Three's a Crowd (1927) - The Unmaking of Harry Langdon, Part 2

Last time, we looked at the circumstances surrounding the making of Harry Langdon’s Three’s a Crowd and the various calamitous events that conspired to make it the beginning of the end for his career as a top star. As a result of the behind the scenes wrangling and the finished film's subsequent critical mauling (much of it done after Langdon was dead and unable to defend himself), the movie, and Harry Langdon’s reputation suffered in silence for many decades. However, recently the critical tide has slowly begun to turn, especially now that people can actually watch Three’s a Crowd once again on DVD. And it is definitely worth watching.

The surreal, dream like abstraction of Three's a Crowd begins right from the very start. The title card names the principle characters simply as One, Two and Three (as per the name of the film of course, but to a later audience this sort of non determinative labelling is perhaps reminiscent of the Samuel Beckett school of drama), and the opening tableaux is of a dusky early morning street scene at 5 am, a liminal time between night and day, dream and reality. A horse and cart travels slowly down the empty street and the street lamps suddenly switch off, signalling the start of the working day and the end of dream time. Langdon uses the switching on and off of street lamps as a symbolic marker throughout the film (he even has a street lamp inside his house) and poetically bookends the film with them.

We cut to Harry waking up as the camera lingers on his somnambulant face for around fifteen seconds while he tries valiantly to escape the haze of sleep. Langdon has always been a confused, sleepy character but here he takes it to such extremes that it establishes the off kilter tone of the whole film. After a panning shot of the objects in his room, we see Harry’s drowsy moon face again for another agonisingly extended shot lasting another fifteen seconds. Unable to rise from his slumbers, he goes back to sleep, only to reawaken as the camera fixes on his face a third time, in this case for an astonishing thirty seconds. What is extraordinary about these shots is the sense of space and tension they provide. Fifteen seconds of close up on a face (especially a face like Harry Langdon's) is a long time cinematically, thirty seconds creates a sense of awkward unease but a combined minute is positively gripping. That Langdon uses this technique so early in the film is an incredibly daring move, pushing the viewer to keep looking, and to be drawn helplessly into Harry’s dream state. To some the effect is sheer overkill or bad editing but to me, this is Harry Langdon pushing his art into an unacceptable territory, putting his stall out by forcing the gaze of the audience. It's also a technique that Langdon employed in his career on stage, thus giving compelling evidence that these extra long takes exist as a conscious technique rather than (as critics have previously bemoaned) a lack of skill. The effect is an audacious and jaw dropping start to the movie. It also underlines the fact that dreams envelope the narrative, and indeed a case could be made that in fact Harry never truly snaps out his dream state, instead sleepwalking helplessly through the vagaries of his life.

Harry, the simple soul that he is, is an overworked furniture mover whose only dream in life is to have a family. Langdon shows from the start that this is merely a unrealistic fantasy for Harry, and that he is emotionally unable to either find or cope with his heart’s dream. This is emphasized by the use of objects in the movie. Harry can only connect to emotions through inanimate objects, something that is a constant throughout Langdon’s career. Yet like everything in Three’s a Crowd, this idea is mused upon and expanded in agonisingly explicit detail. It begins when Harry finds a doll in a trash can and carries it to work. He sees his boss playing with his son and mimics the motion with the doll. It is sad because we know that not only is this the only way he can connect with the reality of this situation but that this is as near to it as he will ever get. To make matters worse, his boss sees the doll and remarks that it is “a perfect resemblance”. Rather than becoming a child surrogate, the doll has become Harry's doppelganger. This a fact the audience knows all along but for it to mentioned directly to Harry is just one of the many horrible realities that he must face throughout the movie.

The cinematography in the film by Buster Keaton’s lensman Elgin Lessley is stunningly composed, as the camera works in unison with Langdon’s eye for detail to create beautifully detailed street scenes and sets. Despite the upheaval behind the scenes with Frank Capra’s dismissal and spiralling costs, the direction is good and the few missteps (a couple of shots don’t match from one scene to the next) are incidental to the overall message and atmosphere of the movie. One would imagine that Langdon had little desire to direct himself (most star comedians were the de facto director of all their films anyway despite rarely taking a credit) but took on the job because it was the easiest and cheapest option. Regardless of the backstage turmoil, the movie looks great, with a particular strength being the small yet evocative set. Harry lives in a tiny house at the top of an enormous staircase, jutting out of the side of a building and complete with a floor trap door to nowhere. The design is something out of an Expressionist film, and is used primarily to represent Harry’s position on the fringe of society. Interestingly, the expected comedy business of the long staircase never really materialises, rather the endless steps show Harry’s distance from reality and his isolation from his desires. This restraint is another marker that what Langdon is trying to do is not a typical over the top comedy spectacular. Pratfalls and slapstick take a back seat to Langdon’s minimalist vision. The film is full of half realised gags that fade into abstraction, subdued by Harry's hypnagogic wanderings.
 

