Guest Post: Ben Robinson Reviews the Marcel Perez Collection

[post 397]

The Return of Marcel Perez!
The DVD and Companion book
Ben Model / Steve Massa
reviewed by Ben Robinson
(Full Disclosure: I was one of the 150+ Kickstarter backers who contributed to the production of this work. The producers did not ask for my endorsement. —BR)

In 1968, the phone did not stop ringing at the New York City booking agency CTA. A twenty-year-old agent and co-founder of the booming business, Marty Hoberman (1949—1999) sat back completely satisfied. Many of his acts were touring nightclubs and performing in rock concerts. Each day the mail brought stacks of checks. Jim Morrison of The Doors had just been cited for contempt of court, and public indecency, and while The Doors management tore their hair out because of the recalcitrance of the lead singer, well-paying offers for The Doors did not slow down to Hoberman’s small agency. Hoberman had booked The Doors into the Miami concert where Morrison allegedly exposed himself to the audience.

Truth told, there were only three full-time employees that showed up for work around noon. Yet, the building foyer index noted at least ten different departments and as many as fifty agents in the company!

An act showed up in the later days of the agency complaining they’d not been paid for a date played six weeks earlier. Marty Hoberman tried to pay respect to the angry magician calling, listening politely as the act railed, “Why is it that I can book myself nationally, on TV, in films and you can’t even get me the lousy $400 you owe me for Westchester Community College?”

 When the breathless artist slowed his rant, the prescient agent offered:
“Sweetheart—yeah, you’re right. The check is in the process. No excuses. But, you don’t seem to realize one strong rule of show biz: If you worked under different names, offered different acts, you’d be working nightly instead of this weekend crap, and you wouldn’t be so hard up for the lousy four-hundred. You want to book yourself? Go ahead. But you better use a different name. No one who writes checks pays artists directly. It don’t happen.” Marcel Perez and his astonishingly prolific career is testament to what we might now call Marty’s Rule #1.

Perez disguising himself as garbage in Camouflage (1918)

Courtesy Undercrank Prods/Library of Congress

Marcel Perez, who author Steve Massa in his book Marcel Perez—The International Mirth Maker, calls “the greatest silent film clown you’ve never heard of,” worked under at least a half-dozen professional names:  Tweedledum, Marcel Fabre, Robinet, Fernando Perez, Tweedy, Bungels, and  Twede-Dan. He was an international star in the years between 1900 and his death in 1928.

In 1912 he made an astonishing 35 films that we know of. It is estimated by film historians Ben Model and Steve Massa, the producers of this wonderful DVD, that this great clown may have made over 200 movies, long and short. In 2015, Perez re-emerges as a force of nature largely because of Messrs. Model and Massa’s seeming archeological dig to find Perez’s films in France, Italy, the Netherlands and the massive 1.1 million films held by the Library of Congress. Both the Library of Congress and the EYE Filmmuseum of the Netherlands contributed 35mm and 16mm prints. Digitally remastered for global consumption, these charming short films are a spectacular follow-up to the Model–Massa 2014 release, The Mishaps of Musty Suffer (also available from Undercrank Productions on Amazon.com).

Perez attempts to be a good Samaritan in Sweet Daddy (1921)

Courtesy Undercrank Prods/Library of Congress

 So, what do you get when you lay down your $$ on Amazon for both book and DVD?

Undercrank Productions has provided another first-rate edition to their expanding catalog of lovingly restored silent clown series. Perez is featured in five films made in the US, and another five made in Torino, Italy. Working under so many different names probably led to his productivity, as the production schedules noted and the many companies he worked for are staggering. Yet, having shed one clown skin for another seems to have worked well for this man who spoke many languages —with the exception of English! No matter: the language of silent film comedy and title cards changed to what language was needed, which was all that mattered to audiences who reveled in his films released in the first quarter of the 20th century.

In this DVD he appears first in a 1911 short titled Robinet’s White Suit. Any clown aficionado will immediately know that when a clown wears a white suit what is likely to ensue. Nevertheless, the invention of the dirtying of the suit is hilarious and not sentimentally inspired. What struck this writer immediately were his physical moves. Given what we know of George M. Cohan and his pigeon-toed arched dance moves…we can now wonder who came first; Cohan or Perez. A later reference will take clown scholars by surprise. Whirls, kicks and spins reminiscent of the great George Carl.

A lovely time-capsule bonus of these ten shorts, with new scores played by maestro Model, is seeing Torino, Italy from 100 years ago. Other locations all over Europe and the U.S. (Jacksonville, FL for instance) are also seen, and this gives us a touch of what the Lumière brothers had intended with their invention — “to bring the world to the world.”

In our fast-changing internet-driven society, the expectant viewer rushing to the cinema to see the latest “whirl” by Musty Suffer or the hyper-kinetic chases and daring acrobatics of Marcel Perez are given a shot of worldly adrenalin; the action is non-stop, we see another time, another world, and delight in the fashions, and the unchanging simplicity of what makes us laugh. The DVD provides a solid 2 hours of truly “otherworldly” entertainment. Largely the film world of Perez pre-dates the first World War.

While Perez is the focus and locus of Mr. Massa and Mr. Model’s Sherlockian dig into film history, the detective story to uncover who Perez was, what his real name was, and the facts of his sad demise are equally fascinating to film students and physical comedy fans.

Just as it seems that every magician who has the money to advertise in public is eventually compared to Houdini, so are silent film clowns compared to Charlie Chaplin. This is natural that the best-known arbiters of stage and cinema (Houdini was also a movie star) should naturally inspire and cast a long shadow for moderns. Yet, Perez began in film about 14 years before Chaplin ever made a single frame; hardly any of the films made in France 1900-10 survive. The comparisons between the two are, as Shakespeare glowered, “odious.”

No comparisons needed. All one needs to do is plunk down their coin (to adopt a phrase of the Perez period) and enjoy.

