CHAPTER X

The usual critic of the motion picture is given to prating long and seriously about the art and the business of it with relation to the Griffiths, the De Milles, the Ingrams, the German Ernst Lubitschs and the ordinary whatnots and their dramatic productions, but when approaching the producer of the slapstick-thrill comedy, they seem to forget that this branch of production is an art too and a very high one and one to be taken just as seriously if not more so than the art of dramatic production.

The picture critics of the New York and Boston newspapers, for instance, will sometimes devote a whole column to a review of an ordinary dramatic production and then close with the line: “There is also a Mack Sennett comedy on the bill.” Nine times out of ten this comedy so briefly dismissed is more interesting and entertaining than the featured part of the program.

Aside from Charles Chaplin (Chaplin is his own director) the critics don't regard the comedy director in his proper light—often one of high artistic achievement plus a marvelous amount of ingenuity.

To digress for a moment, the case of the critics and the Chaplin comedies amuses the writer and many of his acquaintance immensely. It appears that the critics, commentators and publicists of national and sectional standing have only recently “discovered” Charles Chaplin. The reviewers of the daily newspapers and the magazines now hail each effort of his as masterly, pointing out virtues in his performances, in his attitude on life and in his inventive genius with remarkable pride. Chaplin has become the “fashion” with those who formerly thought his name a synonym for a vulgar, pie-throwing clown.

It was some seven years ago that a number of motion picture trade critics and myself first saw the comedian doing a “bit” in a Mack Sennett comedy. Somebody said his name was Charles Chapman. Somebody else said it was Chaplain. They thought so. They weren't quite sure who he was. But everyone in that little room knew then that, whoever he was, he was great.

Five years afterwards, as the picture subtitle would say, some of the newspaper critics woke up to the fact that this little man was an artist. And a year later the liberals and radicals of Greenwich Village, New York, and points west, discovered that Mr. Chaplin was somewhat liberal, even radical, politically, and so made the astounding revelation to their worlds that he was a great artist. Perhaps the above is a little unfair but if Mr. Chaplin had voted a straight Republican ticket it is hardly to be supposed that he would have been heralded as such a master of his craft by these people.

But we in the motion pictures knew him in his true colors from the first and so perhaps this little excursion into the realm of jealous back-biting may be pardoned. However we feel somewhat as Columbus, in his grave might feel if Marshall Foch on his recent visit to these shores, should have announced to the world that he had discovered America.

But to get back to the art of the director who makes a good slapstick comedy. The directors such as Mack Sennett and his staff of associates, such as Hal Roach who guides the destinies of the bespectacled Harold Lloyd, and such as Henry Lehrman, who follows blindly but often quite successfully in Mr. Sennett's footsteps. These men, laboring tirelessly on the invention of new “gags,” stunts and fooleries for the amusement of the picture public are deserving of immense credit.

“Slapstick” is a term that ill describes the efforts of these men. It is a hangover from the period when motion pictures were “movies” and deserved no better appellation. It suggests, besides the act of employing the old stage slapstick itself, the equally worn trick of throwing custard pies. Strange as it may seem to some whose memory of the old days in the making of pictures overshadows their ability to make observations in the present, pies are seldom used in a comedy studio these days, except in the dining room for purposes of conventional consumption.

The throwing of a pie was ceased long since as a comedy “gag” by the high class slapstick directors. Other “gags” have replaced it. Once in a while it is resorted to, probably just for old times sake but as a rule the comedy directors and those mysterious men of the comedy studio, who can hardly be called scenario writers, men whose inspiration is often the combined effect of phonograph music and bottled spirits, are able to hand out something newer and more amusing than mere pie-throwing.

What appears to be most interesting in the production of these comedies is the amazing machinery at the director's control for the entertainment and the fooling, the funny hocus-pocus fooling, of the picture going public. Mack Sennett's studio on the western coast is probably the best equipped in this way and every mechanical contrivance he employs in the making of his pictures is guarded jealously by him and his staff as a state secret might be guarded. Mr. Sennett doesn't believe in telling people how he performs his tricks. He works on the principle that the public is better satisfied by remaining mystified, of which more anon.

