Stars of Slapstick #99: Lyda Roberti

A good day for lady comedians! Today is also the birthday of Lyda Roberti (1906-1938). Born into a Warsaw circus family she began as a trapeze artist and singer in music halls, touring throughout Europe and Asia. In the late 20s, she moved to the U.S. and began singing in night clubs. This led to Broadway, where she featured in three shows: You Said It (1931), Pardon My English (1933), and Roberta (1934). Her beauty, talent and funny accent made her highly castable, so Hollywood too was inevitable. She is memorable in such films as Million Dollar Legs with W.C. Fields (1932), The Kid from Spain with Eddie Cantor (1932), George White’s 1935 Scandals, and The Big Broadcast of 1936. In 1936, she was also Thelma Todd’s replacement in the last iteration of Hal Roach’s ill-fated all-female comedy team (the line up had gone: Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts, Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly, then Patsy Kelly and Lyda Roberti). Unfortunately, Roberti had a fatally weak heart. She had already retired from show business for health reasons when her heart condition killed her in 1938 at the age of 32.

Here she is in her classic turn as the beautiful spy Matta Machree in Joseph Mankiewics’s hilarious nut comedy Million Dollar Legs:

To find out about  the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

For more on silent and slapstick comedy please check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Stars of Vaudeville # 657: Arthur Lake

Today is the birthday of Arthur Lake (Arthur Silverlake, Jr., 1905-1987.)

His father and uncle had a circus trapeze act called The Flying Silverlakes. Then his father and his mother (Edith Goodwin) formed a vaudeville act called “Family Affair” which Arthur and his sister Florence later joined. The family went to Hollywood to break into pictures. Arthur’s debut was in a silent version of Jack in the Beanstalk in 1917. His film career began in earnest seven years later when he was signed to a contract at Universal. For over a decade he was a steadily working character in Hollywood, usually playing mincing adolescent types.

His big break, the part he was to be indelibly associated with, was Dagwood Bumstead in the film (28 features, 1938-1950), radio (1939-1950) and television (1957) adaptations of the popular comic strip Blondie. I REALLY love Arthur Lake’s performances as this character, although it must said that his performances are more Lake than Bumstead. (I’ve never thought of the character in the comic strip as particularly bumbling, ineffectual or stupid. Lazy, yes. In love with large sandwiches, yes. Too timid with his boss, yes. But Lake took the character, shall we say, to a very special place all his own).

In 1937, Lake married Patricia Van Cleeve, whom time has revealed to have been the unacknowledged daughter of Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst. 

His sister Florence also had a movie career, most memorably playing Edgar Kennedy’s wife in his RKO comedy shorts.

Now here he is with co-star Penny Singleton in Blondie on a Budget (194o):

To find out about  the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

For more on silent and slapstick comedy please check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Stars of Vaudeville #656: Roger Imhof

Roger Imhof (1875-1958) was part of the John Ford stock company, appearing in Judge Priest, Steamboat ‘Round the Bend, Three Godfathers, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Grapes of Wrath, and dozens of other pictures during his decade long movie career.

A native of Rock Island, Illinois, he started out as a clown with the Mills Orton Circus, then as an Irish comedian in vaudeville and burlesque. In vaudeville he worked with numerous partners in many different acts. In the late 1890s, he worked with Charles Osbourne, in a comedy contortion and burlesque acrobatics act. Around 1902 he began to work with Hugh Conn. The two were joined by Marcelle Corinne during the teens to form the act known as Imhof, Conn and Corinne. (Corinne was to become Imhof’s wife) The trio performed two comedy sketches in vaudeville for many years, ‘The Pest House” and “Surgeon Louder”. He also wrote numerous songs during his vaudeville career, including the popular 1906 tune “Old Broadway”.  He was to lose most of his money and investments in the stock market crash, at which he point he decided to try his luck in Hollywood.

To find out about  the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And please check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Zazel, the Human Cannonball (Rosa Richter)

Today is the birthday of Rosa Richter (1862-1922), known professionally as Zazel, one of the first of the human cannonballs.

Born in England, she was already an acrobat and tightrope walker in her teenage years. In 1877, she was first shot out of a cannon and thrown in the air 100 feet by the Great Farini, the inventor of the device. (For those who don’t know, it doesn’t actually shoot you like a gun. The small puff of gunpowder smoke is ornamental. The real mechanism is a spring, like in a children’s dart gun. But that doesn’t make it less dangerous. 30 people have been killed in doing the human cannonball act, usually by missing the net).

In 1880, she was brought to the U.S. by P.T. Barnum and headline for a few years with his circus. Zazel’s act was so popular that many people stole it, not just Farini’s cannonball device, but Zazel’s name as well. Rosa herself stopped doing the act after a few years and went back to walking a tightrope. Ironically, it was a high wire fall that eventually broke her back and caused her retirement in 1891.

To find out about  the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

 

And please check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Stars of Slapstick #82: Fred Karno

The Fred Karno Troup was the pre-eminent company of British Music Hall pantomimes. Karno’s most distinguished alumni included both the man who revolutionized the art of silent comedy (Charlie Chaplin) and the man who brought its techniques farthest into the sound era (Stan Laurel).