The DVD is very well authored and attractively produced. The companion book is chock full of well-produced production stills that support the tragic story of this clown who was written about as dying in 1928, “alone and ignored.”

“Laughing on the outside, and crying on the inside” is the cliché applied to many who use stage theatrics to make us guffaw. In the case of this internationally loved clown who wrought impossibly amazing gags such as a car driving over him (with no discernible switch to a dummy), his birth (possibly) in 1885, and assuredly his death in 1928, is as close as we come to the poetic appellation of the clown’s inside driving force.  An amputated leg because of a cancerous tumor wrought the beginning of his end. He directed, he produced; he made audiences howl and swell with glee. Yet, today and shortly after his demise, with the rampaging advent of sound entering films in 1927, Perez and a great body of his work seems to have frittered away to the sands of time.

However, like a great phoenix rising, Perez is lovingly brought back to life by both the book and DVD offered by Undercrank Productions. It’s worth every penny, and more. Can a price be put on delightful surprise in the fragile 21st century?

LINKS
• The Marcel Perez Collection DVD available here from Amazon.
• The book Marcel Perez, The International Mirth Maker by Steve Massa available here from Amazon.
• A Perez web site
• An article about the date of his death

"Meet Musty Suffer" — Guest Post by Ben Robinson

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THE MISHAPS OF MUSTY SUFFER
Starring Harry Watson Jr.

Produced for video by Ben Model
Films preserved by the Library of Congress
Released April 22, 2014 by Undercrank Productions
Ben Model & Steve Massa, curators
Piano scores written and played by Ben Model
Companion booklet by Steve Massa

Originally produced by George Kleine, March 1916 – June 1917
Eight short films from the twenty-four surviving films in the Library of Congress collection
117 min. 


Reviewed by Ben Robinson

“You know man, she’s grotty, as in gro-tesque.”
—George Harrison, from A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, 1964.

Full disclosure: I was one of the Kickstarter backers of this project. That means nothing more than I contributed the minimum to help launch this DVD. I had only seen one film in a private showing, and then followed the rollout of the proposed Kickstarter campaign. Amazingly, the minimum was quickly reached, and $1,000 more was contributed that made possible the additional well-produced printed booklet by Steve Massa that accompanies the DVD and the future YouYube-only release of additional films that did not fit on the DVD. It’s a most welcome addition because anyone who loves silent film comedy, clowns, circus, vaudeville, performance art, avant-garde film or surrealism will inhale this DVD and booklet.

There are mostly simple plots (with riveting action and comedy):

A man applies for job as a messenger; a man in Automat feeds the machines with food to be dispensed; the Outside Inn, a hotel where there is a “thin room” for one of the stock players of this company who is all but the skinny man from the circus. There is a cabinet just the width of his cane. His hat is pinched as if someone sat on it. He seems so thin a single bed is triple the size he needs. A man dreams of love. As a result, six maidens appear in striking lingerie—fun and mishaps ensue.

Musty happens along at the exact moment another man becomes perturbed with his bellhop, played by a boy. The man picks up the boy and throws him out of a door. At that exact moment, Musty catches the boy, looks him up and down, and then discards him too with gritty abandon as well.

In the world of Musty Suffer, anything can and does happen, and it’s not always pretty—to the cognoscenti, that is the beauty of these films: they are not pretty. An oversize rolling pin is saturated with powder. When Musty hits the thief in the Automat with this rolling pin, a cloud of powder arises when the pilferer is bonked. It’s broad, fast…grotesque, but also…clean. An auto accident is so dense with triple whirling acrobatics it is no wonder these films were subtitled “Another whirl.”


UNSEEN SINCE 1916

These films have not been seen since they appeared in 1916–1917, nearly one hundred years ago. Hence, this is not only a “find,” it is the painstakingly exact work of several film historians, lab technicians and the Library of Congress, which owns these films and generously allowed Messieurs Model and Massa to penetrate their massive archives and bring out these jewels for the world to see once more.  See Musty lay horizontal in space as he is picked up by a human size pair of ice tongs. He is carted about as if he were a wastebasket.

Jewels they are!  If you love a clown who carries a bundle of material that seems too wide for the doorway he seeks to pass through, and therefore engages a saw and cuts wide slots for his cargo (as opposed to just inverting the material, as in the so-called normal world), then you’ll dig this. The dance with the mannequin with the magical surprise ending is worth the price of admission.

The DVD of this whizz bang series brings us Harry Watson Jr., star of the Ziegfeld Follies playing the irrepressible MUSTY SUFFER, whose face contorts, squashes, and explodes much in the same way we have come to appreciate from Stan Laurel or Harpo Marx’s rubber faces. Musty Suffer definitely comes under the rubric of what 19th-century clowns were sometimes called: Grotesques. He  is joined by his vaudeville and circus partner George Bickel who plays a character named Willie Work. There are also characters Dippy Mary and Inna Hurry. (Historical note: Dippy Mary is played by Alma Hanlon, daughter of George Hanlon of the famous knockabout stage extravaganzas of the Hanlon Brothers.)

It would seem impossible to separate this clown from his face, one-armed athletics, or amazing feats of metamorphosis, such as his filmic magical changes of clothing, and then one continuous shot of Mr. Watson, as Musty, deftly engaging us with a genuine “quick-change” act done in almost real time (save for snip edits).  His dream sequence where he has dreamt of being hit in the head with an axe is frightening, deft and clever.

The opening shot gives us Musty drinking the drippings of a tail pipe in a tin cup. When he placed the tin cup beneath the parked car, I wondered silently, “What’s he’s going to do with that?” When he drank what the cup caught, I nearly fell out of my seat. Clearly the authors and curators of this DVD chose to introduce Musty to us with a sock right in the kisser of comedy. His other trademark —opposite his rough physicality—is his spritely magic. In one scene he changes clothing quickly and amazingly by having a barrel pass over him once.

