THE COMIQUE FILM STUDIO by Charles Simic

Manhattan’s Forgotten Film Studio

Charles Simic

Buster Keaton (left), Fatty Arbuckle (center), and Al St. John, circa 1917

Here, briefly, is the story. In March, 1917, while walking on Broadway, Buster Keaton bumped into a friend from vaudeville who happened to know Fatty Arbuckle, the famous silent movie comedian and Chaplin’s rival. Asked if he had ever acted in motion pictures, Keaton said no, and was invited to drop by Arbuckle’s studio on 48th Street the following Monday. Keaton first declined, because Arbuckle had stolen one of his vaudeville routines in the past, but then changed his mind because his curiosity was piqued by the opportunity to see how movies are made and especially how the gags are filmed.

The Comique Film Studio was located in a warehouse at 318-320 East 48th Street, in the tough neighborhood west of the elevated subway tracks on First Avenue. On the first floor, the Norma Talmadge Film Corporation was in full swing filming Poppy. Near the precariously built sets, a violinist was attempting to put Norma in the proper mood for a love scene with her leading man. On the second floor, Norma’s sister Constance, who first gained attention in D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, was making a new comedy. On the third floor Fatty Arbuckle, who was the first of the silent movie comics to also direct, was at work on a film called The Butcher Boy. There was no script. The director, the actors, and the crew talked over what they were going to do in the next scene and then did it. Keaton with his elegant, laid-back air improvised a routine with a broom and was instantly hired.

Keaton had grown up in show business. His father, Joe, worked in a traveling show with Harry Houdini called the “Mohawk Indian Medicine Company,” which in addition to entertaining rubes, sold patent medicine on the side. Keaton became a part of his parents’ comedy act when he was three. His mom played the saxophone while he goaded his father, who would respond by grabbing the boy by the suitcase handle they had sewn to the back of his jacket and throwing him against the scenery, into the orchestra pit, and at times even at the hecklers in the audience. So one might say he had a professional interest in seeing how Arbuckle dealt with the various acrobatic feats that were the staple of silent comedy.

On April 23, 1917, The Butcher Boy opened in two hundred theaters across the country, including the Strand in Times Square, and soon became a big box office success. Following that, Arbuckle and Keaton made, I believe, two other films in the same building—A Reckless Romeo and Rough House, the first of which no longer survives as far as I know. The company then moved to the Biograph Studio on East 175th Street where Coney Island, His Wedding Night, and a couple of others films were made before it relocated to Long Beach, California in October 1917.

Roughly twenty to twenty-five minutes long, these shorts, which can be seen on YouTube, are still very funny. Along with Arbuckle and Keaton, they feature Al St. John, Arbuckle’s second banana (and nephew), a gangly, loose-limbed acrobat dressed like a scarecrow who played country bumpkins and various kinds of villains. Beyond the slapstick and roughhouse typical of the times, the number of thoroughly original and brilliant comic ideas found in these shorts is staggering. (See, for instance, the marvelous clip on YouTube of the boys eating spaghetti in the 1918 film The Cook.) Keaton once said that making funny pictures is like assembling a watch; you have to be sober or it won’t tick. He also said afterward that everything he knew about film comedy he learned from Fatty Arbuckle, who by the time they met had already been in some twenty films.

Jim in Times Square

Part of Buster Keaton and Fatty Arbuckle's 48th Street movie studio, now a parking garage

I know a bit about the subject because years ago, I read everything I could find on Buster Keaton, and collected his movies and those of other silent movie comedians. Still, if my son had not lived for a time on First Avenue and 48th Street and I had not started parking my car at the 20th Century PARKING GARAGE, which turned out to have been part of the old Comique Film studio, I would not have made the connection.

Just recently I took a look at a documentary on Keaton made years ago, which to my shock placed Arbuckle’s studio in California, though it did not move there till the fall of 1917. Regardless, I was astonished that the building that held the studio run by Joseph Schenk was still there. It would be interesting to find out its history and that of the neighborhood over the decades. I love the idea that the garage was just three blocks from the United Nations and that over the years many world leaders and high diplomatic officials must have ridden past it in their bullet-proof limousines, throwing a casual glance at the entrance through which, almost a century earlier, Fatty, Keaton, and St. John went, if they were not already in the studio whacking each other over the heads with pillows, making feathers fly out of windows.

