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Ben Turpin

 
Actor: Ben Turpin
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  • Born: Sep 17, 1869 in New Orleans, Louisiana
  • Died: Jul 01, 1940 in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, California
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: teens-'30s
  • Major Genres: Comedy
  • Career Highlights: Shriek of Araby, A Night Out, Saps at Sea
  • First Major Screen Credit: Mr. Flip (1909)

Biography

Probably no silent comedian has had so much biographical misinformation gathered about him than scrawny, cross-eyed Ben Turpin. This much we know for sure: Turpin was the son of a New Orleans candy store owner, who moved his family all over the country depending on his financial state. We'd like to believe that, having squandered the hundred dollars his father gave him to make a start in the world, he hopped a freight and went on the bum rather than face his dad's wrath. Whether or not Turpin really did live a hobo's existence during his late teens is lost to history; his early career as a comedian in vaudeville, burlesque and stock is only hazily chronicled. Somewhere along the line, he did learn how to take spectacular falls without breaking every bone in his body. Even in his sixties, Turpin was able to perform his specialty, a backwards tumble called the "108," and would do so whenever the spirit moved him, both on camera and off. No one quite knows how Turpin's eyes became crossed, nor did he help future movie historians by giving different accounts of the origin of his ocular affliction to different interviewers. It is quite true that, once he became a star, he took out a Lloyd's of London insurance policy against his eyes ever becoming un-crossed--a wise move, since, in the words of critic Leonard Maltin, "To the end, Ben Turpin's face was his fortune." His movie career commenced in 1907 when he was hired by the Essanay studios in Chicago as both utility comedian and studio janitor. Oddly, his early Essanay films did nothing to capitalize upon the comic potential of his facial appearance. His fortunes improved (and his close-ups increased) when, in 1915, Turpin was teamed with Essanay's newest comedian Charlie Chaplin. Gaining a following thanks to his appearances with Chaplin, Turpin was signed to his own series at Vogue studios in 1917, then began a long association with Mack Sennett. Though he turned out fewer films than Sennett's other top comedians, Turpin rapidly became the studio's most popular star. In addition to headlining such 2-reel gems as The Daredevil (1924), he was starred in several Sennett features, including A Small Town Idol (1921) and the legendary Rudolph Valentino spoof The Shriek of Araby (1923). Because Turpin regularly lampooned such personalities as Valentino and Erich Von Stroheim, some historians have lauded Turpin as a satirist of the highest order. In truth, Turpin was merely performing the routines written for him by such ace Sennett gagsters as Mal St. Clair and Frank Capra; though his comedies were surefire laughgetters, he himself was only as good as his material. In 1924, Turpin announced that he was retiring to care for his ailing wife. After her death in 1925, he made several comeback attempts at both Sennett and the lesser Weiss-Artcraft outfit, but his time was past. During the talkie era, Ben more or less confined his filmmaking activities to bit roles, usually spot gags utilizing his crossed eyes as a punchline (e.g. Lubitsch's The Love Parade [1929] and Wheeler & Woolsey's Cracked Nuts [1931]). He was co-starred along with several other Sennett veterans in the memorable 1935 Vitaphone 2-reeler Keystone Hotel, then went into semiretirement. In his twilight years, Ben was far too wealthy to care that the parade had passed him by; in his heyday, he'd made $3000 a week (a fact that he enjoyed trumpeting to complete strangers on the street), and what he didn't squirrel away in banks he wisely invested in real estate and property. It is said that he personally worked as a janitor in the posh Los Angeles apartment houses that he owned, just to save an extra few bucks per week. Appropriately enough, Ben Turpins last film appearance was as a myopic apartment-house plumber, whose crossed wires and pipes result in music-playing refrigerators and ice-covered radios, in Laurel & Hardy's Saps at Sea (1940). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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Ben Turpin
Born Bernard Turpin
September 19, 1869(1869-09-19)
New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Died July 1, 1940 (aged 70)
Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Years active 1907-1940
Spouse(s) Carrie Turpin (1907-1925)
Babette Dietz (1926-1940)

Ben Turpin (September 19, 1869[1] – July 1, 1940) was a cross-eyed comedian, best remembered for his work in silent films.