Musty sometimes breaks into a small dance. In this tiny dance, where the legs cross and the arms flail with abandon, he only moves a mere two inches with all of the movement. It takes but a few seconds and he doesn’t really go anywhere. Yet the dance is expressive and funny. His little dance is currently seen in the repertoire of Bello Nock on B’way and in the huge avant-garde theatre extravaganza of RAOUL by James Thierree (as seen at The Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY).


HARRY WATSON JR. & MUSTY SUFFER 

Harry Watson Jr. was a major star in American vaudeville beginning in the early 1900s. He and his partner George Bickel led the laughs in the Ziegfeld Follies season after season. It was rough work by performers doing as many as fourteen shows a week of very precise physical comedy, because in their act one could get hit in the face easily during their laugh-filled boxing act, which is seen in the Extras of this retrospective.

Musty Suffer is a broad character. In press, he is referred to as a “clown.” Given the broad world of the clown (“An orangutan who can do the impossible” in one definition), the ensuing “clown logic” or flat-out chaos is the definition of “rough and tumble.” This is very rough slapstick, with a nod to 19th- century French cinema, where plates walk up walls like a row of ants seeking their nest. Stop-motion action is highly complemented by Musty chasing a car to hop a free ride, only to be violently dumped (and feeling still not a care in the world).


THE DVD EXTRAS

There are portraits of Harry Watson Jr. in his prime with Ziegfeld Follies, with George Bickel, and it ends with loving, color snapshots of Mr. Watson in retirement in Canada, 1960, five years before his death. He looks happy and rubber-faced as ever.

The Chicago Daily of January 1916 notes that Chaplin might have a rival in Musty Suffer. George Kleine produced a short “Capturing Chicago.” The film shows Musty winning big crowds with an outdoor serenade by him on a trombone as he is paraded through the streets in an open-air moving car. This turns out to have been during a major film exhibitor’s convention held in Chicago at the time.  Clowning can be very $eriou$ business. This was not advertising folly.

Courtesy of the good folks at The Library of Congress and the Billy Rose Theater Collection at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts (New York), we are provided a time capsule that roars forth with hard-clad evidence that while Chaplin was prodded and poked at by the press of these clowns, and businessmen, Chaplin was not to be rivaled in 1916. Even the skills of this team could not knock Chaplin off his box office pedestal. The Musty Suffer films were originally produced as a 5-reel movie that portrayed a “clown Job.” But George Kleine decided to cut them down and present them weekly as a “another whirl” with Musty.

That is fact and history. It is also now part of our collective history that those who took a shot at beating Chaplin were some mighty fine contenders. It was a skewed thought, but Harry Watson’s acrobatics, executed standing on one arm while the rest of his iron body laid on the floor made me think of Sylvester Stallone doing his one armed push ups as Rocky. It’s a valid comparison given the competitive business of film comedy in 1916.

Musty Suffer’s 30 short films were released once a week from early 1916 to the autumn of 1917. Demand was high. Crowds loved ‘em. They were shot in the Bronx, New York, in one of the boroughs of the City of New York, north of upper Manhattan (Harlem). Fortunately, the Library of Congress has preserved 24 of the Musty Suffer films, the best of which are represented on the DVD.

In 2014, humans are at the point of “saving” films, not necessarily making them look all shiny, new and clear as the Chaplin Archive (Bolonga, Italy) has so beautifully done with such a film as Chaplin’s PAYDAY (1923).

Buy on Amazon right here. And if you like it, give it a review and a whole bunch of stars!

Guest Post: "Circus Oz at the McCarter Theatre" by Ben Robinson

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We live in an age of accomplishment, of bigger, better, and the only. Circus and humor are hardly immune to this credo of the modern age. Enter Circus Oz. What this reviewer thought was an allusion to the L. Frank Baum novel is, in actuality, a clever twist on the land from which the troupe is based, Australia. Oz stands for “Aussie,” which here becomes their own mystical land.

As the audience entered the McCarter Theatre on the gorgeous Princeton University campus on a breezy Saturday afternoon, a dome of white parachute material stood alone on stage greeting all, as mysterious and stagnant as the obelisque in Kubrick’s 2001.

A few of the performers met the ticket-holders on their way into the theatre, and eventually a brass band struck up a rousing tune while the crowds smiled.

The lights dimmed, techs scampered into the inky darkness, ascending ladders on stage right and left like stealthy ninjas, and the dome lifted to reveal a compeer with an operatic range, smartly dressed in Steampunk, this side of  Gangs of New York.

When you attend any circus, the recap is almost always full of  “oh, remember when they jumped through…” and other details of the fantastic delight that is circus. In Circus Oz’s case, what is remembered more than any singular cabalistic acrobatic turn is the attitude with which the skills are displayed.

During a two-person trapeze act on one bar, the male performer is strongly jettisoned so that the cross bar lands firmly, and unmistakably, between his legs—which leads every male member of the audience to fret that happening to themselves. The often-smart mouthed zoftick emcee purrs, “You don’t see that in Cirque du Soliel.”

Tumblers tumble, singers sing, and the rola-bola daredevil went the stunt one better, drawing a rousing cheer for clever innovation. Madcap invention is the rudder to the Oz ship and they steer their circus into directions that conjure up the natural reminiscence of cinema: Mad Max, and a touch of Fritz Lang. What we see on stage, one set piece — reminding one of the Oklahoma oil dirges — and in the audience, and hear from the swinging brass band led by a drummer with deft chops, is really only second to what we imagine. This is pointed out to us by the conspirators of this wacky wonderground of high flying, nattily-dressed and randy, jaunty attitude.

Circus Oz is a delight. One circus/theatre insider mentioned to me before entering, that the second act of this 2 hour show was what he came for. Opening this second act, the entire troupe seemed to form a cyclone of activity surrounding a simple dinner table. Over 100 years ago, the Hanlon Bros. did something similar in their historic act, Voyage en Suisse.  However, as clever as the Oz troupe is with their impossible gyrations and clever spoken humor, only one large stage illusion is left over from the Hanlon’s.