“The guv’nor”, as Karno was affectionately called by his colleagues, was one of the most powerful and influential figures in music hall history. He began with a humble trio of acrobats in 1888. Seven years later he presented his first panto sketch “Hilarity” which scored a big hit with audiences. By 1901, he had added three more sketches to the group’s repertoire. In the years 1904-1914, Karno’s violently comical knockabout really hit its stride with the public. Britain at that time was undergoing a modest social revolution, from an aristocracy to a more level and fluid social structure along the lines of what had been enjoyed in the United States. Karno’s rough housing scenarios usually had plots centered around trades people and working men, allowing such people in the audience to purge some of their pent up frustration at injustices in the workplace.

One of his most successful sketches was called: “Mumming Birds”. It consisted of a vaudeville show within the vaudeville show, including members of the “audience” who would be played by Karno regulars out in the house itself. The centerpiece of the routine was a “drunk” who arrived late, causing a big commotion and calling a great deal of attention to himself. The part of the drunk was first played by one Billie Ritchie (who later became a silent comedy star), and then later by Billie Reeves (whose brother Alfred later managed Charlie Chaplin’s studio). The Chaplin connection was not a coincidence. Charlie followed his half-brother Sydney into the troupe in 1908, and rapidly became the company’s star, playing the lead role of the drunk. His understudy, a young man named Stanley Jefferson (better known to posterity as Stan Laurel) joined in 1910.

The troupe was so successful that Karno undertook an American tour in 1910. In an attempt to calibrate for American tastes, he replaced “Mumming Birds” with  “the Wow Wows”, a sketch especially conceived for Yanks, about secret societies (which were then very much in vogue among the Booboise), but the bit didn’t resonate.  They switched back to “Mumming Birds”, renamed “A Night in an English Music Hall” for the sake of American audiences. They started out with six weeks on the Percy Williams circuit, then did 20 weeks with Sullivan and Considine.

Karno’s salaries were pitifully small; actors stayed with him for the prestige. In their line, Karno’s comedians were known to be the best. Karno drilled his company for several hours a day for months on end, demanding that all of his actors have total command of their bodies, much as a ballet dancer or classical musician must be absolutely tops in his craft. Every actor had to be able to play every part in the show, so that any could substitute for any other in the event of an emergency. Apart from his natural talent and grace, Chaplin owed his superiority as a slapstick film clown (with Keaton his only serious rival) to his training with Karno. Chaplin also appropriated many Karno gags and situations for his films. The 1915 Essanay short A Night in the Show is essentially Chaplin’s drunken turn from “A Night in an English Music Hall.” Laurel, though not Chaplin’s equal, brought with him an indefatigable work ethic, and the technique that allowed him to always discover the funniest possible “take” for any given moment. From Karno both Chaplin and Laurel took the practice of injecting a touch of pathos into their comedy. These two most famous Karno alum went on to have nearly opposite experiences of show business success after they left the nest. The troupe itself did not long survive their departure.

Don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Stars of Vaudeville # 638: The Roma Brothers

“Trio”, Walt Kuhn, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center Collection

The Roma Brothers were an acrobalance act, who seem to have been active at least from 1924 until 1937, when they posed for painter Walt Kuhn for the painting above. They seem to have been most active in the second half of the 1920s — I see references to them having played vaudeville houses in Pittsburgh, Troy, Schenecady, and Salt Lake City during that time. The act was called “A Study in Bronze”. Covered in bronze make-up so as to resemble statues, the brothers went through a series of poses and hand balancing positions which appears to have been novel in the 20s, though its common enough today. (Most of the reviewers remark upon as though they had no seen such a thing before, which leads me to think that they are the originators of the gimmick).

To find out more about the variety arts past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Carrie Swain, Pioneering Female Acrobat and Actor/Manager

A post in celebration of Women’s History Month.

Wowsa! This one’s a labor of love, one of the few posts on this site that’s nearly all primary research. That’s of necessity; there ain’t nothin’ on her by way of an online article — ’til now!  I’ve managed to assemble her story, mostly from references in digitized newspapers. I think it’s fairly accurate.

Vaudeville encyclopediast Anthony Slide lists  Carrie Swain as one of the first female acrobats in variety. She was that indeed, but she was much more. She was also one of the first women in the country to have her own theatre company. She tumbled, yes, but as a kind of enhancement of her performances as an actress. She was also what they called back then a “Protean Actress” (another euphemism for Principal Boy, or male drag.) She also performed in blackface, sang (reportedly with a rough sort of belt) and danced. She also became a millionaire. The story gets even wilder, and you can imagine the thrill of putting it together piece by piece.

