SILENTS PLEASE

[Music] silence please the excitement the thrills the laughter and the heartbreak of hollywood's golden era wonderful raw materials custard pies keystone cops and beautiful bathing girls were assembled onto celluloid packed into cans and sent forth to make the world laugh on the label one name mack senate and in a minute we'll see how senate ran the production line max senate started as a boy soprano tried burlesque for a while then in 1909 he drifted into the biograph movie studio on 14th street in new york city there everyone did a little bit of everything and senate wrote directed and filled in as an actor here he is in 1909 playing the butler shortly afterwards senate started his own studio in california backed by two gamblers to whom he owed a hundred dollars fatty arbuckle sent it himself in the middle here and mabel normand were the studio's busiest stars the cornerstone of the fun factory was to be the keystone cop the idea began developing in senate's mind in 1913 and first emerged on the screen as the banville police the bangville police were a country constabulary the city uniforms and the police desk were to come the following year but the antics were already unmistakably those of the keystone cops [Music] now in 1915 the keystone cops themselves the plot a girl and a boy are trying to elope by boat taking with them a justice of the peace her father played by ford sterling wants to stop the ceremony he decides the only way to stop it is to drain the whole lake actually the fact that the los angeles park department had announced they were going to empty the lake was senate's reason for shooting the picture in the first place it was an ingenious way of getting a spectacular effect at low cost too busy producing now to play anything but a bit the keystone cop in the next shot is senate himself the senate comedies were rarely subtle platforms mud and frantic confusion two reels of organized chaos from which not even the stars were exempted in 1914 senate produced hollywood's first full-length comedy feature tilly's punctured romance the star marie dressler at that time a bigger name than charlie chaplin who played a supporting role along with mabel normand miss dressler had come west to reenact the part of the jilted heiress she had so successfully created on the stage but senate was in awe of neither the star nor the original play and he soon reshaped tilly into typical slapstick comedy complete with police desks balls and keystone cops [Music] despite her strenuous efforts as tilly ms dressler did not find a career in silent films it was to be 15 years before she became one of the greats of talking pictures in men and bill and tugboat annie senate's comics had to be acrobats too watch these cops dive in the surf [Music] senate directed tilly himself however he and chaplain whose stature was growing rapidly began to have conflicting ideas on how to create comedy and chaplin soon started directing as well as starring in senate two realers [Music] charlie's costume was already established by now although his screen character was still forming this aggressive and inconsiderate little man would soon mellow into the familiar lovable [Music] [Applause] max wayne another keystone great [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] oh [Music] aware that senate underestimated charles chaplin was soon to put on his hat and coat and leave the fun factory [Music] turning out two or three comedies a week took a lot of ingenuity and senate had plenty for example to give the impression of wide open spaces for his case sequences he devised a revolving cyclorama a painted background that moved past the actors who worked on treadmills and of course the wind machine saw heavy service another senate trademark and his most attractively packaged product were the bathing beauties beauties such as phyllis haver who started with senate at three dollars a day this by the way was the beginning of the era of the gag titles never before had so much girl been exposed to so many people the costumes were condemned by indignant women's clubs but moviegoers loved them realism was not a requirement as long as the girls were pretty in fact the more improbable the locale the more the fun this energetic young lady broke into films when she was only 16 and was soon working with senate though not one of the bathing girls she was beautiful and versatile equally at home fending off the attentions and jewels of wallace berry or flirting with ingenuous bobby vernon it is miss gloria swanson soon to be barry's wife off screen and cecil b demille's leading star on screen [Music] carol lombard started in the beauty department of senate's fun factory too but senate's special protege his favorite and the star who worked with him longest was mabel normand a mad cap whose life was an incessant world ice cream for breakfast and parties far into the night here she is cast as a would-be actress about to undergo her first screen test [Applause] [Music] a natural comedienne one of hollywood's finest mabel was the lucille ball of her day [Music] put your foot down senate produced several full-length features starring mabel one of them was the extra girl in which mabel is cast as a wardrobe helper assigned to transform teddy the studio dog into a lion the real lion has proved too ferocious to play in the key scenes while mabel is off getting the dog lion a drink the crew takes him off to the set [Music] and the lion trainer puts the real lion in his place [Music] mabel unaware of the switch has such trouble getting the water to teddy that she decides to take teddy to the water the background of course is the senate studio itself with sections of scenery set up for other pictures [Music] oh [Music] [Music] hmm [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] um [Music] many of the great comedy stars chaplin langdon swanson arbuckle carl lombard even bing crosby started in senate's fun factory and went on to spectacular careers on their own but faithful cross-eyed ben turpin stayed with mack right through the 20s here's a sequence from the daredevil in 1924. the director is showing ben how to throttle the villain he is to burst in and rescue the heroine played incidentally by madeleine herlock later the wife of playwright robert sherwood senate uses madeleine here to make fun of the movie queens who exuded glamour in the most unlikely situations then transfixes the villain with his crossed eyes he originally crossed his eyes as a bit of business but somehow they got crossed so permanently that an insurance company wrote a million dollar policy against their uncrossing [Music] in our present editing we've added sound effects to these scenes but remember that senate with no sound had to use elaborate pantomime to build up gags like the one coming now so that audiences of the silence felt they'd heard it as well as seen it [Music] [Applause] [Music] a neat piece of business so watch senate use it again with variations [Music] now into the inevitable senate chase with such fun factory trademarks as cars speeded up by slowing down the camera and trolleys backing up by reversing the [Music] camera [Music] um no action make him do something humor in slapstick comedy was often built around outrage and sadism but since it was so divorced from reality and nobody ever got hurt this grand genial quality never proved offensive after sound came in this brand of humor was to disappear only to be reincarnated more savage and ferocious than ever in cartoon films in the daredevil senate is lampooning his own methods of covering actual outside events and exploiting them in his scripts it's a fire boss [Applause] [Music] so [Music] what a beautiful fire says the director and he quickly improvises a script [Music] where's the stand-in back in the tank get him [Music] so [Music] so senate was always losing his biggest names just as they were proving most useful when sound came in 1928 he had no big names left merely a successful format but it was a format that was soon to be rendered old-fashioned by the new medium of talkies in which the site gag was now almost dead senate's activities dwindled but he left the screen a wonderful rich heritage of visual humor that has never again been equal [Applause] [Music] max senate worked hard to make his audiences laugh and his hard work made him a millionaire until 1929 but the loss of his fortune didn't break mack's spirit he was to live a long and pleasant retirement quite satisfied that it also had been his fortune to make the world rich in laughter [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] you