Topic: Bit Players In Hollywood

[locoboymakesgood]

This is a general questions.. maybe someone can answer.

I'm an avid fan of Laurel & Hardy as well as the Stooges. Billy Gilbert played plenty of bit roles in a lot of their shorts (along with James Finnlayson, Mae Busch, and the like). Specifically, I thought it was uner their "contracts" to only appear in films under a certain studio. Gilbert was in Men in Black and Pardon My Scotch, both Columbia films - not Roach. He also was in of course  A Night at the Opera, which was MGM. This is just an example.

A majority of his films were Hal Roach (he was always considered a member of the Hal Roach Stock Company), yet he was in different films. I thought contracts confined them to certain companies.

The same goes for Stooge bitplayers like Vernon Dent, Emil Sitka, and Bud Jamison. I'm not familiar with a lot of their work other than what they did with the Stooges.. but did they work for other companies as well?

On a side note away from the main topic - when the Stooges used a lot of archive footage for their remakes, would the bitplayers get payed for their old footage? I know in a lot of Shemp remakes Vernon Dent's footage was reused a few times, as well as Simona Boniface in a few shorts. Or did Columbia figure they were payed the first time, oh well?

And yet another point.. will we ever see some of the bitplayers own shorts? My Father told me when our local theater used to run Stoogefests every year, they'd go all out and play shorts of the bit actors. I know Vernon Dent had some for sure. Will those ever surface at the light of day, or are they gone forever?

[Pilsner Panther]

This is a general questions.. maybe someone can answer.

I'm an avid fan of Laurel & Hardy as well as the Stooges. Billy Gilbert played plenty of bit roles in a lot of their shorts (along with James Finnlayson, Mae Busch, and the like). Specifically, I thought it was uner their "contracts" to only appear in films under a certain studio. Gilbert was in Men in Black and Pardon My Scotch, both Columbia films - not Roach. He also was in of course  A Night at the Opera, which was MGM. This is just an example.

A majority of his films were Hal Roach (he was always considered a member of the Hal Roach Stock Company), yet he was in different films. I thought contracts confined them to certain companies.

The same goes for Stooge bitplayers like Vernon Dent, Emil Sitka, and Bud Jamison. I'm not familiar with a lot of their work other than what they did with the Stooges.. but did they work for other companies as well?

Go here—

www.imdb.com

—and you can find information on practically every actor or actress who ever appeared on film.

Vernon Dent worked with Harry Langdon in the slilent era, and he can be seen (briefly) in Buster Keaton's "The Cameraman" (1928). Bud Jamison also had a substantial career in the silents; he must have been a teenager when he started!

Emil Sitka came in later, but not until the Stooges' last short with Curly. Too bad he didn't appear earlier, because some real interaction between Emil and a healthier Curly would have been hilarious.

Silent comedy veterans like Chester Conklin and Snub Pollard (Harold Lloyd's early 1920's co-star) show up in the Stooges shorts, too.

When it comes to the "second-tier" classic film comedians, I'm a major fan of Edgar Kennedy.




 

[Genius In the Lamp]

Also, many Stooge supporting players (most notably Christine McIntyre, Kenneth MacDonald, and Dick Curtis) were familiar staples in B-westerns.

[BeAStooge]

I thought contracts confined them to certain companies.

The majority of the supporting players were not under contract.  They were 'day players.'  Wait for the phone to ring, and hope its White or McCollum with a job for a role in a short subject.  Vernon Dent, Bud Jamison, and Emil Sitka were day players.

Vernon Dent's full-time job was a concession stand he and his wife owned on Santa Monica's Venice Beach.  Emil's son has published some of his father's work diary entries in the Sitka Fan Club journal... Emil worrying about how to make ends meet on a daily basis, and hoping that White, McCollum or Bernds would call with a job that would put $150 for groceries in his pocket.

Some players did have contracts.  Christine McIntyre, because she had a relationship with McCollum; but she still had the allowance to do work at Monogram, Republic, etc., where she was regularly seen in low-budget westerns, and even a 1946 Bowery Boys film.  Jock Mahoney, because he was signed to do feature films, and wound up doing some shorts while the execs tried to launch his feature career.  Mahoney finally left Columbia in 1950, and made a nice career for himself that decade at low-budget studios, and his own TV show; he only came back in 1954 to do new footage for KNUTZY KNIGHTS as a favor to White.  He really hit it big in 1961, becoming the new 'Tarzan' for United Artists, before illness derailed his career for several years.

.. will we ever see some of the bitplayers own shorts? My Father told me when our local theater used to run Stoogefests every year, they'd go all out and play shorts of the bit actors. I know Vernon Dent had some for sure. Will those ever surface at the light of day, or are they gone forever?

For the most part, Vernon Dent and the other players did not have their own shorts subjects.  They supported the other Columbia short subject stars, e.g., Andy Clyde, El Brendel, Vera Vague, Buster Keaton, Charley Chase, Shemp Howard, Joe Besser, Joe DeRita, Harry Von Zell, Hugh Herbert, etc.

Some exceptions.  White was always trying to launch supporting player Monty Collins in his own series, usually trying to combine him into a comedy team... Collins and (Tom) Kennedy, Collins and Keaton, Collins and Brendel.  Tom Kennedy was another player that White tried to star, teaming him with Shemp in a couple short subjects.