Continuing happily in the silent film comedy world after spotlighting great movie comediennes for September 10th's post, today we tip a top hat worn by Ford Sterling to Ben Turpin, the wall-eyed star of Essanay, Vogue, Weiss Brothers/Artclass and Mack Sennett comedies, born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on September 19, 1869.
While there are lots of comedians and comediennes in silent films and early talkies who get this writer ROFL, one who sends this classic movie fan there easily, only every time. . . is the one, the only, the hilarious comic and acrobat Ben Turpin, the guy who reputedly had his crossed eyes insured with Lloyd's Of London to make sure that they would NOT uncross!
First and foremost, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are big fans of both Ben and Steve Rydzewski's book For Art's Sake: The Biography And Filmography Of Ben Turpin. This book is the last word of the wonderful goofball comic's life and times, from vaudeville to his last film, Laurel & Hardy's feature Saps At Sea (1940).
What cracks me up about Ben is the same thing that gets me laughing out loud about Snub Pollard: that mixture of a bemused and nonplussed persona with unabashed over-the-top slapstick.
Today's corncucopia of comedy clips spotlights Ben Turpin, the janitor and jack-of-all-trades at the Essanay Studios in Chicago who became the first star of American comedy films in 1907. He plays quite the roustabout rake in Mr. Flip (1909) and deservedly receives a pie in the face for his behavior.
Contemporaneous with the European comics Andre "Foolshead" Deed, Max Linder and Marcel Perez, Ben preceded Vitagraph's John Bunny, as well as Keystone's Mack Sennett, Ford Sterling and Fred Mace as a U.S. movie comedy headliner.
The following compendium of clips featuring Ben Turpin look to this writer like a segment from The Golden Age Of Comedy, one of the Robert Youngson feature-length compilations of excerpts from Mack Sennett and Hal Roach comedies.
When Charlie Chaplin left Keystone and signed with Essanay as a "free agent," Ben teamed up with Charlie for two films, with delightful results.
It's fantastic to see these two great movie comedians together!
Ben is among the excellent comedy players in Essanay's successful Snakeville series, starring Augustus "Alkali Ike" Carney, Victor Potel, Margaret Joslin and Harry Todd - and produced by G.M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson. Silent film expert, historian and author Sam Gill elaborates:
VERSUS SLEDGE HAMMERS is one of the highly entertaining surviving entries of the Snakeville series.
After Essanay, Ben co-starred in short subjects for Vogue Comedies with his Keystone co-star, stock company member and former circus clown Rube Miller (1886-1927), who also directed the series. Rube is remembered today for directing and co-starring with Alice Howell and triple-jointed Al St. John in the wonderfully way-out 1914 Keystone Comedy SHOT IN THE EXCITEMENT.
In 1917, Turpin was hired by Mack Sennett, where he would star for just short of a decade. At Sennett, Turpin's character was gallant yet unorthodox and pixilated, likable, plucky, ever-nonplussed and weirdly endearing.
.In tribute, we're posting a bunch of Ben Turpin Sennett comedy classics, starting with this excerpt from A CLEVER DUMMY.
LOVE & DOUGHNUTS is one of our favorite Turpin comedies.
Here is an excerpt from one of the funnier Turpin Sennetts, TEN DOLLARS OR TEN DAYS.
Turpin, whose vaudeville career as Happy Hooligan began in the nineteeth century, did slapstick through the 1920's. Yes, Ben's starring role in classic The Stunt Man notwithstanding, there are stunt doubles - but not anywhere near as often as seen in the films of such contemporary comedy kings as Larry Semon.
In these Sennett films, a good number of the somersaults, pratfalls and other physical comedy bits were done by Ben, who was in his mid to late fifties at the time! Gotta love Ben Turpin the action star in Yukon Jake!
At the Mack Sennett Studio, Ben co-starred with several of the very good comediennes on the lot.
Madeline Hurlock and Thelma Hill are both in THE PRODIGAL BRIDEGROOM (1926).
Turpin's earnest sendups of silent movie mega-stars can be both highly absurd and oddly heroic. Particularly riotously funny: the series for Mack Sennett in which Ben played romantic mega-star Rodney St. Clair!
Would FOOLISH WIVES have been a better movie with Ben starring instead of Erich von Stroheim? Maybe. . .
In particular, those Sennett comedies starring Ben as "the great lover" are a scream!
