Silent type

Long before The Artist won Best Picture, Harry Langdon was making his mark on the silver screen

Guest post by Imogen Reed

Think about the era of silent comedy. 

Who are the names that immediately spring to mind? Chaplin? Keaton? Lloyd? Laurel and Hardy? Of course. 

What about Harry Langdon?

Often forgotten and wrongly left off this list of illustrious performers, Langdon was a skilled and adept performer – more than capable of holding his own in slapstick film roles whilst maintaining a “sad clown” image that could turn a celluloid moment around and melt your heart.

Born in Iowa in 1884, Langdon didn’t have the impoverished upbringing of Chaplin – he was the son of a painter and decorator who managed to maintain a very large family, he was lucky in that he never had to rely on handouts or special offers from the stores in his town. But he did have the insatiable love of performing and theatre right from the get-go. He would (much to the chagrin of his mother) enter amateur dramatic competitions in local theatres, for which he won numerous prizes. No matter how hard his parents tried to steer him away from this path, he kept creeping back to it.

Finally in his early teens he ran away to join the rather wonderfully named “Dr Belcher’s Kickapoo Indian Medicine Show”, but soon returned, with the acting bug still firmly in his grasp. This was what he wanted to do; this was the journey he was destined for.  So he did what many of the silent greats did: He carved out a little niche for himself in vaudeville. Performing with his first wife, Rose, Langdon honed an incredibly successful act which the couple toured with for many years – they worked both together and as solo artistes in their own right to great acclaim.

In terms of his film career, Langdon was by the standards of the time a latecomer to the medium, only making his first films in 1923 in a series of short two reelers, working for Sol Lesser under the direction of Alf Goulding. Eventually signing up with the legendary Mack Sennett later that year the initial films he made were possibly not suited to the skills he had gained through years in the theatre and touring. See this clip from Picking Peaches.) In 1924 he really made his mark with a short film entitled The Luck O’ The Foolish, and from this film onwards he managed to find his footing as  a loveably naïve, childlike character – someone who was imbued with the grace of Chaplin, the Keaton gift of perfect slapstick and Lloyd’s head for heights and stunts. 

Most artists eventually left the control of Mack Sennett – and Langdon was no different. He wanted to make the move away from two reelers into longer, more expressive films with more of a concerted storyline. This he did, in 1926 with probably one of his more famous outings Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, in which he gets to showcase all of his talents. It’s a delightful little story, in which he falls in love with a local girl called Betty – and ends up mistakenly entered into a cross-country walking contest. The film sets up some lovely little moments of slapstick – in particular, the one showcased in the clip above in which he is on the edge of a precipice hanging onto a fence panel. His face, so expressive and so childlike, is a study in exactly how silent films should be acted. Comic perfection.

Landgon made two other really notable pictures, The Strong Man and The Long Pants. But he was now in a difficult working relationship with Frank Capra, and the films he made with Capra, while good, were often over-produced and over budget. Langdon was unhappy with these problems and became a victim of them when Capra was fired over Long Pants. Langdon moved on.

In 1929 Langdon made the move to the studios of Hal Roach (most famous for his work with Laurel and Hardy). The talkie era proved a frightening time for many actors and actresses who were worried that acting styles would have to change and also more pressingly whether their voices would actually be recordable. The added challenge of having a microphone placed in your line of view (or sometimes directly over the top of your head) meant restricted movement and sometimes stilted conversation. Langdon’s voice was described as “falsetto,” the result of poor treatment for an illness he’d suffered as a child. Although he took on many small roles for Hal Roach and continued to work in the movies for a good few years after silents became extinct, he never reached the heights he had done in the times of his slapstick heyday. In this clip from one of his films Tied For Life, released in 1933, you can see how his style altered with the advent of microphone technology. It was more or less the end of his career.

Langdon died in 1944.  He was just 60 years old. His contemporaries, Keaton, Lloyd and Chaplin all lived into the 1960s and 1970s (long enough to see their work revered and relived in all its glory, and to enjoy a second chance at fame). Langdon did not. Of course, the three aforementioned gentlemen deserve every bit of the reverence; their work is unsurpassed in its brilliance.  It’s just unfair that the work of Harry Langdon has never had the proper revival it needed.  His childlike insouciance, babyish features and impish little smile fitted into a niche that other actors couldn’t match. It’s time this wonderful actor and performer was given the recognition and merit he requires.

(Transatlantic) travels with Charlie

In which we see the Tramp get dated

The Felix Chronicles, # 17

The Immigrant (1917), a short film starring Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp, has just ended. I eject the DVD and turn on the lights. "So what did you think?" I ask the room of squinting students.

"Oh it was great," Alec says."

"Well, what did you like about it?"