A few days ago, I took a stroll during the lunch hour past nail salons, stores selling cell phones, and pizza joints to take another look at the building, thinking the only familiar establishments in the neighborhood that the members of the Comique Film Corporation would still recognize are the Irish pub and the funeral parlor. The garage was still there, but to my surprise and horror I discovered that the wing of the old warehouse that contained the studio had recently been torn down and the government of Singapore was raising some kind of building in its place.


December 7, 2012, 12:18 p.m.

CHALK FACE: An Essay on Slivers Oakley by Jon Pult

Chalk Face

    By Jon Pult

     On March 9, 1916 an item in the New York Times headlined "Slivers, Clown Suicide for a Girl" detailed the squalid end of Frank Oakley, the most famous American circus clown of the early twentieth-century.  He had sealed his windows with bath towels at 308 West 71st Street in Manhattan and turned on the gas. A few years earlier, the Times has lavished praise on Oakley, deeming him in one fawning feature "Laugh Maker in Chief to the American People by Popular Acclimation." While the subheading in the news item about his death refers to Oakley as the "Man Who Amused Millions" there is scant mention of his  sawdust triumphs, of "The Ball Game" or his famed "Lobster Walk-around." Rather, the focus was on Oakley's descent, a pathetic and familiar tale of sex, theft, alcohol, and loneliness.

            Frank Oakley was one of the most influential figures in the transformation--the invention, really --of an American style of clowning, a move away from the European tradition of the talking clown that was suited to the intimate confines of the one-ring circus, and a move toward the outsized pantomime and grandiose slapstick necessary to entertain thousands in three rings under a vast canvas big top. And he was paid handsomely for his pratfalls and “panto”, earning  $1,000.00 a week, while other top circus clowns made less than $100.00. Such was Oakley’s talent and reach that no less an authority on the art of comedy than the great silent film clown Buster Keaton, in 1948, counted Oakley one of the three greatest comedians of all-time. But Oakley’s legacy in the development of the American circus was overwhelmed by Keaton’s chosen medium, the motion picture. Today, while other pioneering circus clowns such as Emmett Kelly or Lou Jacobs are still on occasion able, whether by name or by look, to muster some vague recognition, Frank "Slivers" Oakley is largely forgotten. 

            You can find a picture of Oakley in a recent compendium of circus photographs taken by F.W. Glaser between 1901 and 1927. Flip past the photo of an elephant receiving a pedicure while perched atop two wooden half-barrels (a true testament to the cooper's art), and past a picture of the famous pinhead "Zip, the What-is-it?" playing the violin at the entrance to Barnum's "Congress of Freaks," and there's Slivers, once known far-and-wide as "America's greatest chalk-face comedian." 

            Glaser took the photo on the Barnum and Bailey circus lot in 1903, at the beginning of Oakley’s ascent.  The big top looms close behind, its sidewall canvas sagging from the quarter poles.  Oakley's greasepaint is standard clown white, with Harlequinade diamonds over the eyes. We can guess that the triangular shape on his nose, and his exaggerated mouth are red. His shirt is a collarless number, its front filigreed with the braid of a bandsman, while his pants are a gleaming white and heavily starched. The outer seams of each pant-leg curve in a sort of wild crescent, his lower extremities suggesting empty parentheses. Finally, his shoes are in the shape of huge and exaggerated bare feet.

            In the photo, Slivers holds his hand to his ear as if to hear something.  His dirty palm (the remains of greasepaint or the result of a bout of rousting?) faces the camera.  In his left arm, he cradles the handle of a bucket. His expression is deadpan, however, and his stony mien suggests that Oakley is wholly unaware that he is about to be hit with a cane wielded by fellow clown Alex Seabert.  Seabert sits precariously on the back end of a mule.  His curly shoulder-length wig (obscuring much of his face) and his outsize puttynose are in the tradition of the grotesque.  He's wearing a tutu of the sort that might be worn by a lithe funambulist, his muscular calves sheathed in white tights. In the left corner appear the words "Oakley and Seabert" in an ornate hand, but there is no record as to whether this is perhaps the penultimate moment of their act, preceding a roaring "blow-off." 

Oakley, a reedy Swede, was born in 1871, and by the time he appeared in this photograph, he was a bright star in Barnum and Bailey's "Greatest Show on Earth."  This in an era when being a "star" of the circus meant something, when the great traveling tent cities --Barnum and Bailey, Ringling Brothers, the Great Forepaugh Shows -- were at the center of America's cultural life. In his prime, Oakley performed for 20,000 people a day. And in that first decade of the twentieth century, when the circus still held sway, the sawdust spectacle perhaps most revered was Oakley's pantomimed baseball game.  All the rings in the massive tent stood empty to make way for a lone and silent rail of a man, a "Sliver," acting out a scene from the nation's pastime. The “Ball Game” act was so popular that the sheet music to the tune that accompanied the performance, "Slivers: Rag Eccentric," was for sale at shops across the country. 