Other magic is made fun of with gentle spirit, and competitions between performers have the audience rooting for both, especially in the case of the giant pole sitter who nearly comes crashing to Earth in a hilarious escapade, almost too big for this environ.

A set of candelabras become the hand props for a six-person juggling routine, a roller blade act is largely kept chained in mild gags and tumbles until the final astonishing conclusion; and no animals are endangered in this show because there aren’t any save the delightfully kooky and resilient performers, who sometimes dress as red kangaroos.

The final affect is one of magic. You leave the theatre believing, rightly in this reviewer’s opinion, that this crowd from Down Under can do anything. Whether it is ride a bicycle that is constantly being reconfigured in transit,  juggle a myriad of chapeaus among two gents, or just happen to be in the right place to have an ostrich feather magically descend from the heaven’s to land on the forehead of a clever clown.

Using a rather broad definition of clown, each performer is indeed clownish. Most talk, and all relate to one another, making this consortium of hilarity tighter, more relaxed and genuinely giving to the audience than many in the variety arts. How many times have we seen the diva take a sweeping bow for perhaps a stunt that was slightly mundane? Not so here.

Circus Oz is in fact a troupe of seemingly selfless performers who jump, dazzle and give; and keep on giving. As the audience leaves the theatre, the songstress wails mightily that she will keep singing until all have left…but the surprise was on the smiling ticket-buyers…the troupe was in the theatre lobby to sign programs, and play the occasional large brass instrument.

If you are in the mood for your standard, 4th wall-observing baggy pants impersonal grand show of 1001 wonders, Circus Oz is not your show. If however, you want to return to the precious childhood state of pure wonder, and gaze upon finely trained and conditioned champions of independent spirit who will make you laugh, shiver, and erupt in glee…see Circus Oz.



Click here for more information on Ben Robinson and to read his previous guest posts.

Guest Post: "Shared Silence" by Ben Robinson

[post 248]

Ben Robinson's decades of writing credits include the book  Magic & the Silent Clowns and a recent article for this blogopedia, Keaton the Conjuror, where you can also read more about his long and fascinating career in magic.
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Just to get into this topic, I would like to acknowledge three brothers who influenced my formative years: Felipe, Matty and Jesús Alou. They were from the Dominican Republic and they all sailed in a small craft about 110 miles in tough winds and choppy seas to North America, where they were given immunity from prosecution for “un-authorized” fleeing of their native country. They came to the U.S. and they all played professional major league baseball at the same time. In fact, Felipe managed in the majors until 2006 and his son Moisés regularly ripped the cover off the ball in an impressive career for six different teams.

Of the three, I think Matty and Jesús were the sluggers. And while no slight athlete himself, Felipe played for a time with the NY Yankees, where I first took notice of these three amazing brothers, one of whom recently departed for that great playing field in the sky.

I think we human animals like to know that family can succeed. I believe the Alou family must have been pretty proud to have three boys all making doubles and triples, catching fly balls, listening to cheering fans…and even…hitting a game-winning home run in their home stadium! They all played baseball before the so-called “steroid era.” The salaries in the Alou shining years was not the money Derek Jeter leaves as a tip.

Two generations: Moisés & Felipe Alou

Nah, the Alou brothers no doubt played baseball for one thing and one thing only — the game itself. This is dedication we admire. We notch it up in the record books and we continue to write about it.

There are other teams relatives played for too. This story really begins in a wagon show traveling the German countryside from Dornum to Essen to Brazl and then on to the periphery of Poland. The wagon master is a magician. I like to think he resembles the wagon show led by the Max Von Sydow character in Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece The Magician.

Fannie and Levi Schoenberg on
their 50th wedding anniversary.

His name is Louis, or Levi, or Ludwig, or whatever he felt like calling himself that day…but the last name was always Schoenberg. Being a magician in the 1800s in Germany wasn’t so bad if you knew of another fella also doing the same thing at this time named Alexander Herrmann and his brother Carl. By the way, the Herrmann brothers were just two of eleven children and their father was also a magician, amateur though he was. But, we digress.

Now, Levi Schoenberg’s daughter came to the US and later married a tailor named Sam Marx. They had six sons, one dying in infancy named Manfred. The second eldest son of Minnie Schoenberg and Sam Marx was named Adolph. He later formally changed his first name to Arthur. His brothers called him “ah-dee” but somehow Arthur sounded more American, maybe with a bit of pluck in it at that? (Some contend, perhaps rightly, that “Adolph” became “Ahdie” that naturally morphed into “Arty” and then became formalized as “Arthur.”)

Now, this name-changing family, a metamorphic spirit at least, had by then traveled from Dornum, Germany in 1838 to the Yorkville streets of Manhattan c.1899. The century is about to change and the older magician smokes his cigar with pride and says from the stoop of East 93rd Street, “Ach, it is goot tube E in Ah-meer—ick-a. Yah! Ha!”

He conjured for his grandson. Levi Schoenberg, somewhere in his 90’s was only too happy to school his 12-year-old grandson Arthur in sleight of hand…the magician’s tradecraft.

Flash forward.

1914: Some unremarkable vaudeville house is sending over eleven acts a day on a crusty stage, in a small town, where the locals are less than feeling sympathy for the actors and energetic comedians. Arthur Marx is backstage, maybe downstairs in a basement lit by an undependable bulb, playing five-card stud poker. Around the table are his professional gambler brother and his other brother, filling the table area with cigar smoke.

 “And here’s a card for you…Harp-o.”

 “And here’s one for you, Leo the chicken chaser, you’re Chick-o.”

“Ay you’re easy, c'mon Grouch-o, take a card!”

