit in spite of going $50,037 over budget, but McBride writes that "Though successful at the box office, The Strong Man was by no means a runaway hit, its critical standing far outdistancing its popular reception". The Film Spectator ranked The Strong Man 70th commercially on a list of Feb 1926-Aug 1927 releases; Tramp, Tramp, Tramp came in at 75.

But the real disappointment, and Langdon's box office turning point, was Long Pants. McBride says it ranked last (#202) on the Film Spectator list; I don't know if that was enough to make it a complete flop, but it was an immense comedown from the first two FN releases. Critics were notably more reserved in their enthusiasm for Langdon and the film closed after only a week in LA. It's probable that Long Pants suffered from the 10 minutes deleted from it in late March or early April 1927, between the NY opening and the general release (including the prologue with Frankie Darro and most of the Technicolor fantasy sequence). The scene in which he tries to shoot Priscilla Bonner was probably disquieting to some of his fans, particularly those unaccustomed to black humour and because Langdon sees the gun and immediately decides to take her to the forest--there is no apparent motivation for his action aside from wanting to escape marriage.

In many ways, Arthur Ripley also has a pivotal role in the story of Langdon at FN. Whether Ripley was an Iago-like figure who poisoned the relationship between Langdon and Capra to further himself or Langdon began gravitating to Ripley on his own, tension developed between the three and Capra was shut out. (Priscilla Bonner also blamed the increasing influence of Helen Walton, who would marry Langdon in 1929.) It's not a simple tale of Langdon getting too big for his britches and kicking out the person(s) he needed most; it was a nettlesome confluence of personalities who each had their own interests and eventually found them incompatible.

What's particularly memorable about McBride's work is how much debunking he had to do when researching Capra's life--story after story after story that Capra told is presented and then dismissed with the backing of research and known facts. Indeed, some of his family were quite displeased with a few of his accounts regarding his early life and whom he owed his early success. Given his indisputable tendency to bend or outright paint over the truth, anything Capra says about Langdon should be taken with the utmost grains of salt--preferably the size of Lot's wife. He rarely refers to his boss as "Harry" or "Langdon"--he's usually "the little guy" or "the little bastard". That should be motivation in itself not to take Capra's word as the last one in re: Langdon.

-Harold

[Ian Elliot]

In 1938 Langdon publicly admitted his own culpability for his career cave-in--at least he's quoted that way in the papers: "I'm not the type who could make good as his own producer." And, as reported, he reviled THE CHASER and HEART TROUBLE, calling them the two pictures that "finished" him, claiming they were made on the fly and on the cheap after he ill-advisedly agreed to radically cut budgets.

Joseph McBride's book also discloses that Capra first directed Langdon in SOLDIER MAN, only to be fired by Sennett early in the shoot, and that Hal Roach barely recalled Capra working for him, if at all. This may by unfair to Capra, but, transcendent and innovative filmmaker though he ultimately proved to be, I do wonder if he was really at home creating and directing silent comedy.

[Mike Gebert]

I don't want to rehash a lengthier post but I recommend actually seeing Three's a Crowd and The Chaser; the films themselves refute a lot of the legend, particularly that Langdon was a simpleton who didn't understand his own character. Langdon in his star persona was just one of those extreme comic figures in whom public interest was intense but short-lived, they happen all the time (Joe Penner, Andy Kaufman). But he was clearly the creative driver of his own persona and made it work for as long as it did, and doing so surely meant a certain amount of ego which rubbed some the wrong way, but not more than many another comedian, I'm sure. We don't hear bad stories about Harold Lloyd but just the fact that he ran such a well-oiled comedy machine must mean he fired somebody once in a while who didn't fit the boss's vision (and, of course, he sued one notable former comedy writer later on).

[Penfold]

Simplistic, but possibly a factor, and a fact generally overlooked - Langdon was by a margin the oldest of the four - Five years older than Chaplin, ten years older than Keaton and Lloyd; did he simply tire from the physical demands of the of comedy filmmaking just as he achieved the success at feature level ??? By the time Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd reached the age Langdon was in '29, they too were respectively slowed right down, in the lower reaches, or pretty much retired.

[David Pierce]

I'm not sure that Langdon's ego was any larger than that of most movie stars. But in 1926-1927 there were a lot of comparisons to Chaplin in the press, and when giving interviews, Langdon (like Chaplin) tended to be serious and reserved, rather than genial and chatty, and that can come across as egotistical. He did acquire a reputation in the business for having an ego, but whether that was fair or not is hard to say.

William K. Everson pointed out that Langdon's career height came during the long gap between THE GOLD RUSH and THE CIRCUS.

“Harry Langdon never had the mass appeal of Lloyd nor the wit of Keaton. For awhile, however, he did appear to be tapping the Chaplin audience, and also because his best films – Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, The Strong Man, and Long Pants, all of 1926-27 – came while Chaplin was off the screen.” William K. Everson, American Silent Film, 1978, p. 276.

David Pierce

[Tommie Hicks]

The saturation of Langdon releases in 1927-1928 by First National and Sennett also had a negative impact on Langdon's career at the time. People of that era didn't have the degree of disposable income we do today and it wasn't likely they were going to attend more than one Langdon showing a year.

[Christopher Jacobs]

The saturation of Langdon releases in 1927-1928 by First National and Sennett also had a negative impact on Langdon's career at the time. People of that era didn't have the degree of disposable income we do today and it wasn't likely they were going to attend more than one Langdon showing a year.