Few other artifacts remain to attest to Oakley's facility under canvas. There are a scattering of photos, cartoon renderings, and newspaper clippings. A thumbnail description of Oakley's “Ball Game” survives in a Detroit obituary, and the routine seems to have been wholly based on exploring Americans' hatred of umpires.  After setting up a diamond in center ring, Slivers acts out the great cry of the American sports fan- “Kill the Umpire!"-in a jaunty panto. 

            At the start of the routine, according to the Detroit writer, Oakley emerged as a catcher, with his "bird cage" mask and heavily padded mitt.  He popped his fist in the glove a few times and set up, crouching behind the plate. He feigned receiving a pitch, and then in the midst of the motion of tossing the horsehide back to his battery-mate he suddenly wheeled to argue the call with the imaginary ump, throwing off the mask, gesticulating wildly and jawing with his adversary. Later he took a turn at bat, and, after working the count full, "hit" one in the gap, but was thrown out trying "to stretch a three-bagger into a home run."  Another rhubarb with the umpire ensued.  By all accounts, at this point the crowd watching Slivers was delirious. One circus memoir of the period references the need for extra medical personnel because so many in the audience were passing out from laughter. "The entire act was in pantomime," the writer states. "No one but Oakley was on the stage. But so realistic was every move and gesture, so convincing, that he never failed to carry the house." 

There is no film of Slivers performing the “Ball Game” routine, but considering Buster Keaton’s comments about Oakley, it’s not hard to conclude that the masterful solo baseball interlude in Keaton’s classic 1928 film “The Cameraman,”  replete with threatening gestures, crazed pratfalls, and  pick-off plays, is an homage to Oakley. With the aid of that cinematic paean, the press clippings, and the photos of  the stained and billowing tents laid out on the scruffy lots where Slivers performed -- the gilded cage wagons with their exotic cargo of giraffes and hippopotami, the elegant equestriennes, the army of clowns -- we can try to put Oakley inside, put him under canvas, and imagine what it might have been like in mid-summer, in Omaha or French Lick, around the turn of the century, the “Circus Age,” when whole towns would shut down for the arrival of the big show.  The heat amplifying the heady smells of elephant dung and sawdust, the din of the crowd, peppered with the cries of candy butchers-"Cracker Jack . . . Lemonade."  Anticipation, the floor of the big top empty, and then release as the band, forty men strong, plays the first strain of his spry namesake rag.  Here comes Slivers "the only clown in the circus history for whom the three rings were ever cleared."  Thousands of faces focus on the silent figure in the center of the big top. "Hardly human is Slivers," a Detroit newsman writes, "He is, rather, a vitilized caracture (sic); a Sunday comic supplement character, life-sized and animated; he endures blows, buffets, kicks, falls without a sound. The children, and at a circus everyone should be a child, watch him with rapture." They have probably all been waiting for this day, circus day, and this moment. Slivers Oakley, the clown pictured on the heralds that have been pasted all over the town for weeks.  Peals of laughter. Surprise. Like that of a young Studs Terkel who said of  the sight of the vaudeville clown A. Robin, "the Banana Man", on the stage of the Palace Theatre in Chicago: "Me flesh and blood, him on the stage flesh and blood, ecce homo, behold the man."

In 1907, his last season with Barnum and Bailey, Slivers was at the height of his popularity and fame, but according to an interview he gave the Times in March of that year, that height didn’t bring happiness. The headline read “Mr. Slivers on the Serious Business of Being a Clown,” and right below, a subheading: “There are Bruises and Hurts and Moments of Mental Anguish, But the Public Laughs at Them All and Wants the Clown to be Funny in Private Life as Well.”  In the article, Oakley describes a multitude of indignities suffered at the hands of children of all ages: “It’s funny how people can’t understand that we clowns are fellow human animals with just about the same outfit of feelings that the rest of ‘em have.” And later, “I’m afraid I’m a social failure.”  

Professionally, however, he was at his peak.  After studying the audiences in the large theatrical palaces of New York, Oakley, at the end of the 1907 season, left the circus and translated his act from center ring to center stage.   And for a while he was a success. Although a mere speck on the grand expanse of stage of the New York Hippodrome, he was able again to  “carry the house.” 

