by Bruce “Charlie” Johnson
Comedy, including clowning and the circus, both influenced culture in general and was influenced by it. Film and TV comedy in particular did that. Screen comedians often incorporated their versions of clown routines, and clowns were often inspired by screen comedians.
All the following events occurred during the same year. Can you guess which year it is?
It is 19??
- Duane “Uncle Soapy” Thorpe is born.
2. The Florida real estate boom is at its height. The last surviving Ringling brothers, Charles and John, lead the development of the town of Sarasota. They compete with each other as to who is the most important man in town. Both men are presidents of their own banks in Sarasota. Charles owns a very ornate hotel, and John is building his own fancier hotel as the center of his own housing development on an island in the bay. (The Florida boom will bust next year and John’s hotel is never finished.)
3. Stan Laurel has been working and living with his partner Mae Dahlberg Laurel for almost a decade since they first teamed in vaudeville. Mae is an actress from Australia. She doesn’t marry Stan because she already has a husband in Australia who won’t give her a divorce. In later years Mae will describe herself as Stan’s common law wife. Mae is a terrible movie actress and Stan realizes it. Out of loyalty to her because she is his partner and out of fear of her terrible temper, Stan had insisted that movie producers cast her in his films. Unwilling to put up with Mae, producers refused to hire Stan, and the couple’s finances were in terrible shape. Last year Joe Rock agreed to produce a series of movies starring Stan Laurel provided Mae did not perform in the films. Rock convinced Mae to agree to the terms. Stan seemed relieved and happy at work. Mae is banned from visiting the studio.
This year the atmosphere at the Stan Laurel Comedies lot changes for the worse. Stan arrives late looking as if he has been up most of the night. He is irritable and impatient, resenting it when scenes need to be reshot. Joe Rock gets Stan to admit that Mae is causing problems at home because she is unhappy at not working in the movies. She wants Stan to return to vaudeville with her, but he wants to stay in the movies.
4. Lou Jacobs is a contortionist. He teams with contortionist Micheal Morris, another contortionist, who has a contract to provide an act for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Wearing whiteface make up, they use a broomstick as a trapeze bar to parody the aerialists.
5. Harry Langdon, in his second year at the Mack Sennett Studios, films “The Sea Squaw”, “Boobs in the Woods”, “His Marriage Wow”, “Plain Clothes”, and “Lucky Stars”, all short subjects.
A whiteface pantomimist, Langdon had spent 20 years touring with minstrel shows, circuses, burlesque, and vaudeville shows performing an act with a trick car. His character is that of a wide-eyed innocent simpleton bewildered by the world around him.
His Sennett films are directed by Harry Edwards and written by Frank Capra. Under their guidance he has reached the point where he is considered part of the Big Four of American silent screen comedy. (The other three are Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd)
Next year, Langdon moves to Warner Bros. studios and begins producing his own films. At first, he continues working with Edwards and Capra, but when he decides he is too big a star to need them, his films and career quickly deteriorate.
6. Old Wagon Show Days by Gil Robinson is published. Robinson lists “Five Great Clowns” of the nineteenth-century American Circus, Nat Austin, singing clown, George L. Fox, “Greatest in Pantomime,” Chas. Abbott, “Shakespearean Jester,” John Lowlow, singing clown, and Dan Rice.
7. Red Skelton starts his entertainment career by selling elixir with Doc Lewis’s Patent Medicine Show. He gets laughs by falling off the stage.
8. The phrase “often a bridesmaid but never a bride” is created by Milton Feasley for a Listerine magazine ad. The ad implies that the reason Edna has never married is because she suffers from halitosis. (Three years ago the word halitosis, meaning bad breath, was invented for another Listerine ad.) The bridesmaid ad is so successful it will be used for more then ten years.
9. The design style known as Art Deco is introduced at the Expostition International des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. At first it is used on expensive handcrafted luxury items, but during the American depression it will be used on everything from railway stations to kitchen appliances.
10. Buster Keaton releases “Seven Chances” which he claimed was his least favorite of his silent feature films. Instead of being an original story, it is based on a play that Joseph Schenck, his producer, purchased without consulting him.
The premise is that Buster is informed he will inherit seven million dollars if he is married before 7 P.M. on his 27th birthday. It turns out that the day he learns of his inheritance is his birthday. He rushes to propose to his girlfriend Mary, but lets the news of his inheritance slip out. Afraid he only wants to marry her for his money, Mary refuses. Buster then proposes to every woman he sees, but is always turned down. Finally, his lawyer tells Buster to meet him at the church and he’ll supply a bride. The lawyer plants a story about the terms of the inheritance in the local
newspaper. Buster falls asleep in the front pew of the church. When he wakes up, he discovers the church is jammed with women, each determined to marry him. In the meantime, Mary has reconsidered and sends him a message agreeing to become his wife. Pursued by crowds of thousands of women, Buster races across town, and manages to marry Mary just in time.