Speaking was a monologist named Art Fisher. Knocko the Monk was a popular comic strip of the day and Fisher was batting out cards like baseballs to cartoon players. He was tagging Arthur, Leonard, and Julius Marx with the names that would thunder across movie screens for over a billion people beginning in 1929, even though they had been the toast of Broadway for over five years already.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, meet The Marx Brothers!

In 2014, it will be a hundred years on the nose that this happened, and that thunderous noise you heard back in the Twenties when the Marx boys were cutting up stages is about to happen again…really.

If you search on that new-fangled typewriter called a computer, you will see the CGH Society. They are the ones promoting this event of the Marx Brothers getting their world-famous names. The celebration will be called a “Global Day of Laughter.” People yelling out their windows that they are “sick and tired of it and they are not going to take it anymore” will be replaced by bulbous, knockdown glee…what would happen if the planet laughed?

Now the head of this whole shebang is none other than Bill Marx, Harpo’s eldest son. To get the resumé out of the way, let’s just agree he’s a world-class musician who has done every type of music, from concert hall broadcast shows of his solo performance on piano to cult film scores like Scream, Blacula, Scream! and Count Yorga, Vampire.

Harpo & Bill Marx

Recently, I had the pleasure of Bill’s counsel during the blackest of times a writer can face — otherwise known as one’s editor. The cuts were deep, and I was bleeding red ink. Bill sent his reply. It consisted of the link you are about to watch and then we’ll talk about it, okay? Really, stick with it. Don't move. Don't answer the phone or surf the web, just spend 4:33 with it. It will make you feel something.

Now, obviously we need to establish who wrote this masterpiece, and it is none other than the legendary avant-garde composer, John Cage.

John Cage

Given the tenor of the work, it might be thought a bad gag to pull this off, but actually, there is considerable skill involved in silence. And, who better to perform this masterpiece other than a man who is a Juilliard-trained master musician who just also happens to be the son of a vaudevillian who learned to entertain the world with only silence — albeit with a few horns honking, and uproarious laughter from the audience.

Harpo Marx was not a silent performer, but he was the silent Marx Brother.

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"Harpo was much more than silent performance. It is what he did with his silence that was his performance."
— Ben Robinson

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I think as the Internet spins its international cocoon around all of us with buzzing 24-7 images and sleepless information, we need to embrace silence and study it.

Just as I said seriously the day after 9/11: Send in the clowns. The jester told the king the awful truth in King Lear;  likewise Feste in Twelfth Night — the message is clear: we ought to be listening to our fools.

I believe that which makes us laugh is that which is truthful to some. What can be more truthful than silence? Physical comedy sounds loud. But, physical comedy can also be deft, fleeting and stealthy, like the ninja. Understanding this will give one a fine appreciation of nuance and focus, unlike the broader bits that, as they used to write, “left ya chewin’.” Meaning, you were worked up by what you saw. Silence does something different. We can analyze silence in earnest, but we can’t hold it in our hand.

Can comic truth be . . .   silence?


Some Links:
Harpo Speaks!, an autobiography by Harpo Marx, with Rowland Barber
Son Of Harpo Speaks! A Family Portrait by Bill Marx
This blog's 2009 birthday tribute to Harpo Marx.
The official John Cage web site.
Ben Robinson's web site.
Purchase Magic & the Silent Clowns by Ben Robinson

Guest Post: "Keaton the Conjuror" by Ben Robinson

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Ben Robinson is both a master magician and an historian of magic, author of Twelve Have Died: Bullet Catching, The Story & Secrets and of The MagiCIAn: John Mulholland's Secret Life, as well as numerous articles for major magic publications. Just last month, Ben's decades-long research into the use of magic in silent films came to fruition with publication of his latest book, Magic and the Silent Clowns — a subject that had received scant attention until Ben's work. Concurrent with that, Ben helped curate a fascinating show at New York's Museum of the Moving Image entitled Magicians on Screen, including both a magic performance by Ben and a lecture-demo on the subject of magic and the silent clowns. In fact, Ben had first proposed the idea to the museum back in the 80s. Patience is indeed a virtue — though persistence sure helps! This blogopedia is very pleased to be able to share the first chapter from Magic & the Silent Clowns, and to be able to match Ben's enthusiastic prose with a few video clips.

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Keaton the Conjuror

Buster Keaton’s education and use of the conjurer’s illusionary techniques. 

by Ben Robinson

“Once Pop accidentally wrecked another act by tossing me into the backdrop curtain. This was the turn of Madame Herrmann, the widow of Herrmann the Great, one of the most popular magicians. She was working some of his simpler tricks. At the finish of her act she had dozens of white doves flying to her from every corner of the stage.” (My Wonderful World of Slapstick, p27)

Buster Keaton was an illusionist.

It is said that the world’s greatest illusionist, or magician, would never be truly known by the public at large. Why?  Because so great a “talent” wouldn’t need the adulation, as the prowess by which the work was deployed would be best praised by not even being seen. In the shadows of show business and art, there would lie success. In the French this is referred to as eminence grise. While Buster is certainly known, his use of illusion is at best appreciated as an auxiliary component to the gag. 

However, a deeper look into Buster’s upbringing and eventual use of his fantastic vaudeville education clearly expresses itself in his movies, some of his TV appearances and, more notably, when meeting the media. It might be assumed that the Keaton we see is an image he is in total control of. That being said, the controlled image we always saw was one of a surreal world where “magic” was part of the landscape, like air. In the famous Sid Avery photograph of Keaton, titled “What Elephant?” while Keaton looks forward, with his hand on his brow, the elephant’s trunk winds through his other arm, the pachyderm quietly standing behind the comedian.  This is a vanishing elephant only to the person closest to the king of the forest, a good metaphor for Keaton’s “magic.”

While the examples of Keaton’s legerdemain are too numerous for inclusion here, this notion may bear some examination in the following examples. 