So it is beyond the power of anyone outside of Mr. Sennett's confidence to set down the exact manner in which he causes to be done some of the most amazing stunts on the screen. One can hazard the guess that he makes a comedian appear to be walking on water by double exposure but, given this information, any other director would be hard put to it to do the trick successfully.

Mr. Sennett is often called upon to assist other directors in producing a thrill. Most people well remember Anita Stewart's picture of two or three years ago, “In Old Kentucky.” And those who can recall the picture will also be able to recall the scene wherein Miss Stewart, on horseback, urged her steed to jump a yawning chasm, rather wide and terrifyingly deep. It was one of the biggest thrills in the picture and it was made in Mr. Sennett's studio. Neither Miss Stewart, nor Marshall Neilan, who directed all the rest of “In Old Kentucky” had anything to do with this particular scene. It was further said that Mr. Sennett demanded and received a sum equivalent to the yearly salary of the President of the United States, for his contribution to the old melodrama.

A great part of Mr. Sennett's art lies in his inventive genius and his happy faculty of applying some basically sound trick of mechanics to a ridiculous comedy situation. In this respect he proceeds from the same principle that R. L. Goldberg, the cartoonist, does. Those “easy machines” contrived by Goldberg, involved, intricate and ridiculous, that finally end up by scratching a man's back or slapping a mosquito, have as a basis an actual mechanical theory. So with Mr. Sennett. In a recent Ben Turpin picture the comedian appeared as a baker. He was shown “holing” doughnuts with a mechanic's auger and going about his work in a perfectly serious fashion. A little later the subtitle “testing” was flashed on the screen, followed by the scene of the baker testing his doughnuts by slipping them over a bar and chinning himself on them.

The effect was utterly ridiculous, uproariously funny. And what was it? Really just an application of sound scientific methods, never funny when applied correctly, but as applied to a bakery more or less of a scream. Mr. Sennett and his staff will startle audiences into fits of laughter time and again by such methods.

While on the subject of Ben Turpin it is only fair to record here that Mack Sennett has never received the credit due him for developing this cross-eyed Romeo. Turpin can be, and has been, quite a tiresome bore on the screen. He proved it a few years ago by trying to star himself without Mr. Sennett's guiding hand—and he failed. Certainly in his case direction enters into his success largely. Ford Sterling is another who once left Mr. Sennett's guidance to form his own company. But he also came back to the fold.

The tricks of the slapstick producers are numerous. The familiar scene of the automobiles skidding all over a wet pavement is sometimes actually hazardous to those participating but more often it is filmed with a slow camera, the cars also skidding around rather slowly, with the result that the completed picture gives the impression of sheer and utter recklessness. In the Ben Turpin picture already mentioned the comedian endeavored to eat asparagus and just as he would get a tip near his mouth it would curl away like a snake. Of course there are such things as wires and springs.

The element of surprise enters into the making of the modern comedy to a great extent. Harold Lloyd and his director, Hal Roach, employ the method of the surprise laugh to admirable effect. One of the biggest laughs that this comedian has ever been responsible for was brought on by a totally unexpected surprise. He appeared as a youth who sought suicide as a way out of all his troubles. He climbed on the railing of a bridge with a rock hung round his neck and leaped into the water below. The water was only about a foot deep and the youth came to a jarring stop when his feet hit the bottom. The laugh that followed was really to be described as an outburst.

Messrs. Lloyd and Roach probably scorn the tricks by which scenes can be made to look thrilling, preferring instead to accomplish the actual thrill, more than any other comedy producers. It may be recalled that Mr. Lloyd once caused a variety of heart afflictions by appearing in a picture in which he was seen walking in his sleep on the edge of a high building. Fake? Not a bit of it! The real thing—that is the high building, not the sleep-walking.

All the studios in California confined to the elaborate production of slapstick-thrill comedy have their own hospitals and their own staffs of bonesetters and doctors. And, in order that the public may have its fill of laughs, these hospitals often have their fill of patients.