Many of Buster’s films are structured around a period of sleep signifying a reversal. Here it is Buster chasing women to find a bride, going to sleep, and then trying to escape hordes of women wanting to be his bride.
Two scenes are of special note. When he leaves the country club to propose to Mary, Buster gets into his car. Then he and the car sit motionless as the background fades from the country club to Mary’s house. The process is reversed when he “drives” back. The scene is all the more amazing because it was filmed before the invention of rear screen projection or matte printing. Buster loved the technical portion of filming, and, with his crew, created many special effects.
Near the climax of the chase is a scene that was created accidentally. When the film was previewed, Buster noticed the audience laughed at the sight of a few rocks he had kicked loose running down the hill. The rocks seemed to be chasing him. Buster and his crew reshoot the scene adding hundreds of artificial rocks of all sizes creating a massive landslide chasing him down the hill.
11. John Scopes breaks the Tennessee law forbidding teaching the theory of evolution. During his ten-day trial, known as the “monkey trial,” Scopes is found guilty. He is fined $100, which is later reduced to one dollar. Because of the small penalty other teachers introduce evolution in their classrooms and the law banning it is never again enforced.
12. Josephine Baker, 19 years old, arrives in Paris as part of La Revue Negre, the first black song and dance revue in Paris. The daughter of a laundress, she grew up in the East St. Louis slums. She left home at the age of 13 to become a professional dancer. Her seminude, wildly energetic erotic dance to jazz music creates a sensation. One critic writes, “there seemed to emanate from her violently shuddering body, her bold dislocations, her springing movements, a gushing stream of rhythm.”
13. Twenty-five-year-old Louis Armstrong begins leading his own bands, the Hot Five and Hot Seven. He creates a new style of jazz with long, melodic improvised solos on his trumpet. He also sings meaningless syllables in a style that will become known as scat singing. Considered the first true revolutionary of jazz music he was soon imitated by sophisticated people in Harlem.
14. Joe Rock wants to cast Oliver Hardy in some of Stan Laurel’s comedies. Stan refuses because he considers Oliver a scene stealer providing competition to him in his own movies. Stan is not yet secure enough in his own movie career and talents to consider working with a partner.
15. After the three-month run of La Revue Negre closes, Josephine Baker is booked by the Follies-Bergere where she introduces her famous banana dance in which she was naked except for a skirt of swaying bananas.
16. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzerald, is published. The book explores the spiritual ruin of the American dream by what Fitzerald terms the jazz age. Daisey Buchanan, one of the books main characters, is based on Zelda Sayre Fitzerald, his wife of five years.
17. Inspired by Josephine Baker, French women start a new fashion fad, slicking down their hair and soaking themselves in walnut oil to darken their skin.
18. Harold Lloyd’s “The Freshman” is released. The film about a young man’s attempts to become the big man on campus is considered a masterpiece.
In the opening scene, Harold is shown in close up leading cheers for a football game. Then the camera pulls back revealing he is only standing in front of a poster in his bedroom practicing cheers. This revelation technique of making you believe one thing and then pulling back to expose the reality is used to open many of Harold’s movies.
One extended scene involves Harold attending a dance wearing a suit that has only been basted together because the tailor didn’t have time to finish it. During the dance the suit begins falling apart. Harold considered losing his pants too much of a cliche so he didn’t include that gag. When the movie was previewed, he learned from audience comment cards that people were disappointed he hadn’t lost his pants. They had been eagerly anticipating that happening. Harold went back and reshot the scene so that his pants come off.
The film ends with a football game in which Harold becomes the unorthodox hero. The same scene opens “Mad Wednesday” (aka The Sins of Harold Diddlebock), Harold Lloyd’s last movie which will be made in another 22 years. In “Mad Wednesday”, he plays the same character, 20 years older, that he had in “The Freshman”.
19. The US Congress authorizes Gutzon Borglum to carve a colossal memorial of the busts of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt on the face of Mount Rushmore. (March 3) The project will be finished by his son, Lincoln, 16 years later.
20. Mae Laurel gets permission to travel with Stan on location for the filming of “The Snow Hawk”. The cast and crew are living in cabins for a week while the movie is shot in the area near Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead in the mountains above Los Angeles.
One day Joe Rock returns to the cabins for some equipment. Mae tells Stan that Joe had invited her to his cabin and tried to seduce her. Stan accuses Joe, and is ashamed when he learns that Joe’s wife had arrived and spent the day in his cabin so he had proof Mae was lying. Stan admits that Mae had tried to blackmail other producers in the past with false sexual harassment charges.
The year is 192?