            But things didn't go as planned. He was married, but soon divorced. Then the story becomes sordid. He played the vaudeville circuit and took to drinking. For a time he bummed around Detroit and "during a spree he got in a row.” When the police were called, and he told them that he was the famous clown Slivers, the Detroit Free Press reported that they “were not impressed in the least."  And then in Utica, New York in 1913, came the beginning of the end.  At a vaudeville house he met Viola Stoll, seventeen, a young "hoofer".  Oakley was forty-two.  Stoll was a kid down on her luck. The show business wasn't working out for her, so she set up house with Slivers in Manhattan. He showered her with jewels, $4,000 worth that he had bought for his ex-wife. The Times explained that after a few weeks she felt "a revulsion" towards the older man.  She took a train to St. Louis, with the jewels, and Oakley had her arrested. She was sentenced to three years in the reformatory. 

But Oakley never stopped pining for young Stoll. Six months before her scheduled release he sought out her mother. He had a message for Viola, he wanted to marry her, to make an honest woman out of her. The mother relayed the message, but two-and-a-half years of confinement had changed Viola Stoll. She wanted no more of the stage and even less of  Oakley. She found the prospect of life with a "traveling clown" unappealing.  She wanted to be a dressmaker.  He didn't take the news well. And then the headline, "Slivers, Clown Suicide for a Girl."

            While the Times focused on the tawdry intrigue in its report on the suicide, an uncredited writer for the Detroit Free Press composed a sort of elegy to Oakley, detailing his many triumphs including a long loving paean to “The Ball Game,” before more thoughtfully noting his troubled end:  "Shattered by whisky, penniless...America's greatest chalk-faced comedian finished his act in tragedy. For years, Slivers’ salary was close to $1,000 a week. Night before last he tried to borrow a quarter and failed.  And so he who was the peer of clowns passed unknown and in poverty, and an art went out with him."

            After 1925, Oakley’s name, at one time among the best known in show business, didn’t appear in the pages of the Times again until 2004.  On October 17 of that year, an article in the Real Estate section reported the opening of the 300 block of West 71st Street, which since the turn of the century had been a dead end. It remains so for Slivers Oakley and his legacy, both a literal and figurative one. While the article, in discussing Oakley and the site of his death, details the Stoll affair and the suicide, there is no mention of his importance or renown, merely that he was “known as Slivers the clown and toured with the Barnum and Bailey circus.” An art went out with him, indeed.

DAVID CARLYON: A Brief History of Clowning in the United States (Part Six)

“Three Types of Clowns” ?

Because Clown College strongly influenced — and may have started — the current idea that there are three types of clowns, it might be helpful to address this topic here. This division splits clowns into whiteface, auguste, and character clown. The dominance of this three-part division after the 1960s suggests the influence of a pamphlet created and illustrated by the school’s second dean, Bill Ballantine. This three-part split does make teaching easier, helping would-be clowns sort through comic impulses.

That split also reflects comic traits. The whiteface and auguste fit the straight man/stooge comedy pair, while the character clown, especially the currently popular tramp clown, represents the solo comic figure. However, any clown “type” is inherently vague, as traits inevitably overlap. For instance, the blackface circus clown before the Civil War talked but was not considered a “talking clown.” Similarly whiteface clowns were originally knockabout comedians, while today they’re often considered too refined for broad physical comedy.

This division of convenience has evolved into what many consider requirements. That urge for certainty may reflect growing uncertainty about what a clown is. Before Clown College, a circus clown was simply and clearly the costumed comic figure in a circus. But after the Sixties, a “clown” could be someone who had just graduated from Clown College, with no experience, or anyone who simply decided to apply makeup and throw on mismatched clothes. In such a fluid situation, it could be reassuring to have rules to follow, an attempt to prove that one was “officially” a clown. That urge to claim the role would explain the rise in common use of clown slang, such as “Joey,” “Clown Alley,” and “First-of-May” (rookie).

In any case, here are the types, as now regarded, as they developed, and as symbols:

            The whiteface has a full-face makeup of white, with accents in colors, and wears a neat, even fancy costume. Currently the whiteface functions either as the straight man in a comedy pair or as a presenter, often elegantly costumed. Historically the whiteface began as knockabout stage clowns like Grimaldi, with a side influence from commedia dell’arte characters. In the 19th-century circus, whiteface clowns were both knockabout and talking clowns, and they continued broad physical comedy into the 20th century. Though now regarded as more an authority figure, what a whiteface clown does still depends more on the needs of a gag or the show than the “type.”

