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'Chic' Sale...and 'Chic' Sale |
You never really get a handle on how gosh-darned huge the
Internets are until you use The Google to research the career of Charles
Partlow ‘Chic” Sale (1885-1936), a vaudevillian who began his film career in
the silent era…and might be recognizable to fans of The Greatest Cable Channel
Known to Mankind™ for appearances in such features as
Stranger in Town (1931),
Men
of America (1932), and
Treasure
Island (1934). Sale frequently performed
in old-age makeup that gave the illusion he was a grizzled old codger (I’m
quite fond of his performance in 1931’s
The
Star Witness, in which he plays a cantankerous Civil War veteran who comes
to the aid of his family when they’re threatened by mobsters) when he was
really only in his mid-forties; Chic died far too young at the age of 51 from
pneumonia, his last movie appearance being a small role in one of my favorite films
directed by Fritz Lang,
You Only Live
Once (1937).
But back to that “how vast is the World Wide Web?”
thing. There is a
website devoted to Chic:
chicsale.net. There you can buy a copy of his main claim to
fame: a 1929 publication entitled
The Specialist. You
see, Chic created a fictional character in “Lem Putt”—based on a man he knew in
his former stomping grounds of Urbana, Illinois—whose occupation was the construction
of privies (outhouses). It began as a
monologue that Chic would perform at Rotary gatherings, and when the material
became well-received by audiences Sale decided to incorporate it into his stage
act. Because vaudeville was notorious
for having comics “liberate” material from their fellow funsters (*cough*
Milton Berle *cough*), Charles Sale decided to publish the material in book
form in 1929 so it would be protected by copyright. The book became a best seller, and a
follow-up that Sale penned,
I’ll Tell You Why, was also
warmly received by the book-buying public.
You
can purchase both books at the site, by the way; according to the site
The Specialist is “now in its 26th
printing, it has sold over 2,600,000 copies worldwide. It has been translated into 9 languages and
published in 12 countries.”
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Sale in A Slip at the Switch |
The Specialist inspired
Lem Putt, the Specialist (1930)—one
of six two-reel comedies available on the latest release by Alpha Video of
their
Ultra-Rare Pre-Code Comedies series (
Volume 3). You could say, in a small way, that Chic Sale
is the star of this collection because another one of his two-reelers,
A Slip at the Switch (1932), is also in
this collection. (For reasons that have
me bamfoozled, neither of these shorts are listed in Sale’s filmography at the
[always reliable] IMDb.)
Switch is a diverting little romp that
casts Sale (his character is named “Lem”—but I don’t know if his outhouse
salesman got a promotion or not) as a station agent who tangles with a pair of
tramps (Bud Jamison, Charlie Hall) who have robbed him. Monte Collins is also in this one (as a
telegraph operator), which helps a lot; the entire concoction was directed by
Mark Sandrich, who would later go on to helm many of the Fred Astaire-Ginger
Rogers musicals:
Top Hat (1935),
Follow the Fleet (1936), etc. (Sandrich also held the reins on two of the
best Wheeler & Woolsey films,
Hips,
Hips, Hooray! [1934] and
Cockeyed
Cavaliers [1934], not to mention one of my favorite Jack Benny vehicles,
Buck Benny Rides Again [1940].) Sandrich also died young, succumbing to a
heart attack at the age of 43 in 1945.
Switch is a lot
more entertaining than
Specialist,
to be brutally honest. Having someone
talk about the fine art of building privies isn’t truly all that funny to me,
and it’s a static presentation to begin with—it might have helped if they had
done Sale’s “talk” as a one-reeler…but believe you me, he’s no Robert Benchley. While
The
Specialist proved to be a positive boon to the comedian’s career, Chic
wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the fact that his name—“Chic Sale”—was
often used as shorthand for “outhouse.”
(That should explain the joke in this header, a reference to my fellow
Appalachian highlander
Billy
Edd Wheeler song smash which hit #3 on the country music charts in 1964.)
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Harry Sweet & Monte Collins (in tub) in Just a Pain in the Parlor |
The funniest short on
Ultra-Rare Pre-Code Comedies, Volume 3
is
Just a Pain in the Parlor (1932),
a very sprightly two-reeler starring Harry Sweet. Who is Harry Sweet and what does he do when
he’s not tending bar, I hear you ask. Sweet
was a writer-director-performer—whose career also got started in the silent
era—who played a large role in the establishment of RKO’s shorts
department. He instigated the Edgar
Kennedy “Mr. Average Man” series, and supervised comedies starring Clark &
McCullough…but at the risk of starting a noticeable pattern in this post, Harry
is another name on the “much too soon” list, perishing in a plane crash in 1933
at the age of 31.
Parlor is a delight, as Sweet plays an Olympic athlete who’s
“adopted” by a man named Smith (James Donlan), fearful that Mrs. Smith (Cecil
Cunningham) is going to strenuously object.
Told by one of his fellow athletes that being invited to Casa del Smith
is a ruse to get him to break training, Harry puts up quite a fuss when the Smith’s
butler, Collins (Monte again!), tries to prepare him for presentation before
Mrs. Smith and her party guests. Monte
gets an assist helping Sweet into the bathtub from no less than four
sub-butlers (including Charlie Hall and Irving Bacon)—a hilarious scene—while
violinist Billy Gilbert attempts to keep his cool during his recital. Having Vernon Dent make an appearance as the
speaker who urges the adoption of the athletes is the cherry on top of the
sundae; the whole concoction was directed by George Marshall.
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Benny Rubin |
Benny Rubin, who was present and accounted for the previous
Ultra-Rare
Pre-Code Comedies release (
Volume 2),
also makes an appearance in
Julius
Sizzer (1931)—a gangster parody that lets Rubin tackle two roles, brothers
Julius and Liddle Sizzer. (That’s the
caliber of the material, friends and neighbors—and what’s more, both brothers
converse in heavy Yiddish accents.)
Someone at the (always reliable) IMDb wasn’t too fond of this one, but
even though I thought
The Messenger Boy (1931,
from
Volume
2) funnier I’d be lying if I didn’t snicker once or twice during
Sizzer (I have a fascination with
dialect humor). I have a handicap in
that I give Benny more leeway because I always enjoyed him on
The
Jack Benny Program (one of his great bits was playing the “Information”
clerk who’d always answer Jack’s questions with “I dunno!”). In fact, I watched
The Shaggy D.A. (1976) the other night (it was on BYU-TV, of all
places) and giggled when I saw Rubin as a waiter who gets plastered with cherry
pies. (Go on. Shame me.
I deserve it.)
If not for the presence of
Lem Putt, the Specialist,
Fifty
Miles from Broadway (1929) might give it some competition in the “worst
short in this collection” department; it’s an early talkie that looks as if
someone pointed a camera at a dinner theatre production, with the impending
marriage of a boy and girl threatened by their fathers’ ongoing feud. The remaining short on this set is
A Night in a Dormitory (1930—spoiler
warning: it’s mostly set in a nightclub), which boasts one of Ginger Rogers’
earliest movie appearances as she sings
Why
Can’t You Love That Way? and
I Love a
Man in Uniform in Helen Kane-fashion, and features Si Wills (billed as
Morgan Morly) and Eddie Elkins doing jokes in a routine that might have made
Abbott & Costello wonder out loud: “I don’t know about these jokes,
fellas…” (Wills would later marry and
write material for his more famous wife, Joan Davis.)
Dormitory
is worth the watch to see the young Ginger, and overall the material on
Ultra-Rare
Pre-Code Comedies, Volume 3 is a must-own for those folks (like me) who
have a thing for offbeat two-reelers.
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