21. The Belinographe Telephoto Machine (precursor to the fax machine) is introduced.
22. Jesus Christ, The Man Nobody Knows is a best seller. This biography of Christ is by Bruce Barton, founder of one of the world’s largest advertising agencies (Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne) and inventor of Betty Crocker for General Mills. Barton claims that Christ was the father of modern business and the greatest pitchman of his day. According to Barton, the “advertisements of Jesus have survived for 20 centuries.”
23. Robert Altman, Robert Kennedy, B.B. King, Malcolm X, Paul Newman, Peter Sellers, Margaret Thatcher, and Gore Vidal are all born this year.
24. After appearing in Life magazine for two years, Percy Crosby’s Skippy becomes a daily comic strip. Considered a classic strip about children it depicted realistic characters engaged in normal childhood activities. Charles Schultz and Bill Waterson have acknowledged Skippy as an important influence on their work.
Crosby portrayed the boys in his strip as complex characters who might be charming, quarrelsome, philosophical, cunning, mischievous, considerate, lonesome, troublesome, happy, or sad. Most of all, they were recognizable as being real.
Skippy is shown as a Christian boy. For example, when his mother has an all-day headache, he prays that the headache might be given to him for a little while. In another strip he prays, “Oh Lord, please give me the strength to brush my teeth every night and if Thou cannot give me the strength, give me the strength not to worry about it.”
Crosby is the first cartoonist to handle specific political issues in his comic strip. By the end of the decade Crosby will use Skippy to attack Roosevelt, Al Capone, J. Edgar Hoover, censorship, and any type of tyranny. He will champion freedom of the press, each individual’s rights, and high morality. When publishers refuse to print a specific cartoon, Crosby will use his own money to have it run as an advertisement in order to get his message out.
Crosby will draw Skippy for 20 years.
25. New York railroad heir Harold S. Vanderbilt invents contract bridge, considered the most challenging of all card games.
26. Brigadier General Billy Mitchell believes control of the skies by an air force is essential for military victory. His superiors disagree with him . When a storm destroys one of the army’s dirigibles, Mitchell publicly accuses his superiors of “incompetency, criminal negligence, and almost treasonable administration of the national defense.” The army convicts Mitchell of insubordination and suspends him for five years. He will die before World War II tragically proves that his ideas are right.
27. “Madame Sans-Gene” becomes a big hit when released in America. The film, starring Gloria Swanson, directed by Leonce Perret, was filmed in France by Paramount productions.
It is the first of a series of films the American company plans to make in France. (April)
28. Mae Laurel states that she would return to Australia if she could afford it. Joe Rock agrees to pay her way and helps her get permission to travel to Australia. Then she says she won’t leave unless she can take her jewelry which has been pawned. Joe Rock pays to get her jewelry out of hock. Worried that Mae will change her mind, Joe arranges with the ship’s purser to hold the jewelry in his safe until they are a couple of days out to sea.
29. Worried that Stan may be depressed by losing Mae, Joe Rock arranges for his brother Murray to spend every minute with Stan the week before Mae sails. The day Mae is scheduled to leave, the two men introduce Stan to an actress named Lois Neilson. Stan is at her house when he is learns Mae has really left. He reacts with great joy. In a year Stan and Lois are married.
30. Ella Cinders debuts as a daily comic strip in June. It is the story of ungainly, freckle-faced Ella toiling for her selfish stepmother, Mytie Cinders, and her two crabby stepsisters, Prissie and Lotta Pill, until one day she wins a movie contract and becomes a big success.
A film, starring Colleen Moore, based on the comic strip will be produced next year. Harry Langdon will make a cameo appearance in the movie.
31. After more then a year in production, Charlie Chaplin’s ”The Gold Rush” premieres at Grauman’s Egyptian Theater. (June 26) The film is preceded by a stage show featuring live seals and dancing Eskimo girls.
Considered one of his masterpieces, the film contains two of his most famous scenes. In one, he eats his boot and laces as if they are a steak and spaghetti. (They were made out of licorice.) In the other he performs the “Dance Of The Rolls” using two forks and two buns.
Chaplin had originally cast Lita Grey, his new teenage bride, as the dance hall girl. It quickly became evident she wasn’t a good enough actress for the role. Fortunately, she became
pregnant during the production and had to be replaced. Georgia Hale took over the part.
32. French comedian Max Linder is elected president of the Film Writers Society in France. (July) Since last November, Linder has taken a stand against the involvement of American producers in the French film industry. His position is inspired in part by a French distributor signing a partnership deal with American film company Loew’s-Metro to handle their product in France.
Linder had tried to revive his film career by making movies in Hollywood, but the films received only limited American distribution because they were classified as foreign films.
Last year United Artist opposed American release of Linder’s last film, “Au Secours”.