            The auguste (pronounced aw-GOOST) typically has skin-tone makeup, with a red nose and white around the mouth and eyes, and wears baggy pants. This is what most people consider a generic “circus clown.” Some wear more elegant costumes, and can be called “neat” augustes. The auguste is usually the stooge or second-banana in a comedy pair, though it can also function like a whiteface. The most common origin story says that an American performer (variously a clown, rider, or acrobat) named Tom Belling was kicked out of his circus in Germany in the 1860s and got laughs when he snuck back in dressed in oversized clothes, fell, and bloodied his nose, with the baggy pants, red nose and blundering establishing the “type.” The label “auguste” has various origin stories itself; a likely one says it began as an ironic flip of “august” (aw-GUST), the word for dignified. Some see a class division, with the whiteface representing the elite, the auguste as exemplar of the rising / struggling middle class, and the tramp clown standing for the lower class.

            The character clown is not really a type, even in this three-part division, but a category encompassing many types of clowns. Anything that can be identified as a character, such as a policeman or a professor, can be turned into a character clown. Perhaps the first character clown was one of the most popular ever, the rube clown. Nineteenth-century stages and circuses were full of this unsophisticated hick from the sticks, and some still play it. The non-circus rodeo clown, for instance, is costumed like the rube clown. Other character clowns in the 1800s were “ethnic” clowns, based on major immigrant groups, the “Dutch” (German), Irish, Italian, and “Hebrew” (Jews). (The Jewish comedian Chico Marx played an Italian character.) With the increase in woman clowns, the “cute little girl” emerged as a type. Currently, the most common character clown is the tramp clown, evolved in the late 1800s from unemployed tramps caused by the Industrial Revolution. (Some writers, on no apparent evidence, distinguish between tramp and hobo.) The tramp clown has become a symbol of the sad, lovable clown; ironically as the tramp clown became more lovable, the original tramp, the homeless person, became more scorned. The character clown demonstrates the imprecise nature of clown categories: With males clowns often playing exaggerated females, are they “women" characters,” whitefaces dressed in drag, or augustes simply goofing around? 

THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENT IN PHYSICAL/ VISUAL COMEDY IN THE LAST 700 YEARS!

This man is pure genius; a wizard, a true star!

When your grandkids are watching The Exploding Banana Face Show on The Exploding Banana Face Channel (on Steve Jobs IV's IMAX-ready HD iGlasses) you'll be able to say that you saw it here first.

THE BANANA MAN

I spent most of the day in an awful funk over the news of Bill Strong's passing.

I got a call from a friend at just the right time that picked me up and helped me get on with my day. I'm still not in the greatest spirits, but I'm much better than I was.

And when you feel low what's better than some Banana Man?

CLOWNALLEY.NET VOLUME 3 DVD OUT NOW!

THE CLOWNALLEY.NET VOLUME 3 DVD NOW AVAILABLE ON EBAY!

The 3rd edition of the CLOWNALLEY.NET video series, a salute to some of the great clowns of American vaudeville, is now available for order on eBay and features:

Chaz Chase
Red Skelton
A. Robins - The Banana Man
Herb Williams
The Foys
O'Donnell & Blair
Willie, West & McGinty
Jack Benny
Laurel & Hardy
Shaw & Lee
Johnny Puleo and the Harmonica Rascals
Milton Berle
The Gutis
Wally Boag
George Carl

To order, please click the title of this post to be taken to the eBay listsing. Thanks!

PHIL SILVERS

PHIL SILVERS

From Wikipedia...


Phil Silvers (May 11 1911 – November 1 1985) was an American entertainer and comedy actor. He is best known for starring in The Phil Silvers Show, a 1950s sitcom set on a U.S. Army post in which he played Sergeant Bilko.



Early life and career

Born Fischl Silver in Brooklyn, New York, Silvers was the youngest of eight children in a Russian Jewish family. His father was one of the workers on the early New York skyscrapers. Silvers started entertaining at age 11, when he would sing in theaters when the projector broke down (a common occurrence in those days). Two years later, he left school to sing professionally, before appearing in vaudeville as a stooge.

Silvers then landed work in short films for the Vitaphone studio, burlesque houses, and on Broadway, where he made his debut in the short-lived show Yokel Boy. Critics raved about Silvers, who was hailed as the bright spot in the mediocre play. He then wrote the revue High Kickers, until he went to Hollywood to star in films.

