Cinevent Notes Past: SKINNERS DRESS SUIT

[Richard M Roberts]

Todays Cinevent note is for the 1926 Reginald Denny Comedy:

SKINNERS DRESS SUIT


When James Agee wrote “Comedy’s Greatest Era” for Life Magazine in 1949, and started this whole “Three Kings of Comedy” nonsense that Comedy Film Historians have been working to knock apart for decades, he essentially left out a whole group of silent comics, the light or romantic comedians like Johnny Hines, Douglas MacLean, Wallace Reid, Reginald Denny, Glenn Tryon, even Douglas Fairbanks and John Barrymore in the teens, that were indeed very popular performers of the Silent Era. Walter Kerr helped little more when he dismissed them as the “Demi-Clowns” in a chapter of his book, THE SILENT CLOWNS in 1975, when their more normal personas resonated less with him than the quirks and oddities of Chaplin, Keaton, and Langdon. However, the audiences of the teens and twenties held no such prejudices, and loved these funny leading men who indeed paved the way for comic performers of the 30’s like William Powell and Cary Grant, so much so that these “demi-clowns” were considered major stars.

Reginald Denny was Universal’s top farceur in the 1920’s, churning out hit after hit for Carl Laemmle in light comedies like OH DOCTOR!, CALIFORNIA STRAIGHT AHEAD (both 1925), and THE CHEERFUL FRAUD (1927) among others. He had come to prominence in Universal’s “Leather Pushers” two-reelers in 1922 and soon was typed into playing another all-American go-getter that was sort of a mix of Charley Chase and Harold Lloyd without the glasses. This typing came to an abrupt end when talkies revealed Denny to be an unmistakable Englishman, thus he worked his way through thirty-plus more years in Hollywood in character roles as a very stiff-upper-lipped brit indeed (although his comedy training came frequently in hand as when he played sidekick Algy Longworth in Paramount’s Bulldog Drummond series in the late thirties). In the 1940’s Denny, who had always been an amateur engineer, became a specialist in designing and building motorized model airplanes, even designing robot-controlled spy-drones for the Military during World War Two and establishing a successful business in this field after the War.

SKINNERS DRESS SUIT was one of Denny’s biggest hits for Universal. It had been a successful Broadway farce by Henry Irving Dodge in 1916 that had inspired sequels involving Mr. Skinner and his upwardly-mobile middle class suburban life. Essanay had made it into a popular 1917 feature starring Bryant Washburn, and Universal made it a perfect vehicle for Denny as it dusted off other popular farces from the teens like WHAT HAPPENED TO JONES for his vehicles. Universal would remake it again in 1929 as a talkies with Glenn Tryon called SKINNER STEPS OUT and it would do equally well for him. The story of a young married couple who unwittingly (at least for the wife) live beyond their means still speaks resoundingly today amidst our Country’s wash of credit-card debt, and the cast is funny and appealing with the material.

Laura LaPlante was also being groomed for stardom by Universal when she made SKINNERS DRESS SUIT, fresh-faced sexy, wholesome looking but far from bland, LaPlante would be a refreshing presence in many Universal late 20’s programmers, as well as some big hits like THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927) and the 1929 version of SHOWBOAT. She proved herself to have a flair for comedy and was well-remembered despite the fact that her career did falter when talkies came in, really through no apparent fault of her own. Universal dropped her and several other more costly stars when they had financial difficulties and after a few more appearances in B-features, married Producer Irving Asher and moved to England where he would be producing features for Warner Brothers Teddington Studios branch. There she appeared in a handful of features where she charmed the British Public in light comedies like THE CHURCH MOUSE (1934) and MAN OF THE MOMENT (1935), both directed by silent film comedian Monty Banks and the latter title co-starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., yet Laura gave it all up to raise a family in 1935, only sporadically returning to the screen in occasional television appearances in the 1950’s and one major role in the 1957 film SPRING REUNION, playing Mother to the leading lady, and still looking nearly as youthful and exuberant as daughter Betty Hutton does. After a long and happy life, Laura LaPlante passed away in 1996.

This time, the proceedings are deftly handled by Director William A Seiter, who was a master of this sort of screwball shenanigans, and of course, worked with plenty of comedians like Laurel and Hardy (SONS OF THE DESERT), The Marx Brothers (ROOM SERVICE), Wheeler and Woolsey (PEACH O’RENO, CAUGHT PLASTERED and GIRL CRAZY among others), and Abbott and Costello (LITTLE GIANT). At the time of SKINNERS DRESS SUIT, Seiter was married to Laura LaPlante, but would wed leading lady Marian Nixon in the 1930’s. after decade as a solid light comedy director, Seiter moved to television in the mid-fifties, winding down into retirement in 1960 after directing 50 episodes of THE GALE STORM SHOW. Seiter died in1964. (RMR)



RICHARD M ROBERTS