An encapsulation of Langdon’s comic ideas occurs in a scene where, after being chased by his boss, Harry seeks to hide from him by jumping out of the trap door in his house, suspended by a carpet that is wedged in the closed door. This is a familiar trope of silent comedy - the comic suspended on high and perilously close to falling. Obviously, Harold Lloyd made a career from dangling off high buildings in his many ‘thrill’ pictures, but here Harry Langdon makes an important distinction in his approach. Whereas Lloyd ultimately triumphs over the many dangers and pitfalls though a combination of skill, luck and determination, here Harry Langdon is suspended in a trap of his own making, and one from which both he and the audience knows he cannot escape. He climbs up the carpet and opens the trap door, so releasing more of the carpet and sending him back to where he started. This routine goes on for an agonisingly long period of time (perhaps too long if truth be known) and the carpet slowly ekes away. The brilliance of Langdon’s approach is in the sheer nerve of presenting an impossible situation as comedy. Harry can’t escape, and we laugh at him trying to escape, knowing full well he can’t. This essential cruelty is something no other comic would even consider touching, as we laugh at his suffering. And to underline his point, the carpet eventually runs out and he does fall. No skill or luck presents itself, Harry struggles, we laugh at him, he fails to escape and he falls. As it happens, his boss’ truck breaks his fall, but in concept the routine is astonishingly dark in the lengths Langdon will go to torture his on screen alter ego. And he’s not done yet, by a longshot…

What Harry desires more than anything in the world is to be a family man, and as he looks out into the cold one day he sees a young woman collapsed in the snow. He takes her up to his house to recover and discovers that she is pregnant. In typical Langdon fashion, he discovers this not by recognising the tell tale physical signs that she is pregnant but by noticing an object, a pair of tiny socks amongst her possessions. He rounds up some doctors and local women and once the baby has been delivered, Harry is left alone in his small home with mother and child. Finally, out of nowhere, his dreams have come true. However, even at this moment of supposed triumph, we have already been conditioned to expect the unexpected.

What follows is perhaps Langdon’s greatest moment on screen. He stands in his small room, his life finally fulfilled. In a medium shot placing him squarely in the centre of the action, framed perfectly by his house, furniture and mother and child, he stands still. And doesn’t move. At all. All in all, I counted Harry standing still, blank faced and motionless for around thirty seven seconds. Compared to his minimalist experiments at the start of the film, this is an epic pause, and it’s a truly beautiful, eerily poignant moment. Langdon creates a rare thing in cinema: an open space, and on that space, and indeed Harry’s blank face, the audience is free to impose their own thoughts and feelings. What starts as a triumphant affirmation, given space to breathe swiftly shifts to a worryingly unsettling moment of tension and doubt. For all the talk of ‘the look’ of Buster Keaton (specifically the famous blinking scene in The General) or the stare of Garbo at the end of Queen Christina, Harry Langdon is the true master of the blank gaze. His innocent face stares out into nowhere, out of the screen, piercing the soul of the viewer, inhabiting their mind and haunting their dreams. The moment shows that Langdon knew exactly what he was doing, and chose to push the boundaries of what was possible in film comedy in a way that none of his contemporaries could even conceive of. He creates space, disquiet and tension and thus extraordinary, haunting beauty.

 

Now left with this dream domestic scenario, Harry begins to worry that the girl’s husband will find her and take her back. He sees a picture of him and bashfully punches the photo with his back turned to the girl in an embarrassed, joking manner. Again this shows that Harry can react emotionally only to an object, or in this case representations of people. Against the real husband, he knows he hasn’t a chance. This theme is further elucidated upon in a dream Harry then has where the husband appears menacingly at the window of his house during a storm and Harry then fights him in a boxing match. The scene takes place in a darkened arena, lit only on the boxing ring. This seems to have been a budgetary constraint but it certainly adds to surreal, dreamlike mood. The husband has a cape and top hat and is literally twirling his moustache like the old time villains of melodrama while Harry’s secret weapon is a massively outsized boxing glove.

Again, the humour to be found in the scene is far outweighed by the impending tragedy and daring way Langdon uses narrative. Harry is defending the girl’s honour against the mean villain, and is swiftly knocked out cold. He loses the fight and the girl, in his own dream. Three’s a Crowd’s version of the hero’s journey is extraordinary and bold, and its lesson is that there is no journey, and no concept of happiness for Harry. To make matters even worse, Harry wakes up to find that the husband has tracked them down in real life and the girl runs to his arms, the family back together again at the expense of Harry’s dreams. As the day closes, dream and reality start once again to collide, and Harry disappears into the spaces in between.

