Chester Conklin — The Earl of Guffaw (1927) 🇺🇸
Away from the screen most people do not recognize Chester Conklin, who is simple, unaffected and cheerful — a combination Kiwanian, shopkeeper, politician, and Big Brother.
by Malcolm H. Oettinger
Some few faithful parishioners will remember that not more than a month or two ago I spoke from this very pulpit on the blessedness of comedy. Comedians are coming into repute more and more; comedians are being acknowledged as important contributors to what some one has called the silent drama.
You will agree that Chaplin, Lloyd, and the amazing Langdon [Charles Chaplin | Harold Lloyd | Harry Langdon] are preeminent at the moment, but there is another figure deserving attention — a short, shambling figure who has been carrying off more pictures singlehanded than Bill Powell or Wally Beery [William Powell | Wallace Beery]. By this time you have guessed the answer: I refer to the Earl of Guffaw, Chester Conklin, no less.
Professionally, Chester Conklin is that funny little man with the quizzical brow, the droll gestures, the walrus mustache. The mustache dates back to the days of custard pies and Keystone comedies, and prior to that, to days of vaudeville, “doing Dutch crossfire,” which Mr. Conklin attempted to freshen by discarding the orthodox Weber-Fieldian chin patch and baldhead in favor of the drooping mustache and bushy eyebrows.
Here is no “discovery,” then. Here is a veteran whose triumphs in feature comedies have not surprised him as much as might be suspected. He is not, as a matter of record, the stolid, half-witted, low comedian that the Keystone fragments would suggest. He is a bright, calm, canny trouper, casting about for good parts, wary of stardom, contented with his lot. This last is not altogether amazing when one takes into consideration his two-thousand-dollar weekly wage. This would buy three thousand custard pies a day and still leave enough over for carfare and the movies.
Mr. Conklin, should you harbor any fleeting doubts, is the comical gentleman who enlivened “Too Many Kisses” for Richard Dix and Gregory La Cava, stole “A Woman of the World” from La Negri [Pola Negri] herself, appropriated the lion’s share of applause in connection with “A Social Celebrity.” In this he was competing with the urbane, magnetic, and compelling Menjou [Adolphe Menjou], stealing the acting honors was no small task.
Following these outstanding “supporting” roles he was elevated practically to stellar prominence in “The Wilderness Woman,” in which the flashing Pringle [Aileen Pringle] served as a lovely foil for Conklin’s shrewd buffoonery. And since that uproarious performance he has made epics exclusively. If you don’t consider “McFadden’s Flats” an epic, ask Joseph Plunkett of the Strand, the New York cinema temple that held the film over for two extra weeks to accommodate lovers of the cosmic jest.
When I went to his hotel, then, to meet Chester Conklin, I was prepared to have a good time. Nothing boisterous — he was in New York on vacation — a few comedy falls would suffice.
Chester Conklin is content with his lot, and yearns neither for stardom nor to play Hamlet.
It will sound mossy to the more cynical students in our clinic, but the fact remains, I should never have known him without his make-up, had he not approached me unerringly as one who would say, “Here I come. Guess who!”
As we shook hands I noted that he was clean-shaven, blue-eyed, conventionally clad in a comparatively well-fitting sack suit instead of baggy trousers and speckled vest; pleasant, unostentatious — a composite Kiwanian, shopkeeper, politician, and Big Brother. He was affable, simple, unaffected, cheerful.
Not once did he say anything about the world owing him a living. Probably he considers ‘the debt canceled. Not once did he begin a sentence, “What this country needs —” He is content. Not once did he so much as swear. He is the happy warrior.
“Most people fail to recognize me,” he grinned. “I like it better that way. Poor Mary Pickford has to disguise herself before she ventures into town to shop. Lillian Gish wears dark glasses and a veil when she goes out in public. Charlie Chaplin is mobbed by crowds wherever he goes. I have a cinch. Nobody ever knows me. Even when I’m introduced to folks they often say, ‘Oh, Mr. Conklin, are you any relation to that funny man in the movies?’”
Like Ford Sterling, Chester Conklin finds high comedy little different from slapstick. The former is less energetic, but the mechanics are fundamentally the same. “In slapstick you exaggerate, of course, but you play the thing the same way. I attack a part in any picture from the standpoint of the part itself. It’s only a step from straight comedy to farce, and another step to slapstick.” He was matter-of-fact and modest regarding his tremendous successes during the past twelve months. “The breaks,” he explained, diffidently. If you got a good part, you registered. If you didn’t, you were sunk. But strangely enough, it is Conklin’s fate to register, regardless of the role he is enacting. He has a dominant screen presence; when he is on the scene he draws the eye as definitely and as inevitably as Greek tragedy spells death. His characterization of the old barber in A Social Celebrity was deft and natural, yet he sacrificed nothing of his comic appeal. He was funny at the same time that he managed to command sympathy.
He had, when I saw him, just finished “Cabaret” with Gilda Gray, as well as “Rubber Heels” with Ed Wynn.
I wondered that Wynn had dared to permit the presence of such a stellar clown as Conklin.
“Good business judgment,” said Chester, lighting a cigar. “He wants his first picture to be good. To turn out a good picture he realizes he must surround himself with troupers who are acquainted with their groceries. If a star’s picture flops, the public blames the star. So Wynn very sensibly wants his picture to be a wow; he isn’t anxious to make it a one-man affair. He’s no fool.”
This explained, in a measure, why Conklin himself has shunned starring as religiously as he was humanly able. He has never starred, and, he assured me, harbors no desire to see his name in lights, despite the fact that it is often there.
“Once they star you, the public holds you responsible for your pictures’ success. And, you know, the director makes or breaks a picture. It isn’t the star. That’s a lot of hooey. The star just brings the crowd into the theater. But the picture is the work of the director, first of all, aided by his cast, his camera man, his story. The poor actor simply follows directions. No man can tell how his action looks. He must have a director, and a good one.
“That’s why pictures are so much better than they were,” Conklin said. “We used to shoot a scene once or twice and go on with the story. Now we shoot it ten or twelve times, timing it differently, getting different angles on it, and finally using the shot that looks best on the screen when the rushes are shown. Lots of people crab about the wasted time and effort in taking a scene over and over, but they don’t know what it’s all done for. In comedy, especially, it’s essential. You never know how a gag is building when you shoot it, and you have to do it a number of ways to discover the sure-fire way.”
So it was that comedy was interpreted by one who knows. Not an intellectual, never to be mistaken for a savant, hardly professorial in any slight detail, Conklin speaks of the making of funny pictures with authority and conviction.
“Have you a yen to do Hamlet or something imperishable?” I asked, before sliding down the banisters to the main floor.
He cocked his head quizzically to one side, and peered at me jovially.
“What would Will Hays say to a thing like that?” he counter-questioned.
Make no mistake about the comedy boys! They are the white hopes of the cinema.
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Would you know him without his make-up? No one ever does. It’s Chester Conklin, of all people. In the story on the opposite page, Malcolm H. Oettinger meets him and discovers some of his philosophical views on life in general.
Photo by: Ruth Harriet Louise
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, July 1927