Charley Chase — Reversing the Usual Order (1925) 🇺🇸

Every well-read fan knows that being an actor is the usual training for becoming a director. It gives the director a player’s viewpoint.

But Charley Chase, Hal Roach’s star of two-reel comedies in the character of Johnny Jump, has another story to tell. He left vaudeville a few years ago to become a general all-round man, actor, assistant, gag man, and everything else, to learn to be a director. Then he went to Roach’s in that position and eventually supervised all the comedies made there except those of Harold Lloyd. A little more than a year ago, he went back to acting in one-reelers, was promoted to two-reelers, and is now one of the Roach comedy mainstays.

“I find,” he says, “that I can work with a director better than the average actor, because I know his end of it. I resumed acting because there is more money, more advancement, and more certainty of success in it than to continue as a director.”

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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, October 1925

Among Those Present, 1925, 1920s, Picture Play Magazine, Charley Chase