As ever, Harry can go nothing to stop this happening as he stands and watches while his dream walks out the door with her true love. He literally stands by helpless and unmoving as she leaves, just as he did when she arrived. In a crushingly sad scene, Harry stands framed in the doorway of his little house, watching the happy couple disappear into the snow outside. Then we see the doll from earlier, caught in a washing line and tattered by the weather, crumpled and cast away. As predicted, the doll was not a child substitute but Harry himself. He takes a lamp and wanders out into the street. As he stands there entirely alone he blows out the lamp, and all the streetlamps also go out. It’s a beautiful little moment of magic in an otherwise profoundly bleak scene. The movie finishes with a gag, otherwise probably everyone in the cinema would have gone home and put their heads in their gas ovens, as Harry takes revenge on a bogus fortune teller from earlier in the movie. It’s a token gesture, a rare moment of comic relief in a thoroughly heart breaking movie.

What makes Three’s a Crowd so brilliant is the way that Harry Langdon seems to have almost committed career suicide in order to push his comic art further. The movie’s bad reputation surely rests on the fact that as a comedy it’s not very funny, which it isn’t. There is no comparison whatsoever to the earlier features with Capra in terms of laughs, but to do so is failing to see what Langdon is attempting to do. This is a mature work of a growing artist working on a purely conceptual level of comedy. In terms of career longevity Langdon definitely would have been better making another Long Pants or The Strong Man, but he obviously felt that to do so was a backward step. Whereas Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd continued to make more polished and more sophisticated films with each successive work, they essentially use their characters to explore the same variety of themes in varying detail. When Harold Lloyd made The Kid Brother, he achieved a beautiful synthesis of the rural and the ideal, of courage, humour and beauty, perhaps the summit of his achievements. However, the Harold Lloyd character in the movie is no different from the one that he always played, the big  difference being the scope of the movie, the fluidity of its image and perfect balance of comedy and drama.

When Frank Capra thought he understood everything about Harry Langdon’s comic character, he was wrong. Only Langdon knew what the character meant, and free of Capra’s hypothesizing he took the character in the direction it was meant to go in. Unfortunately that was the most uncommercial direction possible for an audience unused to seeing its favourite comedians as anything other than simple clowns. The essential difference is that Capra’s conception of Langdon involved the necessity of God being on his side. Langdon, being the ultimate reactive comedian historically manages to avoid tragedy by doing nothing. If he escapes from a building falling on him, it’s never anything he himself does, it’s just pure luck or Providence. Where the real difference in Capra and Langdon’s view of the character manifests itself is in this divine protection – in Langdon’s worldview, God is not protecting Harry, in fact nothing can protect him and the redemptive happy ending doesn’t exist. Harry is entirely lost, eternally buffered by the seas of Fate.

 

Quite how Langdon hoped to take this idea further in subsequent films is difficult to say, as his next two features were far more conventional (though the final one Heart Trouble remains sadly lost). Perhaps Three’s a Crowd was a one off, a statement that needed to be made and created in response to the situation he found himself in. Even Langdon must have been stung by the movie’s poor reception into making his next film more commercial. As it stands, Three’s a Crowd is either the work of a genius or an amazing series of unconscious coincidences by an unknowing amateur, There is so much depth and thought put into the movie, that the latter is simply inconceivable. Of course, in 1927 movies were rarely watched repeatedly or studied for meaning, least of all comedies. An acquired taste at the best of times, Harry Langdon at his most daringly opaque was going to be a difficult proposition for a lot of audiences. As critic David Kalat says in his excellent DVD commentary to the movie, Three's a Crowd “...is horrifying, it is profoundly sad, deeply tragic, eerily disturbing and unrelenting”. And that I feel sums up this amazing, confrontational, divisive movie perfectly.

On screen and off, Harry Langdon exists at an awkward tangent to the real world, never quite posing the easy questions or giving the correct answers to be lauded universally by critics and moviegoers. Instead he opts to remain forever confounding, elusive and largely unloved. Yet for those who wish to listen, Three's a Crowd remains his ultimate statement, a movie that is both profound and profane. And though the critics and naysayers continue to doubt him, somewhere he watches and stands unmoved, and just stares his stare of eternity.

Three's a Crowd (1927) - The Unmaking of Harry Langdon, Part 1

It’s not often that watching a film for the first time leaves me with a range of conflicting thoughts and emotions but Three’s a Crowd did exactly that. The thoughts and emotions in question stretched from shock and confusion to awe and admiration regarding what exactly I had just seen. And what exactly did I see? Well I’m still not entirely sure, but after mulling it over I thought that I’d make an attempt to share my thoughts on Harry Langdon’s much maligned directorial debut.

