Buster Keaton's ghost-written memoir 'My Wonderful World of Slapstick' contains a perceptive comment about silent-film comedian Larry Semon: he tended to pack his films with impossible gags that were funny but completely implausible. According to Keaton, audiences laughed harder at Semon than at more plausible comedians (such as Keaton) ... but afterwards were unable to recall what they'd laughed at.
Interestingly, both Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (separately) worked as second banana to Semon before they teamed up. In John McCabe's excellent bio 'Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy', Laurel recalled a scene from 'Frauds and Frenzies' in which he and Semon played escaped convicts: Semon, envious that Laurel was getting more laughs, staged a scene in which Laurel's wrists were handcuffed round a tree ... and then merely left him there, with Semon getting the rest of the film to himself.
When I viewed this print of 'Frauds and Frenzies', I was surprised to find no such scene. In fact, I was surprised to see Semon and Laurel billed jointly, and playing as if they were a double-act starring equally. Laurel is largely missing from the final sequences, but in all their footage together they're pretty much co-stars.
Sadly, too much of the business here seems to be second-hand. Semon and Laurel do a hat-tipping gag that was done better (and earlier) by Chaplin and Roscoe Arbuckle in 'The Rounders'. The film's basic situation is copied from Chaplin's 'The Adventurer', a classic of comedy. Semon uses a gag here which Keaton used seven years LATER in 'Seven Chances', but the gag is so tasteless that I'm reluctant to give him 'credit' for it: Semon glimpses a well-dressed lady and proceeds to flirt with her, then recoils when he discovers that she's black.
More positively, at least the supporting actors here (the prison warders) are physical grotesques who are funny in their own right, and the film climaxes with a Keystone-style chase. Plus there are some nice exterior sequences in Bronson Canyon.
I didn't understand some physical business in this movie, which an American friend explained to me was the working-class game of 'matching pennies'. The intertitles have some amusingly obsolete slang: Semon's and Laurel's characters are described as 'sofa sheiks', and one character expresses approval by remarking "It's the lizard's eyebrows."
Although Larry Semon's films did well at the box office, he was a poor businessman and went bankrupt during the awkward transition to talkies. Officially, Semon died (at age 39) of pneumonia ... but some evidence indicates that his family staged his death, so that Semon could escape his debts and start a new career under another identity. Semon's goblin-like features are so distinctive that they make this difficult to believe ... and his features are also so grotesque that (for me, at least) they actually undercut his appeal as a comedian. I'll rate 'Frauds and Frenzies' just 5 out of 10. Although Semon was not a front-rank comedian, he did better films than this.
Interestingly, both Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (separately) worked as second banana to Semon before they teamed up. In John McCabe's excellent bio 'Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy', Laurel recalled a scene from 'Frauds and Frenzies' in which he and Semon played escaped convicts: Semon, envious that Laurel was getting more laughs, staged a scene in which Laurel's wrists were handcuffed round a tree ... and then merely left him there, with Semon getting the rest of the film to himself.
When I viewed this print of 'Frauds and Frenzies', I was surprised to find no such scene. In fact, I was surprised to see Semon and Laurel billed jointly, and playing as if they were a double-act starring equally. Laurel is largely missing from the final sequences, but in all their footage together they're pretty much co-stars.
Sadly, too much of the business here seems to be second-hand. Semon and Laurel do a hat-tipping gag that was done better (and earlier) by Chaplin and Roscoe Arbuckle in 'The Rounders'. The film's basic situation is copied from Chaplin's 'The Adventurer', a classic of comedy. Semon uses a gag here which Keaton used seven years LATER in 'Seven Chances', but the gag is so tasteless that I'm reluctant to give him 'credit' for it: Semon glimpses a well-dressed lady and proceeds to flirt with her, then recoils when he discovers that she's black.
More positively, at least the supporting actors here (the prison warders) are physical grotesques who are funny in their own right, and the film climaxes with a Keystone-style chase. Plus there are some nice exterior sequences in Bronson Canyon.
I didn't understand some physical business in this movie, which an American friend explained to me was the working-class game of 'matching pennies'. The intertitles have some amusingly obsolete slang: Semon's and Laurel's characters are described as 'sofa sheiks', and one character expresses approval by remarking "It's the lizard's eyebrows."
Although Larry Semon's films did well at the box office, he was a poor businessman and went bankrupt during the awkward transition to talkies. Officially, Semon died (at age 39) of pneumonia ... but some evidence indicates that his family staged his death, so that Semon could escape his debts and start a new career under another identity. Semon's goblin-like features are so distinctive that they make this difficult to believe ... and his features are also so grotesque that (for me, at least) they actually undercut his appeal as a comedian. I'll rate 'Frauds and Frenzies' just 5 out of 10. Although Semon was not a front-rank comedian, he did better films than this.