Today is the birthday of Jimmy Aubrey (1887–1983).
The son of an American-born gymnast, Aubrey was born and raised in Lancashire, England. He got his start in music hall with Karno’s Speechless Comedians, where he worked with Syd and Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel and many of the other physical comedians we have written about in these annals. He jumped ship in 1908 during an American tour, as Chaplin, Laurel and many others would later do. For several years he worked primarily in American vaudeville, and then in 1914 began to make comedy films. From 1914 through 1916 he starred as “Heinie” in a series of Starlight Comedies for the independent Mittenthal Film Company. Starting in 1916 he worked at Vitagraph with the likes of Hughie Mack, Larry Semon and Oliver Hardy. From 1919 through 1925 he starred in his own silent comedy shorts for a variety of studios with his trademark “double brush” mustache. Starting in the late 20’s he worked mostly as a comical supporting or bit player, working in hundreds of movies through 1953. He worked in every genre of film, and many of the films are classics (read the IMDB list here). About a quarter of his sound era work was in B movie westerns. Read a wonderful article about that work here.
To learn more about comedy film history don’t miss my 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. For still more on show biz history, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
(Travalanche) 