Rather than subject the world to another extra long movie review, I’ve opted to split this into a couple of shorter, more manageable parts, and I’ll start off here by looking at the background of the film and the story of its making, and its role in the subsequent unmaking of Harry Langdon. Three’s a Crowd, long unavailable for general viewing was released by Kino on DVD (as a double feature with Langdon’s follow up The Chaser) in 2008 and I’d heartily recommend picking it up. Simply put, regardless of critical opinion, Three’s a Crowd is unlike anything else Langdon or indeed any of his contemporaries would ever attempt.

To say that Three’s a Crowd is a polarising movie is a bit of an understatement. The film, its production and subsequent fallout has inspired fierce debate for decades. For the most part, the general critical consensus was that Harry Langdon’s first directorial effort is an artistic disaster, an ego driven misstep of such magnitude that it cost the comedian his career. Split from his collaborator Frank Capra, Harry Langdon was out of his depth and proved once and for all that he needed others to create the comedy for him. As a result of this tide of opinion, there is so much baggage attached to any viewing of the movie that it is often hard to see it untangled from its difficult genesis and the decades of critical mauling.

So I decided to finally watch this most unloved of movies and see for myself. After not laughing much in the opening ten minutes, I feared the worst and began to feel a dreadful sinking feeling. Were the critics right all along? Did Harry really just not understand his own character? Slightly worried, I kept watching but with my expectations lowered and now hoping for at best an amiably average little effort.

It took a short while for the movie’s dreamlike atmosphere to take hold, but once its fog of discord had seeped into my mind I was completely under its mesmeric influence. I went back and watched again from the beginning but now with my eyes open and a new found understanding. Far from the unfunny sentimental nonsense I was told to expect, Three’s a Crowd is an astonishing work of singular genius, and one of the finest and most misrepresented movies of the silent era. Once you get over certain expectations and start to realise what Langdon is trying to achieve, there are few superlatives that can do the film justice. It is nothing less than a masterpiece.

However, before we get to that, let’s review the events that led up to the making of the film and the received wisdom that gives it such a bad reputation. In brief, Harry Langdon started late in movies (he was almost 40) but within two years of his screen debut in 1924 had found a winning formula working for Mack Sennett in creative union with director Harry Edwards, writer Arthur Ripley and gag man Frank Capra. At the height of his fame and influence he signed a six picture deal with First National and took the team with him, promoting Capra to director. The first three movies of the new deal (Tramp, Tramp Tramp, The Strong Man and Long Pants) were very successful and represented the commercial peak of Langdon’s career (and perhaps his most consistently funny work). Popular with critics and moviegoers alike, Langdon was being hailed as a real threat to Chaplin’s crown. Everything was fine for a while but during the production of Long Pants, the cracks in the team began to show.

It seems that Capra and Edwards disagreed over the pacing of Long Pants, and Langdon sided with Edwards. Differing in comic philosophies with Capra, the rift culminated in Langdon firing Capra, leading to a very bitter public dispute that cast Harry in a poor light to the public and press. He decided to go it alone and directed the three remaining pictures of the contract himself (though his collaboration with Arthur Ripley continued). These three (Three’s a Crowd, The Chaser and Heart Trouble) were box office flops and First National did not renew the contract. With the coming of sound Langdon was out of work and declared bankruptcy. He had gone from being a top box office star in a major studio to working on poverty row in the space of a year and his reputation never fully recovered.

That’s the basic story as it is told in most accounts of film history, and that narrative exists due to a number of reasons. Firstly, upon being fired Capra, in order to salvage a burgeoning directorial career apparently vented his frustrations to the media, thus giving Harry Langdon the air of a man who was difficult to work with and egotistical. After Harry’s subsequent movies flopped, his prophecies appeared to hold weight despite the truth being slightly more complex. However, what really tarred Langdon with the brush of failure was a number of statements made by Frank Capra in the intervening years, after Langdon’s death in 1944

Firstly there was film critic James Agee's hugely influential feature in Life Magazine in 1949, entitled ‘Comedy’s Greatest Era’. It is now regarded as a seminal article and responsible for a great upsurge in interest in silent comedy at a time when many of its old stars had been all but forgotten. Frank Capra was a key interviewee, and when asked about Langdon noted that, “Langdon was almost as childlike as the character he played” and that when things went wrong in his career he “never did really understand what hit him”. This conceit that Landon was but a clueless puppet in the hands of the long suffering and hard working creative staff tasked with the unenviable job of coming up with something for him to do remains to this day. The fact that in a separate interview, Mack Sennett agreed with the notion entrenched it in critical history.