Possibly, but in that pre-television era many people were going to movies weekly if not several times a week, so why would the fact that any star or director had more than one picture out in a year make an average moviegoer less likely to attend it? Fans would jump at the chance to see their favorites. Those who disliked a star or director would avoid it anyway. An average moviegoer might well see one or more example of the same filmmakers' work by chance... or not.

--Christopher Jacobs
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs
http://hpr1.com/film

[boblipton]

Well, there were saturation issues. At one point a few years later you could see any of half a dozen Marx Brothers movies at the theaters, from the First Run theater down to the nabes with a second feature and dishes thrown in -- and DUCK SOUP tanked.

I don't think that Langdon's career tanked because there were too many Langdon features out there. I think Langdon's career tanked because of miscalculation. I love a lot of the Langdon shorts, but THE CHASER was a literal snoozer for me. I feel asleep and there sure wasn't any laughter to wake me up.

Bob

[Chris Snowden]

I understand the saturation argument, but I don't think it applies. Many, if not most stars at that time were appearing in three or four films a year: Clara Bow, Lon Chaney, Colleen Moore, Bebe Daniels, etc. etc. Tom Mix was making seven or eight.

On the other hand, the release of several disappointing films in brisk succession couldn't have helped him any.

[Brooksie]

I understand the saturation argument, but I don't think it applies. Many, if not most stars at that time were appearing in three or four films a year: Clara Bow, Lon Chaney, Colleen Moore, Bebe Daniels, etc. etc. Tom Mix was making seven or eight.

On the other hand, the release of several disappointing films in brisk succession couldn't have helped him any.

I agree - take Clara Bow. Seven films in 1926 and six in '27, and so on - but to keep up that pace, you either need consistent quality or, as in the case of Clara, a personality that people would see no matter the film.

Another factor is that Langdon hit the big time somewhat later than Lloyd, Chaplin or Keaton, who were all big stars by the early 1920s. It's only by a few years - but it meant that his character was less well established and maybe not robust enough to carry disappointing films.

The timing also meant that the other three got a lengthy apprenticeship in shorts. By the time they made their first features, they'd been all been making films for five or six years, and Chaplin and Keaton were just as at home behind the camera as in front of it.

Langdon went from being a jobbing actor to a feature director in the space of three years. If Chaplin or Keaton made a few less-than-sparkling shorts in 1920, no big deal; they learned and moved on. An unsuccessful feature fillm is writ far larger, much less a series of them.

[Ian Elliot]

Langdon later said (reportedly), a propos his popular standing in 1928, "audiences tired of [my] character". But it was also reported that a preview audience unexpectedly broke into applause upon seeing his unbilled appearance in THERE GOES MY HEART a full ten years later.

I suspect his film career, on balance I think quite a creditable one, became haphazard after the First National period at least partly out of a "been there, done that" attitude toward the movies. Another quote re his time as a producer: "The responsibility got me down. I finally said, 'Oh, nuts!' That's the way I always was. In vaudeville I couldn't rest till I got to the top, and then I didn't care about it."

[silent-partner]

Simplistic, but possibly a factor, and a fact generally overlooked - Langdon was by a margin the oldest of the four - Five years older than Chaplin, ten years older than Keaton and Lloyd; did he simply tire from the physical demands of the of comedy filmmaking just as he achieved the success at feature level ??? By the time Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd reached the age Langdon was in '29, they too were respectively slowed right down, in the lower reaches, or pretty much retired.

With respect due to you, Pen, artists create regardless of age. I submit that some get better with years. Harry Langdon didn't.
I will give you simplistic; Langdon shined, then faded. Quicksilver star. He's lucky he had even that.

[boblipton]

With respect due to you, Pen, artists create regardless of age. I submit that some get better with years. Harry Langdon didn't.
I will give you simplistic; Langdon shined, then faded. Quicksilver star. He's lucky he had even that.

Mmmmmm no. Artists create when they create and when they don't create they don't create. Sometimes they stop because of age. Sometimes they're in a coma. Sometimes they're happy. Sometimes because the baby needs changing. It's always dangerous to apply general rules to individuals.


Bob

[Penfold]

Simplistic, but possibly a factor, and a fact generally overlooked - Langdon was by a margin the oldest of the four - Five years older than Chaplin, ten years older than Keaton and Lloyd; did he simply tire from the physical demands of the of comedy filmmaking just as he achieved the success at feature level ??? By the time Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd reached the age Langdon was in '29, they too were respectively slowed right down, in the lower reaches, or pretty much retired.

With respect due to you, Pen, artists create regardless of age. I submit that some get better with years. Harry Langdon didn't.
I will give you simplistic; Langdon shined, then faded. Quicksilver star. He's lucky he had even that.

My point is that Langdon did improve with age......and peaked at his mid-late forties; he had been on stage a long time by then. They had all peaked - in their public reception, which I believe is what we're talking about here, not just their creativity - by their late forties.....Langdon was still creating after that point, but as a gag man, not a leading actor. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one comedian from that era that peaked after his late forties, and that was WC Fields....

[rogerskarsten]

Off the top of my head, I can only think of one comedian from that era that peaked after his late forties, and that was WC Fields....

And Marie Dressler!

[kndy]

Who was the more popular of the two during the 20's...Chase or Langdon? Capra or McCarey?