Frank Butler — Beneath the Mask (1925) 🇺🇸

Frank Butler is just a clown, a slapstick comedian, playing in the “Spat” family Comedies.

But he is Oxford-trained; he possesses one of the finest minds in the motion-picture ranks.

When his life as a London journalist followed an even tenor, and books and people interested him in a placid way, he had no thought of frolicking in two-reel movies. But suddenly the classics lost appeal. A circus did it. The blare and dirt of it offended his good taste, but he saw beneath that, something that helped people to forget their troubles, something that a cultured life had failed to offer.

The face of a paralytic child lighting up at the Punch and Judy antics caused him to discard the traditions of generations.

In the sorrowful eyes of another clown he saw the thing he was searching for — the beauty and fineness of making people laugh. He saw, too, that comedy might be an art. To his friends’ horror he joined the circus, and after leaving it, went to an equally cheap road show.

All the while his theory grew that the best way to make his life count would be to dispel gloom with amusement.

Recovering from a long illness in Hollywood, where his vagabonding had taken him, he turned to the movies. And as the lugubrious dumbbell, Tewksbury Spat, he hopes to reach the crowds with a little bit of humor.

He is thoroughly a gentleman. He knows literature and character and likes nothing better than a kindred mind with which to delve into psychological phenomena, to discuss, analyze, thresh out facts and theories.

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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, March 1925