33. “Half A Man”, starring Stan Laurel, produced by Joe Rock, is released in August. Filmed on Catalina, this movie about a ship wreck shows Stan playing an innocent character inspired by Harry Langdon. In one scene he alternately confronts and is frightened by the ocean waves. According to John McCabe, “in the hands of anyone but a master pantomimist, all this would be fatuously childish, but Stan makes it convincing and, incredibly, quite charming.”
34. Scottish inventor John Logie Baird becomes the first person to transmit live moving images to a remote receiver. (Oct 2) Baird’s television system is a crude mechanical affair using spinning perforated disks to scan an object with a concentrated beam of light and break the light into lines. A photoelectric cell converts the light to electricity. The receiver reverses the process. After successfully transmitting from his London attic to a screen in the next
room the image of a ventriloquist figure’s head, Baird runs to a building across the street where he hires William Taynton, a young office boy, to sit in front of his device, making Taynton the first person to appear on television.
Baird’s system works, but the images flicker causing nausea-inducing headaches in viewers. Within two years other inventors will develop electronic systems making television really practical.
35. French film comedian Max Linder, kills his wife and commits suicide. (October 30) Linder had been the first comedian to have international success in movies, and was an important influence on Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin. His career and health were ruined by serving in the army during World War I where he was a victim of a nerve gas attack.
36. Buster Keaton releases “Go West”, a film inspired by Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush”. In the film, Keaton gently parodies Chaplin’s character and style. Buster plays Friendless, a drifter who gets a job on a ranch. The rancher’s daughter falls in love with him, but he loves another. He has given his heart to a cow named Brown Eyes. The rancher is facing financial ruin if he doesn’t deliver his herd immediately to the stock yard. Buster ends up in Los Angeles with the herd,
and decides to lead the cows through the city streets to the stockyard. The herd wanders away disrupting traffic, panicking the citizens, and wrecking local businesses. Buster dons a devil costume to get the animals to follow him. They begin picking up speed, and soon Buster is fleeing the herd in another of his famous running scenes. The herd chases him right to the stockyard just in time. In gratitude the rancher lets Buster have Brown Eyes.
Buster loved animals, featured several in his films, and trained the cow for this film himself.
Buster, nicknamed the Stone Face, was known for not smiling in his films. This film was conceived as a parody of Chaplin, but it also contains a bit of self-parody. When Keaton accuses a crook of cheating at cards, the crook pulls a gun demanding “when you say that, Smile!” Buster pauses to let the audience appreciate the situation, and then still blank faced uses two fingers to push up the corners of his mouth.
During the stampede sequence, Buster’s father, Joe, appears in the barber shop scene. He is the one who sits there unaware that his “shave” is actually two cows licking the lather off his face.
As a young boy, Buster had toured vaudeville performing in a knockabout act with his parents.
The sequence also includes a cameo by Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. As a result of being falsely accused in the death of Virginia Rappe, Arbuckle had been blacklisted. Keaton allows his friend and mentor to appear illegally in the film in order to give his friend a handout disguised as a pay check. Known for female impersonation, Arbuckle is one of the women in the department store scene.
This is the last silent feature film Buster makes wearing his trademark costume of slap shoes, baggy pants, vest, and flat porkpie hat.
37. With Mae gone, Stan happy, and his films once again successful, Hal Roach wants Stan to return to the Roach studios. He offers Stan more money than Rock can pay so Stan decides to change studios breaking his contract with Rock. Next year Stan returns to the Roach studios.
38. “Sally Of The Sawdust” premiers. The film, directed by D.W. Griffith, stars W.C. Fields and Mae Busch. It is based on “Poppy”, the hit Broadway musical comedy Fields had starred in two years ago. The silent film spotlights Fields’ juggling skill. The story will be remade as a talking film titled “Poppy”, also starring Fields, in 1936.
39. Fred Bradna, RBB&B Equestrian Director, books Lou Jacobs into some winter indoor circus dates to test his solo clown ability. He performs a clown/bareback act. Standing on a horse running around a ring, he pours hair oil on his bald head and grows a head of hair. As a result of audience response, he will receive his first Ringling Bros Circus contract next year.
40. Sergei Eisentstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” introduces new storytelling techniques into the film medium. The film, commissioned by the Soviet government to mark the anniversary of the failed 1905 revolution, is based on the 1905 mutiny aboard the Czar’s battleship Potemkin, docked at Odessa. Eisenstein demonstrates the propagandistic power of montage, which until now had been used unobtrusively, and shows the same scene repeatedly from different angles and viewpoints. According to Douglas Fairbanks, seeing it was “the most intense and profoundest experience of my life.”
Charlie Chaplin dubbed it “the best film ever made.”
Critics agree, and it is almost always included in lists of all time great films.
The year is 1925.
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