This may shock even the few living people who remember stage and screen star Eddie Cantor at all, but he was a briefly in silent movies!
We associate Cantor with musical comedies, of course, and that high pitched voice with its Lower East Side accent is so central to what we think of as his character, but the fact remains — he was very good in silent comedies. Judging by the two wordless pictures he made, he could easily have been ranked among the top slapstick stars of his day. Unlike many stage stars who attempted the leap, Cantor possessed several key assets, including a small body and light frame, a highly expressive face, and and great agility. Both of his movies feature novel physical gags worthy of the medium. Only the fact that he entered the field so late makes his little detour into this specialty a mere footnote. That, and the facts that the films are not exactly flawless. Not bad, but maybe not universal classics on the order of The Navigator, City Lights, or Safety Last.
Cantor’s first, Kid Boots (1926) is ostensibly an adaptation of his hit Broadway show of the same name, and Eddie is great in it. That is, he’s great in the parts of the film in which he appears. The Broadway show had been a starring vehicle for Cantor. The screen adaptation switches up the formula. Directed by Frank Tuttle, known for directing romantic comedies and melodramas starring Mary Astor, Bebe Daniels, and Clara Bow, the bulk of the movie seems to focus on the straight plot starring Lawrence Gray and Billie Dove, with the comedy sub-plot inhabited by Cantor, Clara Bow, and Malcolm Waite (whose previous movie with Chaplin’s The Gold Rush.) Ostensibly they’re the stars but I swear, their plot gets about a third of the movie; the remainder goes to the other plot. The story has been radically altered as well. While the entire thing happens at a golf resort in the stage show, there’s only one scene at a golf course in the movie, with Eddie doing lots of comedy business that’s pretty reminiscent of his Ziegfeld co-star W.C. Fields. The film begins with a silly scene in a tailor shop (obviously based on the stage sketch Cantor performed and got a lot of mileage out of). His tour de force bit happens in a cafe, where he makes it appear that he is sitting across a table from a hidden woman. He channels both Chaplin and Lloyd in a lot of this business. The final set piece involving horses and ropes on a treacherous mountain pass, is more in the Keaton vein. Like I say, Cantor could have been a silent comedy star of their caliber in the right circumstances. Here he is shunted to the subplot. Also in the cast is Natalie Kingston, who appeared in comedies with Harry Langdon and Raymond Griffith. Well worth a watch.
Cantor’s second silent movie Special Delivery (1927) did not do well at the box office, which explains why Paramount, the top comedy studio at the time, dropped him and his talkies, which started a couple of years later, were at Goldwyn. I’m not sure why the movie didn’t click at the box office. It may have been because this was not based on a Broadway hit (it was his first original vehicle) or because the plot was not that original (he played a nebbishy spy undercover as a mail man). Yet top comedy talent went into the making of it, and it’s certainly plenty funny. Roscoe Arbuckle directed it (under his William Goodrich pseudonym). Harold Lloyd’s leading lady Jobyna Ralston is his costar. The cast also includes an uncredited Larry Semon, a young William Powell, Donald Keith, Victor Potel, Paul Kelly (mostly cut out because of his murder case), and Tiny Doll of the Doll Family! There is the requisite high speed rescue in the end, involving a fire truck and an ocean liner. There is a very funny scene where his moves dazzle the postman’s dance ball because he has ice down his pants. I find it more interesting and enjoyable than the weaker features of Keaton and Lloyd.
Miraculously both of these movies are extant and available online, although the versions I could find of Special Delivery are all pretty fuzzy to look at.
For more on silent comedy please check out: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube — now also available on audiobook!