SilentComedyMafia.com

Boy, the things that turn up on EBay.

It looks like Hal Roach really DID have high hopes for Dee Lampton to become "the next Roscoe Arbuckle".

The evidence is to be found in Lampton's starring contract for Hal Roach, dated July 1916. Over the course of the previous four months the young comedian from Fort Worth worked as a bit player in Lloyd's "Lonesome Luke" series.

According to the contract, Lampton was on a starting salary of $100 a week (rising to $125, then $150 within an 18 month period). That's DOUBLE the weekly salary Roach was paying Lloyd at that time!

The lot also includes a November 1916 agreement between Rolin and Pathe for the distribution of the short-lived "Skinny" series of nine split-reel comedies in which Lampton starred.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Dee-Lampton-Skinny- ... 3362947632

Neat find there Andrew!

In the Summer of 1916 Roach may have had high hopes for the Lampton series but by that Fall, with the nine films shot, he realized it was not going to be.
IIRC, Lampton was already gone from Rolin by the time Roach signed the distribution deal for the Skinny pictures with Pathe.
He would return the following Fall, after finding no better work elsewhere, and was back playing supporting roles for Lloyd (now doing his glasses character) and for Roach's next big hope, one that would prove far more costly than the Skinny films, Toto.

Joe

"No better work" consisted of a six-month interregnum at the Keystone Film Co.

Here's Lampton's employment contract with Sennett, dated 14 March 1917. He went from $100 a week with Roach to $20 for the first three months at Keystone, rising to $25 for the final three months.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/KEYSTONE-FILM-C ... 5114288683

Every time I watch HAUNTED SPOOKS and see Dee Lampton as the butler slam into the sliding doors, I can't help but wonder if perhaps that event didn't trigger the appendicitis attack, or whatever internal injury, that killed him in September 1919.