Clearly, legend has it that Buster received his nickname from Houdini. While this may be a matter of conjecture, the legend sticks (and most vaudevillians would tell you that when it comes down to printing the myth or the truth, they yowl, “the myth, print that!”). 

That Joe Keaton and Harry Houdini (1874-1926) once appeared before the audiences of the Midwest in a tent show is certainly a fact. It is also a fact that this show, The Keaton-Houdini Medicine Show, was not a great success, and occurred years before Houdini’s triumphant success in Europe in 1900. Of his father Keaton remarks that “he was an eccentric dancer, not an acrobat, but damn near.” The same might be said of Keaton: he wasn’t a magician in the classic sense, but damn near. Like a classic magician, everything that he saw, particularly of the mechanical variety, was always filed away in his memory for future use. His summer home amidst the actor’s colony in Muskegon, Michigan was not far from a little town named Marshall, among its distinctions being the home of the very first electrified house in the US. Called Honolulu House, it doesn’t have the electric staircase (escalator) Buster later used in his movie The Electric House, but it does have many other mechanical wonders, including the sliding bathtub that switches between rooms that Buster used on celluloid. 

Backstage, Buster saw it all. He refers to utilizing some of Houdini’s tricks in his movie Sherlock Junior, and even opens Cops with a line credited to Houdini: “Love laughs at Locksmiths.” He also acknowledges a relatively little-remembered genuine Chinese vaudeville illusionist, Ching Ling Foo — whose grand feats included turning a somersault in mid-air and when he returned to a standing position, he held a bowl of goldfish that 

appeared from nowhere! 

Young Buster grew up learning that magic had to be “justified” or plausible for the introduction of an illusion. He realized in his movie-making career that “cartoon or impossible” gags (and illusions) had to be justified, like his jumping and impossibly disappearing into the briefcase held by a man (dressed as a woman) accomplice on the street (Sherlock Jr.)....

....or appearing as nine individual dancers on stage at the same time (The Playhouse)....

 ....or avoiding the tornado winds by hiding in a magician’s prop (Steamboat Bill Jr.)....

Whenever magic occurred, Keaton might have been justifying his conceit he explained as “I always want  the audience to out guess me, and then I double cross them.”

Keaton’s use of illusion was not always as a trick per se. When the house he moves across the train tracks in One Week narrowly escapes destruction by an oncoming train, another train enters the frame — and his on-screen drama — and demolishes what we only thought, seconds before, was safe. The revelation of the perceptual difference of the first train set the audience up for the wow appearance of the second train.

Similarly a magician will make a scarf appear, only to have the audience relax at that manifestation. When a dove flutters from the folds of that scarf, there comes the “topper.” Buster just played with much larger props. 

This type of drama, albeit small, is as much part of the conjurer’s lexicon as a rabbit and a hat. Magicians refer to this type of presentation as a “sucker gag.” Feigned failure, only to be consummated by winning success, or in the previous example, unexpected total destruction. 

I believe Buster was schooled in such thinking about surprise (both magic and comedy being dependent on surprise) by his vaudeville and mud show upbringing.  The magician’s technique he learned as a child pervaded his work on screen and elsewhere. On stage in France, in the late 1940s, he counseled the clowns in the Cirque Medrano how to get more out of the crowded clown car gag. Multiple large clowns (always ending with the largest of all) simply emerging from a small vehicle was impossible. Once Keaton showed them how the impossibility became surprising, then the illusion became magical, funny and even more surprising. How many times have we all seen this? And how many times have we seen the clowns emerge with beach chairs and finally a clown emerging with a full tray of food including a stuffed turkey?  These were Keaton’s touches he culled from the Hanlon Bros. performance of clowning, magic and illusion that took place in 

Europe and the US prior to 1900. 

And now for the magic that hits you as reality.  This may give you an example of Buster’s eminence grise. 

Remember the famous scene in Sherlock Junior where Buster is “shadowing” a man walking in front of him?  Now, watch as the man tosses a cigarette behind him which Buster catches, takes a drag of and then discards...or does he?  Given that Buster is the fellow who had a whole side of a building fall around him, missing him by mere inches, I think handling a lighted cigarette in flight was child’s play for him. But slow down the image and you will see a nifty piece of sleight of hand he no doubt executed on many occasions, being an inveterate cigarette smoker.

Other hand magic: in The Cameraman Buster tried to catch the fancy of the photo assignment secretary by making a quarter disappear in his hand, only to be revealed from behind his ear.

 In Steamboat Bill Jr., when attempting to have his father receive a loaf of bread in jail, Buster mimes the contents of the bread and involves another deception of the hands. Effortlessly. Gracefully. As if he yawned.

All magical illusions are understood by the student of the art, firstly through small, hand-held deceptions.  Given Buster’s consummate understanding of the nature of his medium (in this case, film) it is likely Buster combined this understanding with his familiarity with the scene backstage where magicians show each other tricks they carry with them, one time known as "vest pocket magic." 

The point: Buster understood close-up magic because he was schooled in close-up magic from day one. 

Whether it was dangling from a rope to save his wife from the pitfalls of a raging waterfall (a la Houdini) in Our Hospitality or making it appear as if he simply caught a lighted cigarette from the air, Keaton saw the meshing of illusion and  reality in every situation, and exploited it. While performing off stage for a visiting film crew, in his later years, he created the illusion of catching a train, and bringing a 10-ton locomotive to a halt.  One might say this was a developed version of catching the side of a moving car and being whisked from view, as in one of his short comedies.  

Jack Flosso, the late owner of the world’s oldest magic shop, knew Keaton remotely through his father, the great Al Flosso, veteran of thousands of vaudeville and Coney Island sideshow performances.  Flosso says, “When you do magic and don’t admit it, that’s great. Harpo did that, and where’d ya think he got that...Keaton! Buster had an eye for everything. Remember that.”  That Keaton’s silent, surreal illusions should find a home in the 1930s amidst Harpo’s arsenal of wonders is not surprising to any Keaton scholar. What is delightful is that Keaton’s use of illusion was an integral part of his day-to-day life.

