COMIC EMBARKS ON SECOND FILM CAREER IN 72ND YEAR

Turpin with Oliver Hardy in Two’s Company, released as Saps at Sea, May 3, 1940

Cross-Eyed Star Now Out To Convulse Another Generation

By MAY MANN, Standard-Examiner Staff

    HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 9 – “Heroes are born – not made,” remarked Ben Turpin, who as a cross-eyed comedian convulsed one generation of movie patrons – and is now about to start a second career at the age of 72.

    Turpin, as funny-eyed as ever, was standing on the set of the new Stan Laurel-Oliver Hardy picture at Hal Roach studios. He plays the role of a plumber whose crossed eyes are responsible for the erratic plumbing in the Laurel and Hardy apartment.

    The director called for action and Turpin and Hardy stepped into a flooded bathroom set. Water was spurting from faucets and Hardy began reprimanding the naive cross-eyed Ben.

    “I can’t understand what’s wrong,” he explained. “It all looked all right to me when I was putting it together.”

Custard-Pie Ring

    In 1925 Ben Turpin retired from pictures. Slapstick comedy and custard pie-throwing had become obsolete. His real estate holdings occupied his time.

    Hollywood Cavalcade featuring the Keystone Comedy Cops brought him back to the screen earlier this year. “Now that slapstick is being revived, I think I’ll start my career over again from where I left off,” he mused.

    Whited-haired, the comedian walks with a springy step and vows that he can keep up with the sprintiest. “My first comedy was made in 1907 and was entitled An Awful Skate,” he recalled. “In fact it was pretty awful, but we used to get a lot of laughs. I don’t know whether the audience had more fun watching us then we had ourselves.

90 Scenes a Day

    “We used to make 90 scenes a day, in those days. We didn’t have stand-ins or doubles. We did our own falling – and every night we’d apply the liniment bottle to black and blue spots and next morning’d find us falling out of runaway cars, horses, trolleys, or off buildings or cliffs. It was a great lark to us.

    “We never had a scenario or a script. Someone would get an idea about a stolen necklace – or the villian pursuing the heroine – and the picture would start right out – and end when we’d shot enough film and had put in enough good laughs.

    “I was a hero of a sort – though my cross-eyes defeated any serious notions I had along those lines. I played leads opposite Mabel Normand, Phyllis Haver, Marie Prevost, Mary Thurman and Louise Fazenda.

    “We didn’t have a lot of lights and things. Quite often our film was shot out on the beach and in a little prop village out in the sunshine at the Sennett studio.”

Radical Change

    The most radical change for Ben Turpin in modern day movies is correlating the action and dialogue. It’s difficult for him to get used to the idea of acting for the camera at the same time he speaks lines.

    Your reporter asked if he would make another picture on completion of the Laurel-Hardy opus. “Yep, I fully expect to stay in harness,” he said. “When I get through over here I’ll take my grease-paint box over to Charlie Chaplin’s. I’m going to play the cross-eyed executioner who shoots the wrong spies in his movie The Dictator.” (That’s the picture based on Hitler).

Twice As Well Off

    “Cock-eyes are always good for a laugh,” he concluded, as he departed for the flooded bathroom set for another “take.” “I see everything double – but that’s plenty good enough for me. Where the average person only sees one dollar – I see two when I have one and so on – which is a comfortable feeling. Makes a man feel twice as well off. I wouldn’t trade my eyes – no sir! Not even to be a hero!”

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My thanks to Ed Watz for bringing the above recently found article to my attention, unfortunately a little late for inclusion in the book, For Art’s Sake. In the headline, it should be noted that Turpin was embarking on his 71st year and not 72nd. Ben sadly died before reaching his 71st birthday and unfortunately never made it in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator.

Lost and Found – or – Some Liars
   Friends, whether it’s a letter, an ad, an article or book, there’s nothing more humiliating than a typo. Well I just caught my first one in the pages of For Art’s Sake, right there on page 161. No matter how many times you read and re-read for those glaring errors they seem to evade you until that day of reckoning, the printed piece.
   So I’d like you to know that the photo at the bottom of page 161 is actually a scene from the Vogue comedy, Lost and Found (released August 6, 1916), and not from Some Liars as I gave erroneously. DOAH!

Tellin’ the Cock-Eyed World

Welcome to my blogsite where I hope to keep you informed of anything and everything on one of the screen’s earliest movie comics and the Greatest Cross-eyed Comedian in the World, BEN TURPIN!

On these pages I’ll be adding new and old, and/or interesting items covered or not in my recently published For Art’s Sake – The Biography and Filmography of Ben Turpin from BearManor Media.
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Puddinfoot Pete (Turpin, center) paying the organ grinder after breaking into a dance in The Hidden Treasure.

Ben Turpin at American

   In late 1912 Ben found his way to the Chicago studios of the American Film Manufacturing Company, who had recently begun to produce comedies. Turpin’s association with the firm has been obscured by time and it was not until very recently, with the discovery of a reel by Dana Driskel, Filmaking Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, were we even aware of Ben’s involvement at American. This little split-reeler comedy, The Hidden Treasure (also known as The Philanderings of Puddinfoot Pete), was released November 30, 1912:

   Bill Binks sold his ranch and came home in high glee, carrying the currency, for Bill didn’t believe in banks. Bill tried tried to think of an unusual place to hide that currency and finally hit upon an old pair of boots, then Bill betook himself off without saying a word to his faithful helpmate. Puddinfoot Pete (Turpin), awakening from a delightful slumber beneath the sheltering side of a barrel, stretched himself and made his way to the eats. Repeated knocks at Bill’s door so incensed Bill’s wife that in desperation she hurled half the articles from the kitchen at poor Pete who wound up with the boots.

   Getting into the boots, Pete found a giant stack of bills. Recovering from his faint, he set out on the task of making the world happier, and incidentally spreading Bill’s bills wherever there seemed no joy. He hired an automobile and set out for a restaurant. What Pete did to the chicken and the sugar is a scream. With a full stomach he hailed forth once more and seeing a woman grinding an organ fell to dancing, much to the happiness of all concerned. He left a small package of bills behind him and sailed forth in quest of all sorts of funny adventures.

   Passing a grocery store, Pete stopped dead. Perspiration broke out in great beads on his forehead, for there staring at him in the face was forty boxes of soap, neatly arranged on the store front. Pete didn’t hesitate. Calling an express wagon, he paid for the soap and personally saw it taken to the wharf. Then he carefully piled it up and made one grand plunge into the middle of it, and thus did Pete get back at an old enemy. He wound up the day in a remarkable manner. Out of a new building, friends carried an injured workman. Pete followed them sadly home. To the wife he gave what remained of the money, and after a brief interval of desperate misery, struck up a tune and went back to sleep on his lumber pile. Moving Picture World, November 23, 1912

Turpin (2nd from left) in his next split-reel comedy for American, Mrs. Brown’s Baby, released December 21, 1912

  

   Why Turpin made his way to American may have just been a matter of needing work. Surely he had friends in directors Gilbert P. Hamilton and A. M. Kennedy, both former Essanay associates, who may well have helped Ben secure employment. However, Turpin’s association as actor or otherwise with American is unknown this early in my research, although it is known that Ben also starred in the company’s next release, Mrs. Brown’s Baby.