However, just in case anyone missed this character assassination, Frank Capra wrote his autobiography in 1971 and went into more detail regarding his views on Langdon’s artistic demise. His autobiography goes to great lengths to show how he was right and Langdon was wrong, and that Harry Langdon and his ego brought all his troubles on himself. The main tenant of his argument is that Langdon never understood his own character, or indeed his own comedy and could only be successful if guided by the safe hands of someone who did understand, like Frank Capra. According to Capra, at a screening of rushes at the Sennett studio, Arthur Ripley thought Langdon’s performance was so bad that he was beyond help and that “only God can help an elf like Langdon”. Capra claims that this became the basis for the character of Langdon’s successful years, an innocent fool out of step with everyday life, for whom his only ally is God. And there you have it - the hopeless vaudeville comedian was successfully moulded into a box office star by following the strict instructions of Capra and Ripley, and when he decided he didn’t need them, his career instantly derailed.

This theory has been successfully demolished by critics and historians such as Walter Kerr,  Joyce Rheuban and David Kalat but still persists (indeed, Langdon’s imdb bio repeats the old story). Capra’s account of things completely ignores the fact that Langdon had been a hugely successful vaudeville star for years who brought a clearly established character with him when he broke into movies in 1924. Langdon had already been making shorts for 2 years before Capra even joined Sennett, thus making the story about viewing early Langdon rushes impossible to have happened – out of 21 Langdon movies at Sennett, Ripley received his first credit on the 13^th and Capra on the 15^th. Virtually every part of the Langdon character was in place by the time they arrived, but what Capra did eventually bring to Harry Langdon’s work was a sure directorial touch, some needed focus and a clear sense of what was commercially popular.

Not to say that the new narrative should be all about bashing Frank Capra and his legacy. Capra’s success and career speaks for itself, and his role in Langdon’s downfall has really no bearing on his own movies and talent. What has to be brought to task is when his statements don’t match the facts, and when these facts can be readily evidenced on the screen. It’s understandable that Capra was angry and bitter at being fired by Langdon and as they say, history is written by the victors. However, it comes of as especially churlish to kick a man when he is down, and from his position at the summit of Hollywood’s hierarchy, that is exactly what Capra did to Harry Langdon. Also, what rubs people the wrong way is the fact that Capra essentially sets himself up as the man pulling Langdon’s strings, that much like Langdon’s screen persona, the real Harry Langdon was a hapless bystander as Capra orchestrated his success. Leo McCarey attempted the same thing in his later years too, insisting that Stan Laurel knew nothing about comedy and claiming all the credit for the creation of Laurel and Hardy's best work, regardless of the facts. Sadly, while people take McCarey's words with a pinch of salt, Capra's are often still treated as gospel.

What Three’s a Crowd proved is that without Capra, Langdon felt he was free to explore his comedy without the same commercial consideration. Ever the populist, this was something that Capra could not conceive of, and therefore in his head it was wrong. Even Capra’s central idea of ‘God is his only ally’ was rejected by Langdon, as for him his comic persona is so far removed from reality, and so wretched that even God openly abandons him. It’s an idea of startling daring and resulted in Harry Langdon creating a film of immense beauty, a dreamlike parable of despair that is so far removed from what his silent comedy contemporaries were delivering that it shocked audiences into confusion.

So there I was, watching my DVD of Three’s a Crowd and struck by the notion that firstly, the film wasn’t really that funny, and that secondly Langdon the director seemed to have no concept of editing (several scenes just lasted far too long). After ten minutes I realised that I was falling into the trap of all the audiences that watched it in 1927 and beyond in that my expectations did not match the delivered product. As I mentioned previously, I stopped the DVD and thought for a moment about what I’d just seen (something that I appreciate cinema audiences would never have the chance to do). Three’s a Crowd is not a comedy in the traditional sense, it’s a dark comic experiment that serves as manifesto for Langdon’s daringly abstract, absurdist view. I started again, with a glimmering of knowledge that this was something a very different and a bit special.

Next time, we shall look at the film itself and marvel at its many wonders…

House of Errors (1942) - Harry Langdon on Poverty Row

I read a fascinating article years ago that theorized what could have happened to Laurel and Hardy had they chosen to join a studio other than Fox in 1940. Ideas were put forward as to the artistic and financial merits of signing with Columbia, Universal or even poverty row studios such as Monogram or Republic. Obviously Stan Laurel thought he could convince the big studios to let him exercise some creative control over his pictures, but ultimately it didn’t work out that way and years of artistic frustration were to follow. However, other comedians of the silent era down on their luck didn’t have the box office power of Laurel and Hardy and had no option other than to find a home with the likes of Educational or Pathe. It stands to reason that in a non-corporate, low budget setting the likes of Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon would be given more creative control in which to create their brand of comedy. I mean, surely a small time operator would bend over backwards to have a bona fide star (albeit a faded one) headline one of their productions?

Sadly, in Harry Langdon’s case, the freedom of a small studio did not equal a funnier, more creative film. Sure, some of his Educational shorts are very funny, but like Keaton he’s mostly just an actor rather than a creator. Perhaps in Langdon’s case it was just too late in the game for him to put himself heart and soul into the making of a new picture. Perhaps his reputation in the industry by the 1940s was such that producers merely saw him as a jobbing actor and not an artist. Perhaps he himself just saw movie work as a paycheck and was pleased to have income, no matter the quality of the material. Most likely he found, like his peers that the business model of the movie industry had changed since the 20s and that producers now called the shots.

