steal from the best

why it's good to study hundred year old comedy films

Today I was reviewing and updating a presentation that I’m going to make, or re-make, fairly soon. This was my one and only academic paper/presentation, THE ANIMATED TRAMP. I presented it at the Century of the Tramp symposium in Bologna, Italy, and a shorter version was given at the Society of Animation Studies in Toronto. Both events took place in 2014, one hundred years after young English vaudevillian and newly minted film actor Charles Spencer Chaplin first donned a pair of baggy pants, oversized shoes, too-small derby, and tight jacket, and pasted a small toothbrush moustache on his upper lip for a film called MABEL’S STRANGE PREDICAMENT.

I wrote that there is no coincidence that the ‘golden age of animation’ overlapped and eventually supplanted the golden age of physical and slapstick comedy. Animated films were a novelty when Chaplin began making his short comedies. They were not the main attraction at theatres in the silent period (although one of the biggest stars of the Twenties was Felix the Cat, who had some of the the same appeal as Chaplin—with good reason, since the cat was based on the man!)

“STEALING MY STUFF, EH?” Chaplin speech title, FELIX IN HOLLYWOOD, 1923

The first generation of studio animators—Tex Avery, Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, Fred Moore, Walter Lantz— grew up watching Chaplin and Keaton and Laurel and Hardy and Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd films, as well as films starring dozens of lesser known comedians. These comedies influenced the makers of animated films well into the 1950s. Animation had great visual humor during that time since the influences were, with some exceptions, visual comedians. In the Sixties, verbal comedy starts to replace the visual in animation, not merely because of lower budgets (which had been declining since the Forties) but also to the rise of standup and nightclub and situation television comedy.

I mentioned the exceptions. The Marx Brothers were visual AND silent comedians; Groucho had startling movements, brash dialogue, an outrageous manner, and what animators call ‘great silhouette value’; Harpo was one of the most original clowns of the sound era, perhaps of any era. No one even tried to imitate Harpo Marx. No one human, that is. It took me about forty years to see the influence of the former on the latter.

ANIMAL CRACKERS, 1929

THE ORPHAN’S BENEFIT, 1934

In my interview with Art Babbitt (available on this site and on the animation world network page) he mentions basing some of the ‘little movement of the knees’ for FANTASIA’s mushroom dancers on Jerome “Curly” Howard’s actions in Three Stooges comedies. Howard was another extremely original visual and aural comedian; his “Soiten’ly” and “What a maroon!” turns up in Bugs Bunny’s dialogue. His knee action can be seen near the end of this clip.

And here it is on some dancing mushrooms.

A few of the silent clowns are well known to modern audiences; Buster Keaton may be more influential than Charlie Chaplin today, because of his modern directorial style and dry comedy. The Disney film PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL (2003) actually managed to ‘top’ a famous gag from Buster Keaton’s 1921 howler, THE BOAT. Johnny Depp also played a character that was a wonderful combination of Chaplin and Keaton in BENNY AND JOON (1993)

THE BOAT, 1921

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL (2003)

Johnny Depp in BENNY AND JOON, 1993

Chuck Jones’ films show a heavy Keaton influence from the beginning ( when I mentioned that some of my student animation owed a lot to his Roadrunner and Coyote, he replied, in a stage whisper, behind one hand: “I’ve been ‘borrowing’ from Buster Keaton for forty years. Steal from the best!”). There is also a brilliant quote from the train chase in Keaton’s THE GENERAL in Disney’s ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD (1949)

but there is no question that Chaplin had a far greater influence on animated films than Keaton for two generations. A new generation of animators rediscovered both in the Seventies and Eighties. It used to be very, very hard to see these films. I brought my 16mm film collection to Cal Arts and showed them to the artists who would later create the Pixar films. There are many Chaplinesque and Keatonesque gags in the TOY STORY films, and a famous scene from CITY LIGHTS was restaged, shot for shot, in WALL-E.

When the films became available on videotape, animators could view them easily. The print quality continued to get better as digital media improved. It’s now easier to see the old films, restored to something close to what they looked like when they were new, than ever before. High definition prints on YouTube look better than anything I owned on 16mm film. New digital transfers approximate the look of nitrate film. I’ve seen nitrate, and 4K restorations are the only thing that compare. And they can do it without blowing up the theatre. (nitrate is highly flammable).

So my question is, why did so few of my students even know that these films existed? Why did they not use them for research the way we did? After all, it’s now ridiculously easy to see them online.

I would run Laurel and Hardy’s BIG BUSINESS (1929) just before Christmas break, and Mae West excerpts in my acting for animation classes, and both of them ‘killed’. In particular, the students couldn’t get enough of Mae West.

So why are they unfamiliar with so many great comedies?

I suspect there’s simply an embarrassment of riches. The films are there, for the viewing, online…along with everything else. Every single Keaton and Chaplin film, and very good prints (including foreign versions) of silent and sound Laurel and Hardy films, and much more, including incredibly rare films by lesser known comedians, can be seen for free. But you have to know what you are looking for, and there is a lot of competition.

It’s good to point these jewels of cinematic comedy out to a new generation of animators and hope that they find them as inspirational as I did. This is not to say that modern comedy is not worthy of emulation. Everything is grist for the mill.

My motto in 1975 was: If studying these films was good enough for the Old Guys, it’s good enough for me. And that goes for you, too, Doc!