He made his film debut in Hit Parade of 1941 (1940) (his previous appearance as a pitch man in Strike Up the Band was cut). Over the next two decades, he appeared in character roles for MGM, Columbia, and 20th Century Fox, in such films as Lady Be Good, Coney Island, Cover Girl, and Summer Stock. When the studio system started collapsing, he returned to the stage.

Silvers wrote the lyrics for Frank Sinatra's "Nancy (With the Laughing Face)". Although he was not a songwriter, he wrote the lyrics on a whim while visiting Sinatra's home with composer Jimmy Van Heusen. The song became a popular hit in 1944 and was a staple in Sinatra's live performances.

Silvers scored a major triumph in Top Banana, a Broadway show of 1952. Silvers played Jerry Biffle, the egocentric, always-busy star of a major television show. (The character is said to have been based on Milton Berle.) Silvers dominated the show and won a Tony Award for his performance. He repeated the role in a 1954 film version that was originally released in 3-D.




1950s fame and later career

Silvers became a household name in 1955 when he starred as Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko in The Phil Silvers Show. The military comedy became a huge television hit, with the opportunistic Bilko fast-talking his way through one obstacle after another. Most episodes of the series were filmed in New York. The series ceased production in 1959, not owing to any decline in popularity but because of high production costs (the show had a huge ensemble cast; see the Wikipedia entry for The Phil Silvers Show).



Throughout the 1960s he appeared internationally in films such as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and 40 Pounds of Trouble. He was featured in Marilyn Monroe's last film, the unfinished Something's Got to Give. In the 1963-1964 television season, he appeared as Harry Grafton, a factory foreman interest in quick-rich-quick schemes, much like the previous Bilko character, in CBS's 30-episode The New Phil Silvers Show, with co-stars Stafford Repp, Herbie Faye, Buddy Lester, Elena Verdugo as his sister, Audrey, and her children, played by Ronnie Dapo and Sandy Descher. In 1967 he starred as a guest in one of the famed British Carry On films, Follow That Camel, a Foreign Legion spoof in which he played a variation of the "Sergeant Bilko" character. Producer Peter Rogers employed him to ensure the Carry On films' success in America. His salary was £30,000, the largest Carry On salary ever, only later met by the appearance of Elke Sommer in Carry On Behind. Silvers' presence did not ensure the film's success on either side of the Atlantic.

Silvers was offered the leading role of conniving Roman slave Pseudolus in the Broadway musical comedy A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Silvers declined, and the role went instead to Zero Mostel, who was so successful in the role that he repeated the role in the 1966 film version. By this time Silvers realized his error, and agreed to appear in the film as a secondary character, flesh merchant Marcus Lycus. When actor-producer Larry Blyden mounted a Broadway revival of Forum in 1972, he wanted Phil Silvers to play the lead, and this time Silvers agreed. The revival was a big hit.

Silvers also guested on The Beverly Hillbillies, and various TV variety shows such as The Carol Burnett Show, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and The Dean Martin Show. Perhaps Silvers' most memorable guest appearance was as curmudgeonly Hollywood producer Harold Hecuba in an episode (titled "The Producer") of Gilligan's Island (Silvers's production company Gladasya - named after his catchphrase "Gladdaseeya!" - financed the show).



Illness and death

In 1972, Silvers suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered. Despite his poor health, he continued working into the early 1980s including an appearance on Fantasy Island as an old comic trying to reunite with his old partner, and on Happy Days as the father of "Jenny Piccolo" (played by his real-life daughter Cathy Silvers). A frail Silvers, interviewed before his death, revealed one of his secrets: "I’m an impatient comedian. And I feel the audience is as impatient as me." Silvers ended his comedy career appearing in mostly blanked British films, which were usually pointed as the films which destroyed the BFI in the seventies.



Silvers died on November 1, 1985 in Century City, California at the age of 74. The cause of death was a heart attack. He was interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California.



Personal life

Silvers was as compulsive a gambler in real life as his legendary comic character Sgt. Bilko. He suffered from depression on and off over the years. His memoirs were titled 'The Laughs were on Me'.

He was rumored to watch his own movies and television shows over and over while living in a nursing home.



Legacy

In 2003, The Phil Silvers Show was voted Best Sitcom in the BBC guide to television comedy. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted #42 on the list of the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

NY HIPPODROME: Billy Rose's Jumbo

The 1935 premier of Billy Rose's JUMBO, the final production staged at the massive NY Hippodrome with cameos by first-nighters Ed Wynn, Fannie Brice, George Burns and Gracie Allen. Imagine Slivers Oakley, Marceline, Toto, Joe Jackson or Poodles Hanneford working this enormous stage. The entire Cole Bros. Circus (with Otto Griebling, Emmett Kelly and Jojo Lewis in the Alley) appeared there in the 30s.