Mark jumps in. "I loved the bit about the fish," he says. "When you first see Charlie Chaplin on the boat coming to America, it looks like he's retching, which is funny enough. And then you see him come in with that fish. Which then proceeds to almost bite the other immigrant's nose off."

"I liked the way he ran circles around that waiter," Joey says. "Great slapstick."

"That's the thing, though," Kim says, more reflectively than Joey, Mark, or Alec."It was all so carefully put together. It was like when the boat was rocking -- or looked like it was rocking. That was really him looking tippy, wasn't it?"

"That's right. He created the illusion of rocking through his movement. Chaplin didn't so much act as he did choreograph his humor. Actually, he did it all -- writing, performing, editing, the whole nine yards. It was really all very complicated."

"He would shoot tons of footage," Sam says. He's a film buff who did his research essay on John Ford westerns. "I'd never seen this one. I love Modern Times."

"Well that came a good deal later," I say. "But you're right about his perfectionism. But even by this point, Chaplin had enough clout in the movie business to do things his own way."

"That's the thing," Kim says. "We talked yesterday about how early movies were just a few minutes long, and were like these little novelties. You know, the rushing train, that kind of thing. But he's really telling a story here. I mean there's the whole immigration thing. Plus it's a love story of the kind we see all the time now."

"Yeah, well, as love stories go, it's not exactly Titanic," Susan observes.

"It can't be," Kim replies. "It's a silent movie. Still, he manages to get the idea across."

"Actually, you make an important point, Kim. You're right that a lot of early movies were sensational -- it was, in effect, the special effects that brought people to them. But the real novelty here is that Chaplin is depicting the kind of experience that a lot of people actually had lived. You know how it is, you're watching a movie and you suddenly say to yourself 'Look! There's Union Square Park! I've been there!' Or 'I love that hotel!'" I see a clutch of nodding heads. "But can you imagine what it must have been like for these immigrants to see their experience represented up there on a screen? The very ordinariness of it must have been thrilling. Even the cliched plot."

"I like the way that Chaplin kinda symbolizes the little guy," Tom observes.

"Absolutely. You know, there's one other thing I realized from watching this movie again," I say. "Remember yesterday when I noted that film is great for immigrants because it's silent? I backtracked a bit because Sam pointed out that there were title cards, as we saw today. But it occurred to me as we did that going to the movies might well have been a way for some immigrants to begin to learn English. They might see a word or phrase on the screen, followed by an image and say "Aha! So that pesce he's holding is called the 'fish.'"

I'm about to go on when I see that Ellen has a sour look on her face. "What is it, Ellen? You don't like fish?"

"No, I love fish," she says. "I'm sorry, but I just don't get it. I found this movie incredibly boring."

"Can you tell me why?"

"Well it was all so predictable. I mean, the love story was so lame. And the humor just didn't seem that funny to me. It's like he made every gesture a few times."

"That's because he had to!" Sam says. "Don't you see? It was part of the rhythm of the film!"

"I understand that," Ellen replies, condescending to Sam's condescension. "I just didn't find it that funny, that's all. It was so slow."

Susan comes to her aid. "I have to agree with Ellen," she says. "I mean, I understand this is great art for its time, that it's an important piece of history and all that, but that doesn't mean I love to watch it."

"It's like beer," Alec says. Tastes bad the first time you try it, but then you get the hang of it." Lots of laughter at that.

"Alec's got a point," I say, pausing, with some ongoing chuckles at the suggestion I'm endorsing his point about alcohol consumption. "But so do Ellen and Susan. Nobody has to love Charlie Chaplin. And while lots and lots of people did in 1917, that doesn't mean everybody did back then, either. Joey called it slapstick, which is basically right, though I think of Chaplin as far more balletic than, say, Jim Carrey" (some smiles at the thought)."I love slapstick. My wife hates it. I suspect it might be a boy thing to some degree -- there's always an undercurrent of violence in seeing someone get whacked with a 2 X 4."

"Exactly," Susan says.

"But I also want to point out that Susan and Ellen's reaction is itself a kind of historical artifact. I think of it as a kind of post-MTV thing." I see a couple quizzical looks. "I can remember a time when sound bites on the evening news would run on for like thirty whole seconds," I say. "That's an eternity now. It's all snippets. Ever since the eighties, the whole Miami Vice thing" -- I realize these kids have no idea what I'm talking about. "Anyway, we have a different sensibility about these things."

"Well, I still loved it," Alec says. "People always talk about Charlie Chaplin. Now I see why."

"The man was a genius," Sam agrees.

"Well, it is a remarkable thing when a work of art from a hundred years ago still has the power to move some of the people some of the time," I aver. "Kind of miraculous, really. Whether we like it or not, so much of what we do is ephemeral, so when something really seems to both embody and transcend a moment, it is kind of special."

"What does 'ephemeral' mean?" Lisa asks.

"Temporary," I say, looking at the clock. "Like high school."