The Expressions of Larry Semon (1920) 🇬🇧

The film comedian who has risen to the front rank of film laughter-makers

Larry Semon, the popular Vitagraph comedian, had many varied experiences before he finally settled down to success on the screen, his earliest recollections are of those days when he travelled with his father’s music-hall troupe of artistes.

This troupe boasted a hypnotist, a singer, a dancer and an acrobat.

Larry acted as understudy to each of these performers, and whenever one of them became ill, Larry had to fill the vacant place.

His versatility and determination to do the best he was capable of usually saved the situation.

Larry’s Efforts as a Cartoonist.

He gained a great deal of valuable experience in those days, but he was not altogether satisfied with the life and the opportunities it presented, so he finally decided to leave, and take up caricaturing as a profession.

Larry had, from his earliest days, aspired to be a great artist. He secured a situation as a cartoonist on ono of New York’s important daily papers, and received a salary of something like £8 per week.

Unfortunately, however, the editor of the newspaper did not think quite so much of Larry’s artistic efforts, and after a while he suggested that perhaps gardening or house-building would be more in his line.

Poor Larry took this sarcasm to heart, and immediately began to look around for some other more suitable occupation.

A Living Cartoon.

Then he thought of the screen and applied to the Vitagraph company for a job. Larry started making weird grimaces and distorting his already wide mouth, and the producer was so impressed with his comical possibilities that he decided to give him a chance.

Larry soon showed that he could be really funny on the screen, and during the last few years he has rapidly forged to the front as a first-rate film comedian. Indeed to-day, Larry Semon’s only equal is Charles Chaplin.

The seal to his success came recently when Vitagraph renewed his engagement for a term of three years, at the immense salary of “three million, six hundred thousand dollars.”

The photographs of Larry, shown on this page, indicate his power of humorous expression.

Larry Semon believes that natural comedy is the only sincere kind. Beards, wigs and grease paint give an artificial touch to an otherwise spontaneous laugh.

So Larry scours the countryside in search of types to appear in his pictures. He has made a living cartoon of himself, and he believes in making others do the same.

His Mission in Life.

He is a philosopher, too.

“After all,” he remarked recently, “we were put on earth to make others happy, and if we are blessed with a funny face, we should consider it an honour to use it in making others laugh.”

“But I can’t act,” protested a quaint character that Larry wanted in one of his films called “The Grocery.”

“You don’t have to act,” said Larry. “If you did, you would spoil the whole show. Just be natural. Help yourself to biscuits, when the proprietor’s not looking, and the rest will come easy.”

“I know how to do that,” chuckled the old man; “I’ve done it for years in the village store.”

Thus Larry went through a small town looking up peculiar types for his “The Grocery,” and before he had finished he had convinced half the people that their object in life was to make others laugh at them.

His ThreeThe film comedian who has risen to the front rank of film laughter-makersAssistants.

In the village grocery store he found a man asleep and he engaged him to sleep in his comedy. The man said he could sleep anywhere, and Larry never said a word about the treacle he was about to dump on the sleeper. What happened afterwards was not acting. It was real.

In another picture Larry has the assistance of a chimpanzee, a white rat, and a kitten, and he has trained them to be three clever actors.

Two of his recent successes which you will shortly have an opportunity to see are “Dew Drop Inn,” and “The Head Waiter.”

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Photo Captions:

• Do you mean it?
• That’s a good joke.
• You surprise me.
• A knowing wink.
• I am hurt.
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(Special to “The Picture Show.”)

Collection: Picture Show Magazine, May 1920