Born in Baden Baden, Germany in 1863, Caroline Wisler moved to Philadelphia with her family when she was very young. At age 9 her father died, and her step-mother brought her to San Francisco, where only a few months later she was cast in a production of Coriolanus. Her career upon the stage proceeded from there. By 1882 she was back in Philly, where a young Eddie Foy joined the company run by herself and her new husband Sam Swain. Somewhere in there, she and Swain split up and Carrie began touring with her own company, playing in cities like Philly, New York and the towns of New England. The company’s repertoire included shows called Jack-in-the-Box; Cad, the Tom Boy (in which she played the title character); and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in which she was Topsy. As we have said, SOMERSAULTS were said to have been the key to all these performances. In Carrie’s own words, “I been gymnastisizin’ ever since I can remember”. Now, that’s the kind of acting I like to see.

Somewhere long about 1887 in London she hooked up with a gentleman (I use the term loosely) named Frank Gardner, who became her manager and (apparently) common-law husband. (More on that in a bit). Gardner seems to have abandoned an existing wife and children and run off with Carrie to Australia — where they made a fortune, first with a smash hit tour of Australia and New Zealand, and then by investing in mines, which made them millionaires.

By 1903, they had had been living in Paris for some time and separated. Gardner had told her that he was still married to the first wife and that prosecution for bigamy was a possibility. She obligingly returned to San Francisco for a time (with 32 trunks, the local paper breathlessly reported), only to learn that Gardner’s real motive was to shack up with a third “wife”. (Fortunately, Carrie’s share of the millions was in her own name).  By the following year, Gardner had gone bankrupt, thanks to several shady investment schemes, some of which seem to have been race horses. In 1905 they were all in court in Paris, trying to sort out this whole “three wives” mess, and who owed whom what money.

At any rate, RootsWeb has Carrie dying in Paris in 1944. I’d like to blame it on Vichy or the Nazis or something, but the woman was 81, so it was probably natural. I have not learned how she spent her last four decades, although people who have millions of dollars have been known to do very little for even longer periods of time.

To find out more about the variety arts past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Stars of Vaudeville #624: H.B. Marinelli

H.B. Marinelli (1864-1924) was one of a multigenerational family of performing contortionists (He was born in Germany, although the family is plainly Italian). He took to the stage himself at age seven, billed as “The Boneless Wonder.” The contortionist move called the Marinelli Bend continues to bear his name. In 1898, after years of success in American vaudeville he opened his own theatrical booking agency, which soon became one of the most important international operations of his kind in the world. Among the major acts Marinelli handled were Sir Harry Lauder, Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, Gaby Deslys, and Rastelli the Juggler. He represented the performers during the 2nd White Rats strike and sued the managers under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (he eventually lost).

To find out more about the variety arts past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Stars of Vaudeville #620: The Hanlon Brothers

Among the most influential figures in circus and variety history were the Hanlon Brothers, an English troupe whose nucleus originally consisted of six acrobatic siblings. Three of them had started as tumblers in their childhood, apprenticed to one “Professor” John Lees. As such they made their performing debut in 1847. (For this reason, the troupe is sometimes referred to as the Hanlon-Lees). In time, the act would include three more brothers plus various others, and would add the then-new spectacle of aerial acrobatics (i.e., trapeze), which they called by the catchy name “zampillaërostation”.

In 1878, at the urging of one of their members, a French juggler named Henri Agoust, the brothers began to present original pantomimes that enlarged upon the tradition of startling stage effects (trap doors and the like) by incorporating the Hanlons’ acrobatic abilities. Their original spectacles were a sui generis; they rapidly deviated from the usual commedia cast of characters, but continued to be referred to as pantomimes for lack of a better term. Various incarnations of the troupe performed these full length stage shows in England, France and America through 1911, after which they played stripped-down excerpts in American vaudeville, and some iteration of the troupe was playing in Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus as late as 1945. The Hanlons were extremely influential; numerous other comedy-acrobatic acts adapted their surprising techniques. Echoes of their work would make it to the silver screen most markedly in the work of Buster Keaton, many of whose gags, such as the balancing ladder stunt in Cops (1922) and the leap through a window with a quick-change of costume in mid-air from Sherlock, Jr. (1924) were lifted whole-cloth from the Hanlons.

For more information on the history of silent and slapstick comedy past present and future, see Chain of Fools:  Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube available at Bear Manor Media, and also through Amazon.com and wherever nutty books are sold.

And to find out more about the variety arts past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold. 

 

The Surprising Family History of Ida Lupino

Today is the birthday of Ida Lupino (1918-1995). Most people know her strictly as a beautiful English-American noir dame, and as one of America’s first female film directors.  What is less commonly known about her is that she came from a long line of English music hall acrobat-comedians, stretching all the way back to the 18th century. Her father, Stanley was also in the music hall, as were her uncles Lupino Lane and Wallace Lane (who also became silent movie comedy stars). Following their advice, she too went into into the family line, but taking a slightly different route, studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and becoming a “legit” star of stage and screen starting in the early 30s. Her last film was My Boys are Good Boys (1978) with Lloyd Nolan and Ralph Meeker.

There’s more about the Lupinos in my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube due out in just a few weeks!

Now here’s Ida making a cameo on I Love Lucy (as so many stars did when Lucy jumped the shark and “went to Hollywood”):

 

 

 

To find out more about the variety arts past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold. And don’t miss Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, to be released by Bear Manor Media in 2013.