Contents

Birth

Turpin was born Bernard Turpin in New Orleans, Louisiana on September 19, 1869, the son of a candy store owner.[1]

Vaudeville

He worked in vaudeville, burlesque, and circuses. Turpin had a distinctive appearance, with a small wiry frame, a brush mustache, and crossed eyes. Turpin's famous eyes, he said, only crossed as a young adult after he suffered an accident. Turpin was convinced that the crossed eyes were essential to his comic career; his co-workers recalled that after he received any blow to the head he made a point of looking himself in the mirror to assure himself that they had not become uncrossed. Turpin was a devout Catholic, and his workmates would occasionally goad him by threatening to pray that Turpin's eyes would uncross, thus depriving him of his livelihood.

Turpin famously bought a $25,000 insurance policy with Lloyd's of London, payable if his eyes ever uncrossed. (How serious this was is open to question; such publicity stunts centered around a performer's "trademark" were common at the time.) He developed a vigorous style of physical comedy, including an ability to stage comic pratfalls that impressed even his fellow workers in the rough-and-tumble world of silent comedy. One of his specialties was a backward tumble he called the "hundred an' eight'" (probably a corruption of "one hundred and eighty," referring to a 180-degree somersault).

Film

Ben Turpin (center) with two Mack Sennett Studios "bathing beauties"

Ben Turpin first appeared on film in 1907 for Essanay Studios in Chicago in various small parts and comic bits; in addition to his on-screen work, Turpin worked as a janitor for Essanay. In the 1909 film Mr. Flip, Turpin receives what is believed to have been the first pie-in-the-face.[2] By 1912 he was an established if not major screen personality, giving interviews and writing articles for the new fan magazines (the first of which had started the year before).

Charlie Chaplin joined the Essanay company in 1915, and the studio made Turpin his second banana. Chaplin was maturing as a filmmaker, working slowly and intuitively. Turpin, however, was impatient with Chaplin's methods. The earthy Turpin understood straightforward slapstick more than comic subtlety. The Chaplin-Turpin duo didn't last long, with Chaplin abandoning Chicago for California. Turpin does share one additional credit with Chaplin: after Chaplin filmed Burlesque on Carmen in two reels, Essanay filmed new scenes with Ben Turpin to pad the picture into a featurette, doubling its length.

Essanay did not survive Chaplin's departure and remained solvent for only a few more years. Turpin may have been aware of Essanay's instability; he left Essanay for the Vogue comedy company, where he starred in a series of two-reel comedies. Former Essanay comedian Paddy McQuire supported him. Many of Turpin's Vogue comedies were re-released under different titles, to cash in on Turpin's subsequent stardom.

Mack Sennett and stardom

In 1917 Ben Turpin joined the leading comedy company, the Mack Sennett studio. Turpin's aptitude for crude slapstick suited the Sennett style perfectly, and Sennett's writers often cast the ridiculous-looking Turpin against type (a rugged Yukon miner; a suave, worldly lover; a stalwart cowboy; a fearless stuntman, etc.) for maximum comic effect. Through the 1920s his roles often spoofed serious actors and celebrities of the time -- e.g., "The Shriek" for "The Sheik" -- and Turpin became one of film's most popular comics. Turpin appeared in both short subjects and feature films for Sennett. Delighted with his own success, he took to introducing himself with the phrase, "I'm Ben Turpin; I make $3000 a week."

Sennett terminated most of his staff's contracts in 1928, and closed the studio to retool for the new talking pictures. Turpin was signed by the low-budget Weiss Brothers-Artclass company, perhaps the most ambitious coup Artclass ever attempted. Turpin made two-reel comedies there for one year. Artclass usually traded on his peculiar vision with titles like Idle Eyes and The Eyes Have It.