Buster Keaton working as a gag writer for the Marx Brothers

He frequently polished a window near him only to surprise his viewers by putting his head through the glass he had just polished, revealing that his polishing was deft pantomime... the illusionary transparent glass was only perceived as solid by his impromptu audience.  Many remark what a great practical joker he was. Such visual jokes have their roots in illusion. In several newsreels depicting Buster at play one finds Keaton doing something short and sweet like sewing his fingers together (later adopted by Red Skelton) or making a baseball disappear for a dog (but not for the rest of the audience). Anything surprising, anything out of the ordinary from this apparently “ordinary” man made his magic more memorable and surprising. 

We always hear of the “magic of the movies.” Buster Keaton is a master of a special type of  movie magic that, often, you don’t even realize is right in front of you! 

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Sources: 

Beckett, Samuel., FILM, Grove Press, NY 1969. 

Bengtson, John., Silent Echoes  (Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Buster Keaton), Santa Monica Press, CA 2000. 

Blesh, Rudi., Keaton, The Macmillan Company, New York, NY 1966. 

Dardis, Tom., KEATON — The Man Who Wouldn’t Lie Down, Limelight Edition, 1996 

Kerr, Walter., The Silent Clowns, Da Capo Press, NY 1975. 

Keaton, Buster with Charles Samuels., My Wonderful World of Slapstick, Doubleday & Co., NY 1960. 

Kline, Jim., The Complete Films of Buster Keaton, Citadel Press, NY 1993. 

Knopf, Robert., The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton, Princeton University, Press, NJ 1999. 

Meade, Marion., Buster Keaton Cut to the Chase., Harper Collins, NY 1995. 

Tobias, Patricia Eliot, Ed., The Great Stone Face, The Magazine of the Damfinos, The International Buster Keaton Society, Volume 1, 1996. 

Interview with Jack Flosso in New York City, December, 1999. 

Kevin Brownlow, & David Gill (producers)., Keaton — A Hard Act to Follow, Thames TV production, 1987. 

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This article was originally published in The Keaton Chronicle, the magazine of the International Buster Keaton Society, The Damfino’s, in the Vol. 10 Issue 4, Autumn, 2002. Reprinted by permission. It is also part of Ben Robinson’s book Magic & The Silent Clowns (2011).

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Visit Ben's web site here, where you can also purchase his book directly via PayPal.

Revenge of the Silents

Will The Artist and Hugo Compete for an Oscar?

[post 221]
Despite frequent tributes to the stars of the 1920s, despite all those beautifully remastered DVD sets, despite your enthusiasm and mine, our modern world has pretty much relegated silent film comedy to the nostalgia bin. Most of the younger generation has only vaguely heard of Chaplin or Keaton, much less seen any of their films, and names like Charley Chase, Harry Langdon, or Fatty Arbuckle mean nothing to them. I know; I teach college.

There are both good and bad reasons for this. Admittedly, the quality of these early films can vary drastically — not unlike television today. Many are formulaic, with minimal character or story development. Other than the action sequences, the pace must seem slow to a visual generation used to shots lasting only a couple of seconds. And did I mention — horrors! — they're in black and white?

But presentation is also a major problem. Before you'd plunk down cash to buy a silent film comedy on DVD, you're more likely to go to YouTube to watch one of the comedian's movies, or more likely just an out-of-context clip. You're going to be sitting at your desk, probably surfing the net at warp speed, seeking instant gratification. The video and audio quality is likely to be poor, depending on the source and the amount of compression for the web. Frustrated with the small size, you enlarge it to full screen, but now it's all blurry and pixelated. The sound track, coming out of your computer's sole speaker, is likely to be generic, just some ragtime tune slapped on top. If the clip doesn't grab you in twenty seconds or less, you're gone.

Ben Model

Contrast that with sitting in a crowded audience watching a restored print (film!) on a large screen. The music has been composed specifically for this movie and is being performed live by a talented and enthusiastic pianist, perhaps by an entire band. The audience is laughing loudly (they always do) and probably cheering and jeering as well. Soon you forget that it's not in color, you forget that you can't hear any dialogue. Instead you're marveling at all that creativity, wondering why they can't make movies like that any more. Silent film as a live performing art! But.... I'm guessing the number of people who've had this experience is way under 1%.

Is it at all possible, however, that the tide may be turning?

Not only are live performances of silent films growing in popularity, but two major commercial films about the silent era have just opened to rave reviews and serious talk of awards for best film of 2011. The first is The Artist, an actual black & white silent movie, which I previewed in this earlier post, when it almost won the Cannes Film Festival. The second is Martin Scorcese's Hugo, based on the novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a book I wrote about in this earlier post on Georges Mélies. Hugo's not silent, it's color, and it's even available in 3D, but much of it as a tribute to Mélies and the inventiveness of early cinema.

More on both of these shortly, but first honorable mentions to some of the silent film series that have paved the way. In New York, there are at least two ongoing series that you should know about, both of which have the imprint of Ben Model, silent film historian, composer, and pianist. The Silent Clowns Film Series, ongoing since 1997, presents about ten events a year, all free, and all featuring Ben on piano, with programming by Bruce Lawton and film notes by Steve Massa. Many of the films screened are not available anywhere else and are usually seen on newly restored prints. Always a fun time, full of revelations, and after the movies are over, Ben, Bruce, and Steve hold court, fielding questions from an audience of fellow fans.

Ben has also done a lot of similar work for the Museum of Modern Art, including the current film series Cruel and Unusual Comedy, focusing on social commentary in American slapstick, which he curates with Ron Magliozzi and Steve Massa. The most recent installment, however, focused on some marvelous rare early European comedy shorts from the Desmet Collection of the EYE Institute (Amsterdam). This was billed as "a sort of highlights reel of a complete 5-program series that will be presented at MoMA during 2012." Judging by what I saw in October, this collection is a significant find. And while I hope it eventually ends up on DVD, that won't be as cool as having seen the movies accompanied by a live band, with my Bloomfield College colleague Peter Gordon on saxophone!

