Langdon book review by Brad Linaweaver

[Michael J Hayde]

I don't know how anyone could let go someone who just made THE KING.

That's easy. He wasn't let go... he asked for his release. As for why, you'll have to read LITTLE ELF... or Richard's Roach book, since I'm sure we're in agreement on that point.

Michael

[Ed Watz]

I got a chuckle reading the comments posted on the Indie Wire in response to Leonard's review of LITTLE ELF. If further evidence were needed that reactions to Harry Langdon's work is highly subjective, look at these comparisons among the several who posted:

Leonard Maltin - dislikes both THREE'S A CROWD and THE CHASER, calling them "painfully unfunny." Finds the first three First Nationals to be Langdon's best.

Michael J. Hayde - appreciates THREE'S A CROWD as a personal statement by Langdon but intensely dislikes THE CHASER. Favorite Langdon feature is LONG PANTS.

Dave Kirwin - likes THE CHASER very much but calls LONG PANTS a "weak effort."

Mike Schlesinger - finds THE CHASER "hilarious" at times and calls it "quite amusing." Calls THREE'S A CROWD "dreadful."

Ed Watz - Of the six surviving Langdon silent features, my favorite is probably THE CHASER, but I do enjoy them all.

Quick tally of the top titles:

THE CHASER - two against, three in favor;

THREE'S A CROWD - two against, two in favor;

LONG PANTS - one against, three in favor.

All of this signifies nothing, of course, except the obvious: five comedy fans are all over the place on three of his films...

[Richard M Roberts]

Hmm, I like all six of the surviving Langdon silent features(everyone seems to forget HIS FIRST FLAME), but still think they're all flawed in one way or another, and that Langdon's only truly brilliant, fully realized silent work was done in shorts. However much I like THREES A CROWD, I was saying for years that when it became generally available, that the pretentious would jump on it as Langdon's "masterpiece" because it goes for the obvious pathos, and miss what is truly interesting about it while harping on exactly where it fails (in other words, thank you David Kalat). And I still say Langdon's work in talkies is way underrated (and say Leonard, there are indeed signs of a falling off as a filmmaker in Chaplin's post-1930 work).

In some ways, Leonard is beginning to sound like the Old Guard who formed their opinion on the canon way back when and can't change nor revisit those opinions with time. Grey Hairs sometimes do that sort of thing.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Gary Johnson]

Even though I can find something watchable in all of Langdon's work, I have never had much need to return to HIS FIRST FLAME.

[Richard M Roberts]

Even though I can find something watchable in all of Langdon's work, I have never had much need to return to HIS FIRST FLAME.

I've never had a problem with it, it a string of set pieces loosely strung together, but is no more episodic than any of his other features, and Iove that very black dinner sequence with Dot Farley and Bud Jamison. Theres some great Langdon bits in it, and it has a nice mysoginistic tone to it, more of that "Capra" touch eh?


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Michael J Hayde]

Theres some great Langdon bits in it, and it has a nice mysoginistic tone to it, more of that "Capra" touch eh?


RICHARD M ROBERTS

Well, THE CHASER ain't exactly a valentine to women, either, and Capra had nothing to do with that one!

Seriously, you have to wonder if misogyny was the common ground that bonded Ripley and Capra during those years.

Michael

[Richard M Roberts]

Theres some great Langdon bits in it, and it has a nice mysoginistic tone to it, more of that "Capra" touch eh?


RICHARD M ROBERTS

Well, THE CHASER ain't exactly a valentine to women, either, and Capra had nothing to do with that one!

Seriously, you have to wonder if misogyny was the common ground that bonded Ripley and Capra during those years.

Michael

It appears the ironic sarcasm eluded you Michael, my apparently too subtle point was that that was not the Capra touch at all, and another reason I consider his self-proclaimed "equal" status within Langdon's unit questionable. The black humor in Langdon is Langdons, aided and abetted by Arthur Ripley, and it is that blackness and misogynism that is the truly unique and original aspect of Langdon's humor, if you don't appreciate it, you really don't get Langdon frankly. That’s another reason why Capra was doomed in his attempt to present Langdon as a "Little Elf", because trying to push a star comedian who’s obsessed with making a joke out of AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY towards blind heroines and being cute and cuddly is going to have a tough sell, especially if the Star Comedian has Arthur Ripley backing him up.

Langdon is hands-down the darkest most surreal and misogynistic of the silent comedians, and he got away with it by couching that impossible character in a clown-white innocent appearance and a completely cartoonish Universe. That’s why Mack Sennett was actually the perfect place for Langdon to work because he needed a comic milieu so bigger than life and full of grotesques for his character whose whole modus operandi was to try to work against the whole narrative and get laughs by being as ineffectual as possible to be forced into actually doing something and react. The closer to reality Langdons character got, the more it unraveled and the darkness made audiences uncomfortable. That’s why the brilliant things in THREES A CROWD ain’t the “lets feel sorry for poor Harry who can’t have a wife and kid” claptrap, it’s the way he can diffuse a serious situation like finding a pregnant woman lying in the street in the freezing cold and his first reaction is to look around as if he’s asking “did somebody lose this pregnant woman?’, which is always one of the biggest laughs I’ve seen that film get with an audience.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Michael J Hayde]

It appears the ironic sarcasm eluded you Michael, my apparently too subtle point was that that was not the Capra touch at all, and another reason I consider his self-proclaimed "equal" status within Langdon's unit questionable.

