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Picture Show Annual 49 / —\ Comedians' MEN WHO BROKE FROM THE SLAPSTICK SCHOOL AND GAVE US REAL COMEDY Charlie Chaplin, (he king of comedian*. IT may be true that there is a lack of really great comedians on the films, but it is equally true that the star laughter- makers of the screen have created types of character that broke away from every tradition of the stage. In the old melodramas the comedian was merely a burt. a farcical figure who was merely a foil to the handsome hero and a relief to the other serious actors in the play. Perhaps it would be better to describe him as the comic man, for there were real comedians in the old days, fine actors who held as high a place as famous tragedians. When the pictures first started they had only use for one kind of comedian, the comic figure who fell over wash tubs and chairs, and received custard pies on one cheek and turned the other for more. The people liked these early comedies much better than they liked the early attempts to make serious pictures, and naturally the makers of films turned out slapstick and custard pie pictures as fast as they could make them. But these pictures were not comedies in the best sense of the word, they were merely an inconsequential series of impossible happen- ings, and they were all very much alike. It was Charlie Chaplin who made the first break into real comedy in the pictures. Charlie had made Harold Lloyd in a typical scene in " The Kid Brother."