Turpin in the sound era

The year 1929 saw many silent-film stars uncertain about their future employment, with the new talking pictures requiring new skills and techniques. Ben Turpin chose to retire. He had invested his earnings in real estate, and being highly successful at this, had no financial need for more work. Producers soon sought him out for gag appearances in films. He commanded a flat fee of $1000 per appearance, regardless of whether it was a speaking role or a fleeting cameo. He starred in only one more film, Keystone Hotel (Warner Brothers, 1935), a two-reel reunion of silent-era comedians. Turpin's speaking voice, incidentally, was a gritty, rasp that retained elements of the New Orleans "Yat" accent of his youth. His last film role was in the Laurel and Hardy film Saps at Sea in 1940, in which his cross-eyed face served as a joke punchline. He was paid his $1000 for one quick shot of his face and just 16 words of dialogue.

Death

Ben Turpin died July 1st, 1940 of a heart attack[3] and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.[4]

Turpin's crossed eyes

Turpin and Sennett both appeared as themselves (in Technicolor) in Hollywood Cavalcade, a partly fictionalized movie about the silent-film era. This movie contains a sequence in which Turpin reports for work and prepares to go onto the set in character. In the dressing room he picks up a hand mirror and checks his reflection as he deliberately crosses his eyes as extremely as possible. In this sequence, it can be seen that Turpin's left eye was actually normal when he was not performing, and that he intentionally crossed it (to match his misaligned right eye) as part of his screen character.

In the film The Comic, Mickey Rooney plays a fictional silent-film comedian named Cockeye Van Buren who is genuinely cross-eyed; although this character does not otherwise resemble Turpin, the handicap given to Rooney's role is clearly inspired by Turpin.

Timeline

  • 1869 Birth in New Orleans, Louisiana on September 19th
  • 1897 Possible marriage to Norma from Ohio
  • 1900 US Census in Houston, Texas listing birth year as 1869 and living with Norma and claiming to be married for 3 years. His father was Mexican and his mother Irish
  • 1907 First movie for Essanay, An Awful Skate (or The Hobo on Rollers)
  • 1907 Marriage to Carrie Le Mieux (1885-1925) aka Catherine of Canada
  • 1910 US Census in Chicago, Illinois
  • 1917 Work for Mack Sennett
  • 1920 US Census in Los Angeles, California
  • 1925 Announces retirement to care for ailing wife
  • 1925 Death of Carrie Le Mieux (1885-1925)
  • 1926 Marriage to German born Babette Dietz, on July 8th
  • 1930 US Census
  • 1940 Death

See also

References

  1. ^ a b His birth date was given as September 19, 1869 but other years were used at various times in his Hollywood publicity material. In the 1900 US Census he used the year "1869", and his death certificate used "1869", and that year will be used here. Encyclopædia Britannica wrongly lists the year of his birth as "1874". The New York Times obituary mentions the alternate years as fabrications. His death certificate lists his birthday as "September 19, 1869" and lists his mother's maiden name as "Buckley". The Internet Movie Database lists his birthday properly as "September 19, 1869".
  2. ^ "A Very Brief History of Slapstick". Splat TV. 2003. http://splat-tv.artshtick.com/history.html. Retrieved 2009-01-29. 
  3. ^ Ginibre, Jean-Louis (2005). Ladies or Gentlemen. New York City: Filipacchi Publishing. 
  4. ^ "Ben Turpin Dead. Actor Who Won Fame in Silent Films, Once a Hobo, Stricken in Hollywood at 71.". Associated Press in New York Times. July 2, 1940. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30C10FA3554107A93C0A9178CD85F448485F9. Retrieved 2008-06-17. "Ben Turpin, the funny little man with the crossed eyes who always maintained that he could do a "108" better than any one else, died today. He was 71 years old, although kindly biographers always had made him six years younger." 

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