I knew you were being sarcastic, but thought it was much more clever than you're admitting. Do you really think misogyny ISN'T part-and-parcel of the "Capra touch?" I trust you've seen a Capra picture or two. Who are the "heroines" of the majority of his films? Embittered, cynical, spoiled, sarcastic women who are inevitably "redeemed" by the love of a good man. (The flip side, a'la IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, is the devoted, starry-eyed girlfriend/wife.) Yes, Capra - whose mother ran the ship during his formative years - sure loved to pay tribute to strong, independent women! (That's also sarcasm.)

The black humor in Langdon is Langdons, aided and abetted by Arthur Ripley, and it is that blackness and misogynism that is the truly unique and original aspect of Langdon's humor, if you don't appreciate it, you really don't get Langdon frankly.

I'd argue that the black, misogynist humor is ENTIRELY Capra & Ripley... because there isn't a trace of it in 15 years of Langdon vaudeville turns. Go back and read the scripts. Yes, Cecil is a bit of a harpy, but that's to provide conflict with Rose. It's telling that it's Capra who described Rose as a hatchet-faced termagant, or whatever the hell it was he wrote. She was nothing of the kind!

I'll agree that the black humor resonated with Langdon, and he wanted to explore it further than did Capra, but his primary desire - affirmed by his own lengthy quotes - was for pathos. The THREE'S A CROWD gag you cite is nothing more than his variation on Chaplin's "Who threw this baby out the window?", which isn't to say it's not funny or out-of-character.

Michael

[Richard M Roberts]

I knew you were being sarcastic, but thought it was much more clever than you're admitting. Do you really think misogyny ISN'T part-and-parcel of the "Capra touch?" I trust you've seen a Capra picture or two. Who are the "heroines" of the majority of his films? Embittered, cynical, spoiled, sarcastic women who are inevitably "redeemed" by the love of a good man. (The flip side, a'la IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, is the devoted, starry-eyed girlfriend/wife.) Yes, Capra - whose mother ran the ship during his formative years - sure loved to pay tribute to strong, independent women! (That's also sarcasm.)

Actually, no, Capra’s women were always pushovers to be redeemed, and fell way too quickly. Barbara Stanwyck in LADIES OF LEISURE, THE MIRACLE WOMAN, FORBIDDEN, THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN and MEET JOHN DOE, can’t hold a candle to Barbara Stanwyck in most of her Warner vehicles like BABYFACE. And casting Jean Arthur as anything hard-boiled is like casting a kitten to play a cougar. Capra’s women may be smart and street-wise, but they’re always looking to be redeemed, and know deep-down that they’re missing that most important thing they need ---a GOOD MAN---to bring them back from the brink. Capra was always pushing for the small-town values, God and Country, and it took a Robert Riskin to put any teeth into his City Characters. That’s why things got trickier and tricklier in the Capra oeurve’ when Riskin left.

I'd argue that the black, misogynist humor is ENTIRELY Capra & Ripley... because there isn't a trace of it in 15 years of Langdon vaudeville turns. Go back and read the scripts. Yes, Cecil is a bit of a harpy, but that's to provide conflict with Rose. It's telling that it's Capra who described Rose as a hatchet-faced termagant, or whatever the hell it was he wrote. She was nothing of the kind!

I think you’ve misread those Langdon sketch scripts if you can’t see either traces of misogyny or Langdon’s screen character emerging in his stage routines. Granted, it’s easy to do, these are merely scripts for copyright purposes, not performance, and apart from dialogue, the visual comedy and stage instructions are not indicated with much detail, certainly not as much as, say, the same copyright versions of W. C. Fields’ stage sketches, but the reviews of Langdon’s stage work always seem to praise his pantomime, and little of that is indicated in the scripts. Yet even in the dialogue, Langdon’s words seem to be written in that silly sort of babbling style we hear in his sound films (and can see him doing in his silent films even if we can’t hear it). I read Langdon’s dialogue in JOHNNYS NEW CAR and I can hear him saying it.

As well the misogyny we see is the standard comedy tropes of the time, expensive girl-friends, henpecked husbands or boyfriends, but it’s there, and no matter what you think about Langdon’s stage work, it’s there in spades in all of his film work after, with or without Capra, Ripley, or Edwards, and seems to rear it’s ugly and very funny head especially in films in which he had larger degrees of control, like the Roach and Educational shorts, and Columbia Comedies like HIS MARRIAGE MIX-UP, with a story by Vernon Dent (and gee, you think he and Langdon worked together on that?) right up to PISTOL PACKIN NITWITS, with another story by Langdon and Harry Edwards in the Directors chair.



[quote]I'll agree that the black humor resonated with Langdon, and he wanted to explore it further than did Capra, but his primary desire - affirmed by his own lengthy quotes - was for pathos. The THREE'S A CROWD gag you cite is nothing more than his variation on Chaplin's "Who threw this baby out the window?", which isn't to say it's not funny or out-of-character.[quote]


All the comics did variations on each others work, but what’s brilliant in this gag is that Langdon makes it completely his own, and on his terms. Chaplins version is both slightly sarcastic and realistic, a baby could have fallen out a window. Langdon’s version ties in so much more with his own surreal universe and lack of touch with it, where do pregnant women drop from when somebody loses them? The danger comes later when his basically cartoon character is actually caring for woman and child, and this sudden realism inserted into Langdon’s Cartoon Universe turns away gag situations as the audience becomes too concerned for the safety of woman and child at the mercy of a comic character designed to be completely ineffectual.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Gary Johnson]

In the same way that the laughs slow down when Stan & Ollie are in charge of the newborn in THEIR FIST MISTAKE. Attempting to provide financial support for the young war orphan in PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES is fine comic fodder but per-natal care is another matter. We worry that the infant may end up thrown out with the bath water at any moment.