Earle Foxe — The Menacin’ Man (1928) 🇺🇸

December 06, 2024

He had just finished killing Victor McLaglen. And a very neat job he made of it, too.

by Herbert Cruikshank

Personally, I could never understand how some folks can be so messy with their murders. No finesse, no je ne sais quoi — if you know what I mean. But practice makes perfect, and he’d killed Vic several times before.

Nevertheless, it was a good job well done. Particularly when one considers the fact that up to four films ago Earle Foxe was known primarily as the creator of that very silly ass Reginald Fan Bibber. Reggie, you remember, being the two-reeler chappie who had all sorts of ghastly custard-pie things happen to him and his high hat.

But what a different setting this! No comic background here. The scene was real and raw and ruthless as the pungent tang of tar and bilge that permeated the studio. The picture was “The River Pirate.” And the stagnant water on the flooded set lent the odor of the wharves to the stark realism of the scene. In such environment I had seen half-naked shenangoes mingle blood with sweat in murderous battles with baling hooks, eye-gouging, ear-biting battles from which even the victor was scarce able to stagger away.

“Putitdahn, I tellyah! Put it dahn!” Vic McLaglen [Victor McLaglen] had yelled in his Cockney accent. But Foxe, sleek rat of the river, held the gat steady on the big Briton’s heart. Inch by inch they edged nearer, taut with the lust of the battle which must come. Then the sudden leap, the flash of the gun, and “Cut! That’s very good Earle, very good Vic,” from director Bill Howard.

“They’ve certainly made you a deep and dirty menace in this babay,” I ventured as Earle stepped off the set.

“Yes,” responded the ex-slapsticker, “and when they write ‘em dirtier, I’ll play ‘em heavier. Let’s get a glass of milk.”

And over the milk I learned about Foxe from Earle.

Ohio Plays Santa Claus

He was born in Oxford, Ohio. As the feller says, lots of good men come from there. The better they are the quicker they come. Earle was born on Christmas day. Just a little gift to art.

If it hadn’t been for one thing and another, he might still be taking the local talent joy riding. And boy, what a buggy it would be. For old Dan’l Foxe owned the buggy works. And Dan’l was Earle’s grandpa. But, of course, as things happened, the buggy works gradually evolved into the Buick Motor Company. Which makes old Dan’l one of the founders of General Motors. And makes his grandson, Earle Foxe, of course, a darned good movie actor.

Earle fooled around the home grounds Until he was about sixteen. Then he went away to college in Zinzinnatty, the town that helped make Lew Fields famous. Or was it Sam Bernard? And perhaps this was the genesis of that destiny which finally carried him to Hollywood. In any event, Earle waved an early adieu to Euclid and the boys, and at eighteen made his debut as a professional thespian with William Hawtrey. He played a character role, that of an aged man. And in this part toured England and Canada.

But you know how tours are, and Earle wound up on the banks of the more or less beautiful Ohio, answering the calliope call of the “Island Queen.” Not the modern stick-in-the-mud scow, but the glorious show boat whose rakish ribs have long since been blanched by ancient suns.

In her glamourous hulk Foxe was the backbone of that part of the show which followed the dramatic effort, and which might he seen by the wide-eyed yokelry at the slight additional cost of a dime, ten cents, the tenth part of a dollah. Earle rattled the snares, sang illustrated songs, went into his fiancé, and also did a black-face repertoire that knocked ‘em off their chairs at Gallipolis.

After all, this was not the red dramatic meat into which our hero wished to sink his histrionic teeth. So we next fade in on him completing sixty-eight weeks of one night stands, and rescuing the gal at each one of them. Shortly thereafter his attentive ear heard the low, sweet call of the big time, and he followed Tom Meighan [Thomas Meighan] in The College Widow, got an engagement in musical comedy Leave it to Jane, costarred with Tom Wise in Cappy Ricks, was the original Florien Slappey in the stage version of Octavus Cohen’s [Roy Octavus Cohen] story, Come Seven. Then he took a crack at King Love in Everywoman, and with the funds accumulated from these various ventures established his own stock company in Washington, D. C.

But one day in a speakeasy he decided that F Street was too warm to be an ideal summer resort. By the time he had reached another speakeasy he was sure of it, and he wired Henry Duffy to invite him to California for a month. Henry did. And Earle went. That was six years ago. Earle has never been back. And you oughta hear him rave about the climate, and grouch about how they run the movie business.

But even when Earle crossed the desert on the dear old Sante Fe, he wasn’t entirely ignorant regarding the celluloid industry. Back as far as 1909 he had played with Florence Lawrence in Victor Pictures, and played in Kalem productions.

His first real important role was in Universal’s “A Lady of Quality.” And then William Fox signed him for Van Bibber. Van had his birth in the imaginative brain of Richard Harding Davis, and as the character flowed from his talented pen, it was colorful and interesting. But somehow in its transition to the screen some genius decided “ya gotta have a chase.” So the Van Bibber comedies became arrant nonsense as time went on.

One of those sudden shifts hurled Earle into “Upstream,” a feature length effort in which he burlesqued no less an idol than John Barrymore so effectively that director John Ford, one of those second-sight Irishmen, saw beneath the motley of the clown far sterner dramatic fabric.

Thus it happened that Earle became a villainous Prussian what not in Four Sons, a Ritzy gallows-bird in “Hangman’s House.” His work in these laid poor Van Bibber’s ghost for ever and for aye. Perhaps for the reason that there was no one on the lot possessing the temerity to cast a pie in such an evil eye as Earle flashed in these offerings. “The News Parade” followed, and the villain’s dirty laugh fairly begged for Movietone accompaniment to make the village lovers hold hands tighter.

The News Parade having passed Winnie Sheehan’s reviewing stand cum laude, The River Pirate with its juicy villain role was tossed into Foxe’s lap, a very sweet bunch of grapes, indeed.

And this as you see brings us back to Mr. McLaglen’s neat dispatch, followed as it was by the glass of milk at the “Munchers Club” on the Fox lot.

Foxe might be thirty. He’s probably nearer forty. A well-featured chap, tall and slender. His chiefest charm is his smile, as infectious as it is natural. His chiefest asset is his scowl, ferocious as it is affected.

It is his staunch belief that no talent nor ability is required by leading men or comedians, and he’ll name you a list long as a Chicago count of doorkeepers, prop boys, truck drivers, and what have you, plucked from their chosen professions and thrown into action as languishing Lotharios, or custardians of comedy.

He doesn’t cheer loudly for the importation of alleged talent from the lands beyond the sea. He holds that picture goers should see Americans first, and that there are more than enough good actors in the land of the free, without bringing them from the land of the brie.

One may judge as to just how deeply the mark of the beast has been graven on Earle’s brow during his recent cinematic villainies, by his free and unshamed admission that he likes best of all to sneak the toys of his young son and play with them. The boy, little knowing his parent’s deep, dark heart, thinks his old man is a regular feller.

But Earle hopes that his future triumphs may not necessitate too ogre-like impersonations, for he swears that already anxious mothers, seeing his approach, call to their offspring: “Here comes Earle Foxe, come right in the house, darling, and bring the dog in with you!”