This all brings us to House of Errors, a 1942 comedy starring Langdon for the Producers Releasing Corporation, a poverty row company mostly known for westerns. The movie is cheap and mostly cheerful, but what makes it interesting is the pairing of Langdon with former Laurel and Hardy gag man and director, Charley Rogers. The two had previously teamed up in Monogram’s Double Trouble in 1941 and the result must have garnered enough interest to warrant a second go. The pair work brilliantly together and despite the movie being slightly below par, they really come across as a double act with real chemistry. Harry Langdon by this time had evolved his “man-child form Mars” routine into a sort of permanently confused Hugh Herbert or Frank McHugh type of character, which played especially well off Charley Rogers’ fast talking, scheming Englishman. In fact, Rogers is so good at the character that I think he really missed his calling by not returning to his native land after the war, as he would have fitted in perfectly with the cast of music hall comedians making films in Britain in the late 40s and early 50s.

The plot of the film concerns wannabe reporters Langdon and Rogers (interestingly named Bert and Alf, the names of Stan and Ollie’s alter egos in Our Relations, a movie which Rogers had a big hand in writing) disguising themselves as home help for reclusive inventor in order to get a scoop on his latest idea, a new machine gun. Luckily, The Producers Releasing Corporation seemed to have had some faith in Harry Langdon as he is credited with the film’s story, and although it’s difficult to say with authority which bits were his, there is definitely an air of familiar Langdon-esque whimsy in the paper-thin plot.

What is really nice about the film is the little moments of comic business. Most of these come from the perfect timing and reactions of Langdon and Rogers. Langdon at times comes across a little like Stan Laurel but with the added layer of punch drunk buffoonery one associates with him (especially in sound). There’s lots of the usual vacuous blinking, bleary eye rolling, inept pointing, and inability to use limbs as nature intended, which due to Langdon’s advancing years (he was 57 when he made the film) make the whole childlike act all the more bizarre and incongruous. He also has an odd way of talking which involves saying…a lot of his lines…with…funny pauses. All in all he’s wonderfully entertaining and when paired with the fast talking Rogers, with his expert timing they produce a real winning combination.

The movie also has a number of quite charming visual gags which you have to assume were the work of Langdon, but which sadly never get the chance to evolve. On a side note, I’ve always found it interesting that Laurel and Hardy could easily pack a fully-fledged plot and a ton of well-worked gags into a 65 minute feature whereas movies like this at the same length collapse under the boredom of an inconsequential story interspersed with half formed routines. House of Errors (and its ilk) seems to take forever to end but Sons of the Desert does twice as much, ten times as good in less time. It raises the question, why did 40’s comedy producers feel the need to sideline comedians? Watching House of Errors, I could not care less about the nominal lead and his budding romance, and this goes for every Abbott and Costello or Ritz Brothers movie too. But I digress…

The aforementioned gags include Langdon’s heart beating out of his chest only to be moved by him to his other side (the accompanying line "I think he's got heart trouble", a sly mention of Langdon's final silent?), Langdon and Rogers doing housework and pushing air from a vacuum cleaner all the way under a carpet as well as playing a tune on a kettle. Also, in a flophouse the pair get involved with a flea circus (a nice cameo from Monte Collins) and Langdon traps his hand then does some ridiculous pantomiming as he tries to fix a crooked painting. All these situations are lovely while they last but unfortunately are brushed aside in favour of reporters, spies and plans for guns.

However there is a bit of redemption at the end where Langdon fires the new gun accidentally and in hitting some stock footage appears (I think) to kill the obnoxious hero! This done, the girl neatly falls into Harry’s lap, where being Harry he kisses her with his fingers then uses them to “eat her nose”! She seems a bit surprised as the credits roll…

House of Errors is by no means a good film, in fact it’s pretty terrible and sadly Harry Langdon is actually hardly in it. What makes in interesting is watching a former great in reduced circumstances, and regardless of the reasons for being there we can see tiny little glimpses of genius. I’d like to think that if Laurel and Hardy had ended up at the Producers Releasing Corporation that their films would have been just as awful too, yet similarly filled with glimmers of hope. In fact, anything they made for a poverty row studio would’ve been an improvement artistically over their 40s output at Fox and MGM.

The other interesting and unrealized part of the film is the pairing of Langdon and Rogers. It’s a more traditional double act than Langdon’s long-standing partnership with Vernon Dent (as good as that was) and really deserved more screen time. If only Columbia had seen the double act and decided to incorporate them into Harry’s then current series of shorts, it might have reached a degree of potential. As it is, all we have are a couple of films and a whole load of what ifs. But then again, Harry Langdon was probably pleased to get the work and a script credit and after all he had been through in his career perhaps that was more than enough.