Another place in NYC to learn more about the silent era is The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, which houses exhibits on movie history, but also has a steady stream of screenings and lectures. If you're in town December 17th, don't miss master magician Ben Robinson's lecture, Magic and the Silent Clowns:   There is a strong link between some of cinema’s great comedians and magic. Performers such as Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Harpo Marx started out in the world of vaudeville; many of their finest gags grew directly out of their love of magic. Magician and author Ben Robinson will show scenes from such movies as Grandma’s Boy, Sherlock Jr., The Circus, and Duck Soup to examine this important connection between magic, comedy, and cinema.


Also in New York, the Film Forum provides another home for screenings of silent movies with live musical accompaniment. They are currently in the midst of a Monday night series, The Silent Roar, featuring MGM films from 1924 to 1929, with Steve Sterner on the piano. Buster Keaton's The Cameraman plays the day after Christmas.


Enough tooting the Big Apple's horn.... don't want to make all those New Yorkers blush! Back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Bérénice Bejo & Malcolm McDowell in The Artist

The Artist

This is a French film directed by Michel Hazanavicius, most recently known for his OSS 117 spy spoofs, and starring Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo (real-life wife of Hazanavicius). Other than its bland title, I was utterly won over by The Artist, whose story unfolds against the backdrop of the transition from silent films to sound. There are obvious parallels with Singing in the Rain, except The Artist actually is a silent movie, and a black and white one at that. It's also stylish and sweet, quite funny, and very well acted. Dujardin and Bejo are easy to fall in love with, and John Goodman as the cigar-chomping Hollywood mogul and Uggie as the dog Uggie are both hilarious.

Jean Dujardin as George Valentin

Although the male lead, one George Valentin, is dashing, athletic, and comic, very much in the style of Douglas Fairbanks, The Artist does not attempt to recapture the world of the great physical comedians. "It wasn't the slapstick that meant so much to me. It was the melodramas," explained Hazanavicius. "The point was to share that sensual experience I felt sitting in the cinema watching Murnau's Sunrise." Be that as it may, the style is sumptuously visual and the acting ultimately physical. And did I mention that it's very well done?

Bérénice Bejo as Pepe Miller

At the risk of sounding mushy and sentimental, I was also pleased to see characters that were not total jerks. Yes, self-serving jerks exist, but that can also be too easy of a writing choice. The George Valentin character could have been an arrogant womanizer and a bitter loser. Peppy Miller's stardom could have made her totally full of herself. Goodman's Al Zimmer could have been a ruthless producer. Instead, they all have their positive side, which (spoiler alert) makes a happy ending possible. Yes, you could argue that this is phony and manipulative. After all, Hollywood comes off very well in this French valentine to America, which is no doubt one reason The Artist is creating Academy Award buzz. But not the only reason. It's an exceptional film, and has already won Best Film of the Year from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Boston Society of Film Critics, and has six Golden Globe nominations, including Best Comedy. 


Here's the trailer:

Better yet, here's a short scene from the movie with the director's commentary:

And here's the press kit:
The ARTIST Production Notes

Ben Kingsley as Georges Mélies

Hugo
Martin Scorcese's Hugo is another valentine to the movies, but in this case an American director returns the compliment, reminding us all of France's contribution to early film history, specifically the effects-laden work of magician-turned-director Georges Mélies.  Hugo is quite the contrast, a full-color, all-talking, big-budget Hollywood movie with major stars (Ben Kingsley, Jude Law, Sacha Baron Cohen) and serious technology, including a cool secret world concealed within Paris' Montparnasse train station, which for a price ($17.50 in Manhattan!) we get to explore in 3D. 

But what on earth does this have to do with silent film comedy?

A lot, as it turns out, because [spoiler alert] that crotchety old man winding down his life selling wind-up toys in the train station is — true story — none other than silent film pioneer Georges Mélies, long since forgotten by the public, his early special effects movies all thought to have been destroyed. Not to worry: it is his fate to be rediscovered by an orphaned boy who secretly lives in the station, following in his father's and uncle's footsteps by caring for the clocks, one of which he of course ends up hanging from in the climactic chase scene, à la Harold Lloyd in Safety Last.

Speaking of chase scenes, Sacha Baron Cohen of Borat fame plays a nasty Keystone Kop with a leg brace who is intent on nabbing vagrant kids and packing them off to the orphanage, and therefore much chasing ensues. Unfortunately, Cohen's comic genius does not get full rein here, and the potential for physical comedy is squandered. What is special, and to my mind well worth the price of admission, is the loving recreation of Mélies' Paris studio and working methods — with Scorcese as a cameraman! — which constitutes the final section of the movie. Very cool. Indeed, the whole movie can be seen as a tribute to film preservation, with the film archivist (played by my former student, Michael Stuhlbarg) clearly modeled on Henri Langlois, founder of the Cinémathèque Française.

Here's the official trailer:

A good movie, not necessarily perfect, but its heart is in the right place, and it has an important story to tell. Two weeks ago, when I first saw both of these, I would have thought American judges would be favoring Hugo over The Artist, but the opposite seems to be happening. We'll have to wait and see but, either way, silent film is the winner.

Some More Links:
Ben Model's website
Entertainment Weekly: The Awesomeness of Silent Movies
Wall St. Journal review; they like The Artist; Hugo, not so much
NY Times review of Hugo
NY Times review of The Artist
Silent Comedy Mafia (forum)
Films Muet, French silent film blog
Lobbying for an Oscar (NY Times)
New Yorker review of Hugo by David Denby
New Yorker review of Hugo by Richard Brody