The production was directed by longtime Ringling director John Murray Anderson.

In addition to Jimmy Durante (who reprised his role in the 1962 film version) the show featured several circus acts including A. Robins, the Banana Man.

At about 3:15, if I'm not mistaken, the Kimris (Bill and Trudy Strong's family) are included.

Wow.

The Banana Men

Clips of both A. Robins and Sam Levine, the performers known to audiences as "The Banana Man".

First up is a clip of A. Robins (although this is in dispute as Robins would have been 61 years old when this 1947 film was made 1947 and the performer seen here doesn't look a day older than the A. Robins seen in the 1939 Red Skelton short SEEING RED), originally known to vaudeville audiences as "The Walking Music Store" or "The One Man Music Store".

Robins, a talented NY area toy and prop maker as well as vaudeville and circus clown built all of his own props. Over time he added big bunches of his spring-loaded fruit to the enormous list of musical intruments he could load into his oversized coat, including (seemingly) hundreds and hundreds of bananas, hence the change in billing to "A. Robins: The Banana Man".

Robins passed away in the early 50s. It is uncertain if he trained his successor, Sam Levine, personally or Mr. Levine was trained by their agent, Max Roach.

Either way, Mr. Levine assumed the mantle of "The Banana Man" in the early 50s and kept Mr. Robins' unique brand of visual comedy alive on many, many television programs throughout the 50s, 60s and into the early 70s. He is probably best remembered for his numerous appearances on "Captain Kangaroo" throughout those years.

The clip of Mr. Robins (or Mr. Robins' unknown immediate successor) is taken from the 1947 film MOTHER WORE TIGHTS.

The clip of Mr. Levine is from late in his career and is believed to be from an early 70s (possibly his final) appearance on CAPTAIN KANGAROO.



For more information on The Banana Man act and character, please click the title of this post to be taken to Rhett Bryson's excellent tribute page.

A. Robins from SEEING RED (1939)

I can't take credit for presenting this one, although I wish that I could. I've got two copies of this scene from the 1939 film SEEING RED, each with a flaw. I was hunting down a new copy when I saw that someone had beaten me to the punch and posted it to YouTube the other day.

Ladies and Gentlemen, in one of only two known film appearances, it gives me great pleasure to introduce the extremely inventive Mr. A. Robins, originally known as the "One Man Music Shop" or "The Walking Music Shop" and later simply as "The Banana Man".

This is not Sam Levine, the man who later presented the same act (with the same props) on television from the 40s through the 70s, this is the original Banana Man himself.

Mr. Robins was the featured clown on Ringling's 1943 Madison Square Garden spectacular entitled Spangles.


For more on A. Robins, Sam Levine and the Banana Man act please click the title of this post.



From Mark Evanier's blog NEWS FROM ME...

A man named A. Robins started doing his odd act in the days of vaudeville, occasionally venturing into circuses. It was an act that basically consisted of him taking things out of his pockets and using his voice, sometimes with the aid of a kazoo-like device, to provide the sounds of musical props. In most appearances, he'd drop the items he produced into a large chest which would eventually turn into a train — sometimes with many cars — and he'd ride it off stage at the end.

Originally, the act was called "The Walking Music Shop" but he spent so much of his on-stage time finding stalks of bananas in his pockets that he came to be known as "The Banana Man."

Mr. Robins, who was also a toy and propmaker, performed his unnatural act until around the end of World War II. In the fifties, The Banana Man was a frequent guest on all the live kids' shows of that era (Howdy Doody, Mickey Mouse Club, Captain Kangaroo, etc.) and even on variety shows for adults, including Ed Sullivan's. By this time, the act and its unique props were in the hands of a man named Sam Levine, though he was never billed as anything but The Banana Man. Once in a while, he was even billed as "A. Robins, The Banana Man," even though the first A. Robins — whose real name was Adolph Proper — passed away around 1950.

Among folks who study such matters, there is some argument as to whether someone else (or maybe even several someone elses) performed as The Banana Man after the act's originator sold it off and before Levine assumed the role. In any case, Levine was the guy I saw on all those shows and he was mesmerizing. I couldn't take my eyes off this odd man when he was on TV. Neither could most of my friends, and we all tried to mimic his bizarre, high-pitched humming, sometimes merging it with impressions of Curly Howard. He seems to have retired in the mid-sixties but his haunting song lingers on.