His First Flame (1927) - Harry Langdon Drops in from Another Planet...

Poor old Harry Langdon. Forever destined to be the distant 4th in the pantheon of silent comedy immortals. And if that wasn't bad enough, for many his position as 4th clown is really a temporary measure while they wait for critics and historians to trot out their theories and decide who should really be in his place. Who is it this week? Charley Bowers? Lloyd Hamilton? Well, enough of this nonsense, Harry Langdon deserves his spot and created enough of a legacy in silent cinema that his place, while still firmly in 4th is rock solid.

Even then, that's not enough for some people. Despite a string of excellent shorts, some of the most innovative and sophisticated of their time, his legacy all comes down to the involvement of the supposed creative force behind his success, Arthur Ripley and Frank Capra. Without them, the story goes, he was a directionless mannequin lacking in ideas or any real understanding of his own character. This idea took hold due to a couple of situations, the first being that Harry died in 1944 and when the silent revival hit in the early 60's he wasn't around to promote his own work (funnily enough, pretty much every one who is now accepted as an important comedian from that era was). Harry Langdon, like Raymond Griffith, Charley Chase and many others had to wait another few decades before their work was reappraised. Of course, being dead has other disadvantages (other than the obvious one) in that those who worked with you and who are still alive can exaggerate or misappropriate their part in your story. Leo McCarey and Hal Roach tried it after Stan Laurel died, and so did Frank Capra and others when Harry died. Luckily in recent years a backlash to this way of thinking has started and Harry is getting his due as a legitimate creative force under his own talents.

The historical truth to his story is as usual, a mix of both sides. Langdon was a gifted and innovative physical comedian with extensive success in vaudeville who excelled from the minute he set foot on the screen. When Capra and Ripley got involved Langdon had already developed his character (he did that on the vaudeville stage years before he came to Hollywood) and was comfortably ironing out the details. What they did was to add to what he had already created by giving more structure and shading. When they left, from all accounts Langdon's features still did well, though it was felt that his popularity had peaked. In reality though he worked hard he wasn't best suited to being a film auteur and he probably did shoot himself in the foot by trying to do much too soon. Capra would have moved on no matter what his relationship with Langdon was because his talent was taking him different places. Due to his later and much more lasting fame, Capra's time with Langdon was always written as a parable of the student outgrowing the master. When all was said and done, the importance of Capra in Harry Langdon's career has been greatly over stated.

A big problem was that Langdon perhaps came to the party too late. When he debuted in 1924 he was already middle aged and comedy and indeed movies were rapidly growing up, with tastes and fads quickly changing. Rather than having years and years to hone his craft like Chaplin, Lloyd and others, Harry stepped in at the deep end and found that his style of comedy, though cutting edge for a time, rapidly fell out of favour as the world hurtled towards the end of the 20's and the coming of sound. Also it didn't help that he was so unusual that audiences and critics often found it difficult to categorise his work and this lack of universal appeal hurt his box office and reputation, right up to the present day. You find you either like him or you don't, there is rarely a middle ground. However, that he made such an enormous impact in such a small space of time in a busy marketplace showed an undeniable talent as a comedian.

Another downfall for Langdon's brand of humour, and this applies to Stan Laurel as well, was the move away from shorts and into features. Despite it being an economic necessity Laurel was always uncomfortable with features, feeling that Laurel and Hardy's humour was ideally suited to short bursts. Despite all the excellent feature films the pair made, even at 60 minutes there was frequently an element of padding in a Laurel and Hardy film (A Chump at Oxford's indeterminable maze scene comes to mind). Laurel settled on a four reel film as the perfect length if he had to go into features (although ironically he only made one 4 reeler in the end) and Langdon, in His First Flame (originally a five reel film, though currently running at 44 minutes in the most complete version) shows that this logic is sound. Though slightly padded, it consistently gets laughs and never outstays its welcome.

His First Flame was Langdon's first attempt at a feature film, originally filmed and due for release in 1925. However, due to his leaving Sennett and setting up his own production company with First National, the film was held back and not released until 1927. As a result audiences saw it as his fourth feature and thus it was seen as a step down from its predecessors and had a mixed reception. The plot concerns Harry trying to stay away from girls to please his woman-hating fireman uncle. Throughout various situations and interludes Harry continually lets the uncle down until saving a girl from a burning building and getting a happy ending. By this time his uncle has changed his mind about women so Harry at last finds love. The plot really doesn't matter in these sort of comedies as the focus is always on the minute details of comic business involving the star as they wander from one situation to the next.

