Tag: Silent Films

On a Bad Imitation

Some historians claim that a woman named Sarah Bernhardt, was the first “modern” celebrity. The French actress used popular magazines and her relationships to famous painters and writers and musicians to publicize her stage career in the 1800s. As a result, people world-wide knew who she was, thus becoming the first international star. But the world has never seen the popularity of the (mostly silent) film star, Charlie Chaplin. Everywhere he went, even when he wasn’t in his usual costume as the character “The Little Tramp,” the talented actor and director was mobbed. He was so famous in the 1910s and ’20s that cities and organizations would often hold Charlie Chaplin Look-Alike contests, contests that offered cash prizes to the person who could best imitate the character’s signature splay-footed walk. Even a young Bob Hope, later to become a famous comedian in his own right, entered one such contest during that time.

One such competition was held near San Francisco in the late 1910s as part of a county fair and a new movie theater promotion. Several dozen competitors donned their little under-the-nose bristle mustaches, put on ill-fitting hats and too-big shoes, found ragged pairs of trousers, grabbed reedy canes, and made their way to the fairgrounds. As the crowd gathered to watch the competitors, one of their number, a young man named Spencer, watched with amusement. “Those clowns,” he said to his small group of friends who had joined him at the fair that day as they watched the look-alikes start to parade across the fairground’s stage, “they don’t have the walk right.” You see, Spencer considered himself somewhat of a Chaplin expert, having seen everything that the comedian had put out on the screen.

Spencer’s chums began to goad him good naturedly. One of them dared him to get up on the stage and show them how to imitate the Chaplin walk if he knew it so well. Spencer grinned at his friend. “You’re on,” he said. “Here,” he added, taking off his jacket, “hold this and watch!” And, with that, the competition had another entrant. Spencer made his way to the side of the stage where one of the organizers was trying to corral the several would-be Chaplins in line before they demonstrated their imitations on stage.

“Say,” Spencer said to the harried worker, “d’ya think I could join the competition?” The staffer didn’t care. He just wanted to get through the warm afternoon as quickly as possible. “Sure, what do I care?” he said handing Spencer a number and a safety pin. “Just put this on your shirt and go to the back of the line.” And, flashing a large grin and a thumbs-up to his group of friends, Spencer went to the end of the queue to wait his turn. Eventually, as the last entrant, Spencer–without any Chaplinesque costume at all–made his duck-walking way across the stage. A few people clapped, mainly Spencer’s friends, and a few in the crowd booed.

The organizers used a set of three local minor dignitaries as their judges, and the judges also used crowd approval as a criteria in selecting the five finalists for the competition that day. And, when the votes were tabulated and every competitor was judged, it turned out that Spencer didn’t make the cut. He and the other unsuccessful entrants were thanked by the emcee and they were dismissed. Spencer made his way back to his little coterie of friends. They laughed at his failure, telling him that maybe he wasn’t as good of a Chaplin fan as he thought he was if he couldn’t even do the Chaplin walk correctly. Spencer was incredulous. In his frustration, he didn’t want to stick around to see who won the contest, and, with his friends still laughing at his expense, the group made their way on down the fair’s midway.

Now, of course, no one remembers who won that look-alike competition that day.

However, we do remember the contest.

For, you see, it was the day that Charles Spencer Chaplin couldn’t even win a competition imitating himself.

On a Silent Death

John Gilbert passed away silently at 7:44am on January 9, 1936 at his home in California. It was a heart attack, his second major one (there had been several minor ones). He was only 39 years old. His long-time nurse, May Jordan, called the doctor, but it was too late. She told the doctor that Mr. John had raised his hands shortly before he died as if he wanted to say something, but he dropped them and passed away. A silent death, she reported.

The doctor signed the death certificate that the cause of death was “acute myocarditis,” but everyone who knew John knew that it was because he drank himself to an early grave. John’s long-time butler, a man with the improbably name of Don Veto, said that John would often drink alone, silently downing glass after glass, bottle after bottle, night after night. The man literally drank himself to death.

You probably haven’t heard of him, but John Gilbert was a wealthy man in the 1920s. John had wisely invested the money he made in the entertainment business and lived off the investment income. You see, people knew John Gilbert, but his had not been one of the voices that people heard over his years in show business for the most part. His house was paid for, he could well afford the butler, the chauffeur, the cook, and the gardener. He had the finest clothes, the prettiest women, and the best champaign that money could buy.

Too much of the champaign, it turns out.

So, it seems that John would have everything to live for. Yet, he was miserable. You see, the decade of the 1920s saw more films made than any other decade. Despite what some say, the films of that decade were more than Chaplin and Keaton and those other silent film comedians. Some of the most beautiful and technically brilliant as well as some of the best stories ever told were produced in the 1920s.

And John Gilbert starred in a film, The Big Parade, that was the second highest-grossing film and the most profitable film made during that era. His next film, Flesh and the Devil, paired him with Greta Garbo. He and Garbo, his love interest in the film, became lovers in real life. Their every movements were reported in the newspapers and their hordes of fans followed their love story breathlessly. Next to Rudolph Valentino, John Gilbert was the greatest matinee idol of the decade.

But then, in the fall of 1927, Al Jolson uttered the famous line, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” at the start of The Jazz Singer, and the era of “talkies” was born. By 1930, the film All Quiet on the Western Front was first filmed as a silent movie, but it was quickly remade as a talkie and went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture that year. Silent film was dead.

Gilbert had trouble transitioning to talking pictures. The issue wasn’t that his voice was high-pitched or nasally as so many silent stars’ voices were. No, Gilbert had the opposite problem. His voice was fine, but his enunciation was perfect. People who believed Gilbert’s acting when he they couldn’t hear him suddenly found him unbelievable when they could. His diction was off-putting. It made people laugh.

Sadly, by 1936, John Gilbert’s career was over, and he was dead.

And so were silent films.