Ben finished his stretch as a star of silent comedy films with a series of short subjects produced by the Weiss Brothers/Artclass, a studio that cranked out low budget comedies and westerns which were often surprisingly good. They can be seen on the Weiss O' Rama DVD. Ben, nearly 60 years of age, performs slapstick and somersaults as if he's 30 years younger.
Ben Turpin would continue into talkies, beginning with an appearance in one of Louis Lewyn's The Voice Of Hollywood series.
Ben has small roles and cameo appearances in a bunch of 1930's feature films, including Cracked Nuts (1931), a frequently uproarious Wheeler & Woolsey flick from RKO Radio Pictures.
Expanding his reach into westerns, Ben Turpin co-starred with none other than Rex, the King of the Wild Horses in the Mascot Pictures western serial The Law Of The Wild (1934).
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As comic relief, Ben transitioned into westerns quite well in The Law Of The Wild, and also continued appearing in comedy short subjects and features.
The 1930's included several attempts by short subject producers (including Sennett) to bring back the silent era slapstick approach of yore, with Jules White's Columbia Shorts Department proving by far the most successful.
Paramount Pictures distributed a series of 2-reelers produced by Phil L. Ryan in 1930-1932 and starring ex-Sennett and Chaplin players Chester Conklin and Mack Swain. In LIGHTHOUSE LOVE, Ben co-stars with fellow goofy comic Arthur Stone, early 1930's Mack Sennett stock company member and periodic star of Hal Roach Studio's Taxi Boys comedies Franklin Pangborn,and the patented "big dumb lug" from the 1931 Marx Brothers' classic MONKEY BUSINESS, Tom Kennedy.
Another is Ralph Staub's Vitaphone 2-reeler KEYSTONE HOTEL (1935), which constitutes something of a last hurrah for the 1920's Mack Sennett Comedies gang, including Ford Sterling, Ben Turpin and Marie Prevost, with Keystone Comedies and Charlie Chaplin Productions favorites Hank Mann and Chester Conklin. Billy Bevan and Al St John must have not been available!
There are memorable Ben Turpin cameos in such feature films as the Wheeler & Woolsey comedy Cracked Nuts and the absurdist Million Dollar Legs.
Improbably, Ben works in the mythical land of Klopstokia as a spy!
At Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we especially love Turpin's cameo that closes the great Laurel & Hardy short Our Wife. It is a clever twist ending to a classic L&H 2-reeler which co-stars the talented and very funny Babe London as Ollie's fiancée.
Ben is among a slew of silent film comedians who appear in the 1939 Alice Faye vehicle Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), one of several features which attempts to look back nostalgically on the slapstick of 20 years earlier (note: very oddly, the one guy who actually didn't do slapstick per se, Buster Keaton, leads the plethora of comedians in this Fox movie). Ben has a cameo with the ubiquitous Chester Conklin. It's Ben's second-to-last film.
Alas, this number of clips is finite and must end - in this case with Ben's final silver screen appearance, in the 1940 L&H feature SAPS AT SEA.
There is no greater tribute to a comedian than to be caricatured in an animated cartoon. Ben is caricatured in a slew of classic cartoons, first in Otto Messmer's 1923 opus Felix In Hollywood.
Closing today's tribute to Ben Turpin, shall note his appearance - along with fellow Sennett stars Ford Sterling, Mack Swain, Harry Langdon and Chester Conklin, in the Hollywood star caricature-packed 1933 cartoon Mickey's Gala Premier (note: it is on Mickey Mouse In Black & White volume 1, used copies of which can still be found periodically on eBay).
In the Acknowledgements department, a big time assist for many of the video clips in this Ben Turpin tribute goes to the outstanding Reel Comedies YouTube channel, a treasure trove of silent comedy goodness; thanks a million to Dave Glass and the late silent movie historian David Wyatt).
And, in addition, there are the usual suspects. . .the Trav S.D. article Ben Turpin: Cross-Eyed Comedy Star from Travalanche and a piece from Matthew Ross' The Lost Laugh Seven Improbable Facts About Silent Films’ Most Improbable Star. I'm certain that, in addition to The Silent Comedy Watch Party's Steve Massa's two Lame Brains & Lunatics books, there's material on Ben Turpin's movie career by Richard M. Roberts, curator of the Weiss O' Rama DVD set, writer of Smileage Guaranteed and one of the individuals who has seen more vintage comedies than I have.