The following clip is introduced by a youthful Red Skelton. It's from a 1939 short film called Seeing Red, and it's one of the few times Robins performed on film...and as I said, it's a very short version of what he did on stage. In fact, he doesn't even get around to producing any bananas. Oddly enough, although Sam Levine did the act on hundreds of TV shows, clips of him are equally hard to come by.

From Marcelo "Peppo" Melison

Hi there, Pat:

I wanted to write you for the last past weeks, I really need to say a huge THANK YOU !!! for the incredible opportunity you are giving me through your blog... But... let me explain myself a little better...

My name is Marcelo Melison, aka PEPPO the Clown. I'm from Argentina, but I emmigrated to Canada seven years ago.
I'm a collector like you, I'm looking here and there for photos, books, newspaper clippings, whatever... I don't exactly remember how I did it, but like a month ago I met your website. Oh dear... How can I make you understand how incredibly happy all the photos and video clips made me?

I saw the one and only Grock on stage for the very first time in my life !!! (almost twenty years ago I met a guy at work, he was from Switzerland, and somehow he mentioned Grock's name, he saw him when he was a child, back in his country... I almost drove him crazy asking him about Grock's act !!!). I saw the Banana Man, a longer clip of his act (I saw a very brief moment of it in the PBS video "Vaudeville" and I loved it... Then I met his official website and because I loved what I saw in some of the photos, I made a huge papier mache hand, like his... children love it !!!). And so many photos, bits of information here and there that inspire me, give me ideas, or, simply, just make me happy...

As I mentioned, I'm from Argentina, so I grew up watching and absorbing the European tradition of clowning (which is the one in use in those small one ring circuses) which means, lots of verbal comedy, some "violent" stooge-like slapstick, and music, a lot of music... Argentinian Clowns usually play "normal" instruments like saxophone, violin, guitar, trombone... and crazy ones like bellows, bicycle pumps, car horns, metal discs, saws, etcetera.

I had the good fortune of meeting a clown who was born in his family circus, he was THE Clown in my book. He took me under his wing and he taught me so, so, so much, that you couldn't believe it. He was a very generous man, he was in his seventies when I met him; he passed away before I moved to Canada. So, when I came to this country I had to study the American style of clowning, with more exagerated costume and make up, more visual action, and pantomime. Quite a learning process !!!.

So, Pat, all this long message to say, again, THANK YOU for all the great work you are doing by helping other "clown scholars" like me to do research and get inspiration for more nutty stuff to be enjoyed for "children of all ages " (I just love that definition).

If you are interested, I can scan some photos of Argentine clowns from my collection and e-mail them to you. Some of the explanatinos could be interesting to you, I think.

Dear Pat, please take care, my best for you and all the people you have in your heart. May God bless you and all the children you make happy. Hope to know from you soon !!!.

Your Brother Clown,
PEPPO

Charlie Cairoli: Babes in Toyland 1954

An equally bad transfer as yesterday's footage of the Banana Man from the same live 1954 NBC broadcast of "Babes in Toyland", this time featuring an entree by Charlie Cairoli and, I believe, Paul Freeman.

The interplay between Charlie and Paul blurs the distinction between the comedy styles of circus, vaudeville, burlesque and music hall as Paul reminds me more than anything of, essentially, a musical Bud Abbott in traditional whiteface makeup and wardrobe while Charlie, by turns, evokes the spirits of Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx, Lou Costello and Stan Laurel.

The strength of the material hopefully excuses the poor quality of the video. I hope to be able to post better transfers soon.

Merry Christmas John Cooper!

The Banana Man: Babes in Toyland 1954

Sam Levine as the Banana Man (using props, costume and character developed by A. Robins who had been billed both as "The Banana Man " as well as "The One Man Music Shop") performing on a live 1954 NBC television broadcast of Babes in Toyland.

This is neither the best quality video nor the best performance of the act (it is rushed quite a bit) but I hope to be able to post a better quality video of a better performance soon.

A. Robins: The Banana Man

The original Banana Man, A. Robins. Robins was featured in Spangles - The Continental Circus, a one-ring show produced by RBB&B Circus for Madison Square Garden the summer of 1943. His act was described as, "The Banana Man Himself! Pre-eminent Star of Continental Circus and Music Hall Fame -- The Inimitable A. Robins, The Walking Victory Garden, Artfully Assisted by Seductive Spanglettes."

For more info on The Banana Man please visit:
http://facweb.furman.edu/~rbryson/BananaMan/index.html

Description by Bruce Johnson