Make no mistake, His First Flame is not a masterpiece but it is a very, very funny film filled with the sort of inventive subtlety expected of Langdon in his prime. The best moments involve some of the key themes in Langdon's work, those of Harry's passive, non reactive nature and of the blurring of the lines of gender and perception. The first key scene happens when Harry meets a woman who he recognises, who happens to be a shoplifter. He walks towards her, hand outstretched. On the run from the police she runs in his direction. Friendship turns to fear and Harry starts running away, chased through the streets by the woman. From this simple and typical Langdon role reversal, he takes it one step further when he thinks he has lost her. Safe, he stands looking blankly at the camera as she suddenly hits him on the head. Langdon then does his patented standing lean (a la Michael Jackson), to the right, then the left before falling over. The woman switches clothes with him and escapes leaving Harry in her frock and hat (with a flower poking out the top). He staggers about with a goofy grin on his face as he tries to hitch a lift to the fire station. What is very unusual about Langdon in drag is firstly that it happens a lot, but more importantly that despite being dressed as a woman he makes absolutely no attempt to act feminine. To add to the confusion, everyone around him treats him as if he is a real woman, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary (he gets picked up by a driver only to eventually be thrown out the car). It makes for a rather odd situation, with a staple of comedy not being milked for all the obvious gags. Langdon's reversal of convention and minimalist underplaying of the situation just adds to the audience confusion.

Similarly, the other key scene involves Harry's frequent inability to distinguish the real from the unreal, the material from the immaterial. Later in the film he tries to rescue a girl from a burning building in an uncharacteristic burst of bravery and energy. Unfortunately the girl is in fact a wooden shop dummy. To heighten the gag, the dummy's limbs are positioned in the most unrealistic manner and it has a ridiculous wig on, but in the real moment of genius, in full view of the audience is a large price tag hanging from its neck. Harry carefully lowers the dummy down the ladder then stops half way to tell her that she's going to be alright. Then, to stretch the bizarre situation further he has a sort of tender moment face to face with the dummy. For a moment he acts hurt that his words get no response from her before the penny slowly drops and the veil of unreality lifts. He then ditches the dummy and scampers down the ladder. To end the sequence, as he leaves he notices the dummy's skirt has come up and he bashfully pulls it down for her. As if in response, the propped up mannequin moves suddenly and Harry runs away in abject terror. The sequence highlights how Langdon often played on awkwardly uncomfortable incongruities to demonstrate his ability to collapse boundaries between the real and unreal worlds. He then continues to push each situation as far as it can go, and sometimes further, to highlight his otherness in a way that would leave his audience bewildered and unsure what to think. There was literally no one doing comedy like this in 1925 but sadly audiences grew impatient with his approach and he was left to plow his field alone.

Having watched pretty much all the surviving Langdon shorts he made at Sennett (1924 - 1927), as presented on Facets' indispensable and awe inspiring box set Harry Langdon: Lost and Found, I have to say that it's an amazing body of work and in terms of short films certainly better overall than Harold Lloyd's (though to be fair Lloyd had given up on shorts before Langdon had even started). There is always an element of debate regarding silent comedians as to which ones seem the most "modern" to current audiences. Traditionally Buster Keaton always wins the argument with his stoic pioneer spirit coming up against the trials of modern life in his rather detached way. Lloyd is modern in so much as his films depict the modern world that he lived in and his character displays an admirable drive and determination. Personally Chaplin always fails in modernity for me, despite the universal ideals of The Tramp, due to eternally being stuck in that early 20th century world of poor houses and flower girls that even D. W. Griffith eventually gave up on. Langdon, on the other hand isn't modern. He's from the future.

The mere idea of a passive central comedian is one worthy of genius, but for Langdon to play him as a character who is completely oblivious to the world around him to the point of frequently looking as if he has wandered into the wrong film is the icing on the cake. Much has been made of Langdon's childlike innocence and dopey boy in a man's body behaviour, but it's really the blank look that gives him his edge. The round face, the slowly blinking eyes and blank stare is the look of Andy Kaufman fifty years later confusing audiences with his foreign man character (in fact Langdon's minimal approach to his stage comedy apparently got the same reactions in vaudeville). It's this confusion, both for the audience and for Harry that is most startling about his art. He's like an animal awakening from hibernation, unaware of how to control his extremities, looking at everything as if it's the first time he's ever seen them and unsure what is real. Mere normal objects become threatening monsters that could explode and a pretty girl's smile the most frightening thing in the world. And despite the confusion, Harry just looks, and looks, then blinks. Then frequently the moment will pass and his goldfish memory sets back to zero and he remembers to be scared of everything all over again, so then runs away. Then he runs back. Then he runs away again.

This disarming confusion, the passive apathy, the blinking face, the odd wave, the inexplicable juxtapositions and the frankly bizarre approach to female impersonation is what splits audiences over Harry Langdon today, as he did in the twenties but which makes me think that we're just not ready for him yet.