Slapstick Encyclopedia, Vol. 1- In the Beginning: Comedy Pioneers [VHS]

Description

This first volume of Slapstick Encyclopedia offers an unprecedented survey of once important, now forgotten but still funny vaudevillians, stage actors and novelty acts that gravitated to the film world during the first fifteen years of the century. Their work in front of the camera inspired the first wave of film comedy. Starting his career at the Essanay Studios as a janitor and shipping clerk, Ben Turpin rose to become one of the most easily recognizable figures in American slapstick and appears here in the 1909 film Mr. Flip. Bert (Egbert Austin) Williams, the only black performer to cross over into the white vaudeville circuits, performs one of his Ziegfeld Follies routines for the Biograph cameras in A Natural-Born Gambler (1916). Also featured are the works of several other slapstick celebs who graduated to the screen from the stage, among them John Bunny and Victor Moore. In an abridgment of his Amercian-made feature Be My Wife (1921), Frenchman Max Linder (whom Chaplin openly acknowledged as a primary influence on his craft) demonstrates the effortless charm and gift for comedy that made him the first world-famous film comedian. various directors. U.S. 1909-21. Approx. time: 126 mins. B&W. Music by Eric Beheim, Brian Benison, Robert Israel, Ken Rosen. Contents: One Too Many (1916 - Oliver Hardy, Billy Bletcher) The Wrong Mr. Fox (1917 - Victor Moore) Mr. Flip (1909 - Ben Turpin) Alkali Ike's Auto (1911 - Augustus Carney) Mabel's Dramatic Debut (1913 - Mabel Normand, Mack Sennett, Ford Sterling, Fatty Arbuckle) Fox-Trot Finesse (1915 - Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew) A Cure For Pokeritis (1912 - John Bunny, Flora Finch) Be My Wife (1921 - Max Linder) A Natural-Born Gambler (1916 - Bert Williams)