“Smiling” Bill Parsons — A Face That Makes Fun (1919) 🇬🇧

The comedian who makes you laugh loudest when he is not “Smiling.”

Comedians who are really funny are few and far between, and to be a successful laughter-maker on the screen is the greatest accomplishment of all. The absence of the spoken quip and jest of the stage must be compensated by humorous expression and action. “Smiling” Bill Parsons is a master in these arts. In a short time he has won a great reputation for clean, brisk comedy, and his face, figure, and funniosities are known nation-wide.

When “Smiling” Bill first went into films, his comedies were not widely heralded or advertised, but their humour won increasing audiences everywhere. His fame just “growed,” and the more people saw of him, the more they wanted to.

There is nothing strained or forced about his fun. When we are watching him on the screen, we are forced to the conclusion that his humour has not been thought out and planned. It is apparently evolving in the ordinary course of events, perhaps while lie is engaged in a “screen” conversation, at dinner, or, in fact, wherever he may happen to be.

The Champion Gloom Killer

His success lies in the fact that he is homely, and not merely a manufactured comedian. He is just the sort of man one would like to have about the house. What an asset he would be to the ordinary domestic household. Can’t you imagine him teasing sister, ragging the boy, bouncing baby on his knee, and digging dad in the ribs? Wherever he was, gloom would give place to happiness and laughter.

But besides being a first-rate comedian, “Smiling” Bill Parsons is a very keen business man. He has built up a big organisation in California to increase the output of his comedies, and he is leaving no stone unturned to merit the attention which his Capitol comedies have attracted. A very large number of new players have been added to his companies.

His Newly-Married Wife

“Bill” also manages the affairs of his newly-married wife, Billie Rhodes, and he is going to see that she appears in far more ambitious pictures in the future. She has, of course, only appeared so far in two reel comedies; He has recently signed contracts that place her services under one of the most important managements, and Miss Rhodes will be at the head of an entire company of fifty players, and a complete technical organisation.

The first of her new films will be called The Blue Bonnet. This is a story of the Salvation Army, and Ben Wilson [Ben F. Wilson] will also appear in it.

A quaint incident occurred recently when Billie Rhodes was rehearsing for a little comedy picture, She Couldn’t Grow Up. In the film Billie appears as the younger daughter of an ambitious mother, who dresses her up in extremely juvenile costume in order that she may not spoil her elder sister’s matrimonial chances.

She Looked so Young

In short skirts and long white socks she looked, despite her nineteen years, the very embodiment of youthful innocence, but she scarcely knew whether to be amused or angry when a youngster of some twelve years, who had been brought to the studio to play dolls with her in one of the scenes, flatly refused to have anything to do with “such a little kid as that.”

In the end, however, Billie Rhodes solemnly explained that she was not quite so young as she looked, whereupon the youthful critic fell a quick victim to her pretty charms, and the two romped together with an abandon that is well depicted on the screen.

Before taking to the screen “Bill” Parsons was an insurance man, and lie was so successful that he was always called “the millionaire insurance man.” Regularly every year he did insurance business to the extent of one million dollars.

It is a curious thing that a man should want to give up a thriving business to make people laugh, but this is what “Bill” did and he succeeded in his aim right from his first production.

“Smiling” Bill Parsons, who is President of the National Film Corporation of America, has just made arrangements which ensure that the whole of his next year’s output of comedies will be bought by a well-known distributing firm, before they have been seen by them, so the concern evidently has great faith in the continuance of his laughter-creating powers.

—

• Oh, I say!
• You don’t mean it?
• Stop kidding.
• Stay and talk with me.
• It wasn’t my fault.

Collection: Picture Show Magazine, July 1919