5 Second-String Silent-Film Comedians

Everyone's heard of Charlie Chaplin, and most people know about Buster Keaton (and many consider his artistry to be superior to Chaplin's). Harold Lloyd is less well known but has deservedly gotten more attention lately. Then there's Laurel and Hardy, who are as well known for their sound films as for their silent-era work. (The careers of the other three performers also straddled both eras but with variable success.)

Unfortunately, many film fans are only slightly or not at all familiar with their contemporaries, some of whom achieved fame equaling or even eclipsing that of these more enduring silent-film comedians. Here are five comedy stars from before the sound era you should also know about:

Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle

The corpulent Arbuckle, like many of his contemporaries, worked in vaudeville from an early age. Hired by pioneering producer/director Mack Sennett, he worked for three years in small roles, usually as one of the fabled Keystone Kops, but eventually he landed starring roles and started directing himself (the first actor to do so consistently). Arbuckle launched Buster Keaton's career -- Keaton appeared in more than a dozen Arbuckle short films -- and Chaplin and Lloyd each had a supporting role in one of his shorts. Soon after Arbuckle, second only to Chaplin in fame among film comedians, made the transition to full-length movies, however, he was implicated in the death of a starlet at a party. He was acquitted in three trials, but although he remained popular with the public, newspapers (especially those of the Hearst chain) blew the incident up into the first major Hollywood scandal, and studios were leery of working with him. After directing, under the pseudonym William Goodrich, dozens of films over the next ten years, he made a comeback, starring in six shorts, but the night after he was signed to a feature-film contract, he died of a heart attack.

Charley Chase

Chase, like Fatty Arbuckle, worked for Mack Sennett, appearing with stars like Charlie Chaplin and Arbuckle and codirecting with Arbuckle and Ford Sterling. He took a while to advance from bit parts to leading roles and, though admired by critics, was never a great commercial success. Hired to direct for Hal Roach, Sennett's archrival, he acted for Roach instead, directed by legendary director Leo McCarey (whose career extended late into the sound era). Chase, often playing charming losers, also made the transition, starring in dozens of short films made in the 1930s (and showing up in Laurel and Hardy's classic film Sons of the Desert, though he was never given the chance to star in full-length sound films). Chase also produced, directed, and wrote films, often under his birth name, Charles Parrott, including working behind the camera on early Three Stooges shorts. A longtime alcoholic, like Arbuckle he died of a heart attack at 46.

Harry Langdon

Langdon ran away to join the circus and worked in vaudeville until he was 40, when he finally broke into films, working for -- you guessed it -- Mack Sennett. Among the collaborators who developed his man-child persona was a young writer named Frank Capra, who joined Langdon when the star formed his own company. But Langdon, buoyed by the success of several self-produced hits, fired Capra, who had directed two of these latest movies, and produced, directed, and wrote his own vehicles, but they flopped. (Capra, of course, became one of Hollywood's most celebrated directors.) A short-lived collaboration with Hal Roach was a failure, as were subsequent projects, but Langdon found some success as a writer for Laurel and Hardy and became a character actor in sound features, but he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1944 at 60.

Larry Semon

Semon joined the family vaudeville act but later honored his father's deathbed request and studied art, then became a newspaper cartoonist. But then he met someone from the Vitagraph studio and was persuaded to give films a try. Semon wrote gags and directed, then stepped in front of the camera, and among his collaborators were two comedians with whom he worked consecutively, who later teamed up as Laurel and Hardy. Eventually, Semon's success went to his head, and Vitagraph, wearying of his disregard for budgets and his overbearing manner, reined him in and eventually dumped him. His career as an independent talent floundered, especially after his loose (and expensive) adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz flopped, and he found himself working as a gag writer again. After a failed attempt at a comeback, Semon went bankrupt, and, then, when he thought things couldn't get any worse, he contracted tuberculosis and suffered a nervous breakdown. Soon after, he is reported to have died in a sanitarium, but, per his instructions, his wife was not allowed to attend his funeral or claim his body, which was cremated, and some people believe that he faked his own death to secretly rebuild his life after suffering one misfortune after another.

Ben Turpin

Diminutive, cross-eyed Bernard Turpin allegedly developed his ocular affliction during his vaudeville act (parents sometimes do know best), but he milked it during his career, getting his eyes insured by Lloyds of London (and being careful lest they became unstuck and ruined what made him unique). After a peripatetic young adulthood, he entered vaudeville relatively late in life and, like Harry Langdon, also came late to films, in his case at 38. While working at Essanay Studios, he met Charlie Chaplin, who introduced him to -- here we go again -- Mack Sennett, who made him a star specializing in parodies of current hits. Turpin briefly gave up acting to care for his dying wife, but when he returned, he was unable to achieve the popularity he had had before. Despite stints with Hal Roach (heard of him?) and Pathe, his career faltered, and though he had occasional roles in sound movies (including, like Charlie Chase, a Laurel and Hardy film), his glory days were long over, and he died in 1940.