Screenland (Oct 1923-Mar 1924)

d^How film farces are built by comedy architects—the gagmen In the TEMPLES P J \~ ICTU . icTURE-making is a thing of opposites. Producers striving to be serious are funny while comedians anxious to be funny are serious. Giggle-picklers insist the canning of comedies is a deathly-inearnest tussle in which their strangle-holds on laughter often slip. Thrill-throttlers with a story to trifle with have a much easier time, they say. Slap-stickers cannot be hampered with a story while the hp-stickers refuse to be. Fhotoplay patrons ambling out of a flicker shop after two reels of giggles have often exhibited a corrugated brow. The poor, erstwhile chuckleheads are trying to figure out why they laughed and at what. Hence the non-skid foreheads. Making Comedies a Serious Business Thb making of film comedies is a serious business and the titter-tailors, cudgelling their brains for a laugh, have rendered their heads as bald as their humor. The floor about the chair of a gag-man, when he can find a chair, after an eight-hour stalking of the furtive snicker is littered with handfuls of his hair. And what is a gag-man? Just a witty wight whose motto is: "It is to laugh!" Gag-men are the courtjesters to comedy-canners whose sense of humor has been completely effaced by the cash-register. They assay the chortle value of the ridiculous and attempt to put a celluloid collar about the neck of Mirth. If it were not for them our screen farces would be skull-bound but not gagged. They have made bank-rolls for Buster Keaton, Mack Sennett, Hal Roach, Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin and all will own Gnash cars after eight or nine more payments. Their identity is veiled in mystery, for their bosses' press agents tell the world each comedian does his own stuff. Either that or the gag-men are ashamed to admit they live by their wits. I Who Are The Gag Men? have been told that Harold Lloyd has a gag-man by the name of Sam Taylor. The man who told me this upsetting bit of gossip I would believe outside of his working hours. But since he is a press agent who was talkative at 10 oclock in the morning I am inclined to be dubious. "A gagman ih an undignified scenario writer," says Sam. "A scenario writer is a man who wears blackribboned eyeglasses and an air of importance. He also writes scripts for dramatic productions. "A gagman is a guy who wears last year's straw hat and a hang-dog, under-dog air. He gets ideas for comedies. The more he gets, the more he is abused. "When a scenario writer sees a director he smiles disdainfully. "When a gag-man sees a director he puts what little tail he has not had bitten off between his legs and slinks. "A scenario writer types his thoughts, if possible, upon big, clean sheets of foolscap — reams of it. How The Gag-Man Works gag-man scribbles his on the back of a dirty envelope. Sometimes he summons up enough courage to whisper them to a director and then hangs his head in shame. "Then the director has them photographed and a million people have a good laugh. "They proclaim the director to be a blessing upon earth. The comedian they elevate to heaven. "There's only one place left HJJntil the gag man appeared, the chief ingredients of film farce were custard pies, stuffed clubs, rubber bricks, smoke bombs and comedy chases. H,Then the gag man began to devise comic stunts. H,Here's what some of the famous gag men earn: Chuck Reisner (Chaplin) $750 Sam Taylor {Harold Lloyd) ... 500 Joe Mitchell (Buster Keaton) .$500 H. M. Walker (Harold Lloyd) .$500 Marcel Perez (Jimmy Aubrey) . $400 {[Cecile Evans, one of M ack Sennett' s new bathing girls, looks to see if her make-up is on right