Fri Jul 07, 2017 7:30 pm
I'm surprised at the number of Nitratevillains who admit to unfamiliarity with Lloyd Hamilton. Yes, he is the Ham in the "Ham & Bud" series I have been warning people about for decades. However, after he and Bud Duncan split up, Hamilton went off on his own and, first with the help of Charles Parrott (aka Charlie Chase) as his director, he became a highly skilled and inventive gag technician; you'll see several of those comedies here, and the four I've seen are very entertaining.
It was about 1922 that he began developing his comic persona, and it was a great one: an overweight, slightly fey man in a cloth cap, who walked like a duck. He was called "The Poor Soul", but I think of him as "The Shlamazel", which is a type in Jewish humor. Everyone knows the shlamiel, the walking embodiment of Murphy's Law: if anything can go wrong for him, it does. If there is a banana peel anywhere in the city, he will slip on it. If there is is an open manhole, the shlamiel will fall into it. And he will land on the shlamazel, who was down there, minding his own business when the universe came along, fetched him a smack on the head, and went on its way, not caring about him. Keaton was stoic. Hamilton was indignant at the world's indignities. You feel for him. At least, I do.
One of his great shorts is Move Along (1926), in which he is tossed out of his rooming house and forced to make his home on the snowy street; another is The Movies (1925), in which Ham goes to Tinseltown and reality and perception become indistinguishable. These two are available -- one was in The Slapstick Encyclopedia. Looser than Loose had a bunch of Hamilton discs -- alas, he released through Educational, and his stuff went up in the Fox vault fire, so not much exists. But what does is prime short comedy. Looser than Loose managed to get their hands on and release a lot of his stuff a decade or so ago.
The shorts from the early twenties are not likely to be topnotch -- as I said, I've seen four of them. What they are is perfectly timed and executed gag comedies, under the direction and frequently with the participation of Charley Chase. I haven't seen A Home Made Man, but I have high hopes for it.
And so should you. At least to the extent of $30. Are you saving it up for the next Adam Sandler comedy?
Bob
Last edited by
boblipton on Sat Jul 08, 2017 4:46 am, edited 2 times in total.
New and vigorous impulses seem to me to be at work in it,[the cinema] and doubtless before long it will drop all slavish copying of the stage and strike out along fresh paths. -- Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree
