CHARLIE CHAPLIN AND HARPO MARX AS MASKS OF

THE COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE:

THEORY AND PRACTICE

by
DAVID JAMES LeMASTER, B.A., M.A.
A DISSERTATION
IN
FINE ARTS
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of Texas Tech University in
Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for
the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Approved

< J h a i r ^ r s o n of^the Committee

Accepted

Dean of the Graduate School

May, 1995

^^a-

) ^

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the members of my committee for

their help, support, and friendship.

I extend a most

grateful thanks to Dr. George Sorensen, whose committement

to excellence reaches far beyond the classroom.

Dr.

Sorensen sacrificed of himself as both a reader and a

teacher.
Thank to Dr. Richard Weaver and Dr. Jim Gregory, for
help in preparing my presentation.

Thanks to Dr. Mike

Schoenecke for his outstanding teaching skills and for

giving me confidence as a writer, and thanks to Dr. Leon
Higdon for his support and encouragement.
I am eternally grateful to Dr. Janet Cooper for all of
her help as a director, playwrighting teacher, and mentor.
Special thanks also goes to Dr. Constance Kuriyama for her
careful attention to detail and her continued help in
preparing this document for the future.

Special thanks to

Jean Ann Cantore and all of my friends in the Texas Tech

School of Engineering for encouragement and friendship.
This document would never have been possible without
the training and support of my family.

I want to thank my

parents, and especially thank Dr. David R. LeMaster for

setting an example and giving me a goal.

Special thanks to

my wonderful Heather, without whose support I would never

have finished.
11

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ii

ABSTRACT

iv

CHAPTER
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.

VI.
VII.
VIII.

IX.
X.
XI.

INTRODUCTION

LITERATURE REVIEW

10

ORIGINS: CHAPLIN HARPO, AND THE

COMMEDIA HARLEQUIN

44

ORIGINS: CHAPLIN, HARPO, AND

THE PIERROT

82

THE MARX BROTHERS AND THE THEATRE

OF CRUELTY: UNIQUE SURREALISM OR
VAUDEVILLIAN STYLE

130

THE ARTAUDIAN ELEMENTS AS DISPLAYED

IN THE MARX BROTHERS AND CHAPLIN

166

THE SEARCH FOR STYLE: CHAPLIN

AND MEYERHOLD

207

MEYERHOLD AND THE COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE:

A DISCUSSION OF LAZZI AND HOW THEY
APPLY TO CHAPLIN HARPO

231

CONCLUSION

288

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

295

APPENDIX

303

111

ABSTRACT

Harpo Marx and Charlie Chaplin are cinematic

representatives of the Commedia dell'Arte, the living
theatre of the Renaissance.

Their evolutionary developments

may be traced by identifying their use of Commedia

techniques at various points in their careers.

Harpo used

lazzi to strengthen the comedic value of his performance,

while Chaplin used the lazzi as one technique to develop a
three-dimensional character.
Harpo remained a Harlequin throughout his career,
relying on many of the same lazzi in his final films that he
had created for his characters on stage.

In contrast,

although the early Chaplin possesses the Harlequin's traits,

Chaplin continued exploring and sought a more fully
developed character that did not rely on slapstick to convey
emotion.

The character known as "Pierrot" to twentieth

century audiences is distinct from the Harlequin because he

developed the characteristic of evoking sympathetic pity.
Several conclusions may be drawn:

First, the Pierrot

is a natural product of the evolution of drama from comedy

to tragedy to twentieth century tragicomedy.

Charlie

Chaplin is the link between comedy for the masses and

tragicomedy for the common man.

Second, Chaplin embodies

Meyerholdian and Artaudian technique as both an actor and

director, therefore achieving an artistic approach to
iv

comedy.

Finally, Harpo and his brothers are a filmed link

to vaudeville, which may, in turn, be traced to the original

Commedia dell'Arte.

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

No previous study has focused on the similarities

between Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx, the silent Marx
Brother.

Critics like Alexander Woollcott commented on

their similar use of pantomime and childlike movement, but

there has been no detailed comparison of th^i__origins or

documentation of their comedic techniques.

It is not enough

to say that both Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx made use of
pantomime and facial, hand, and bodily movement in their ^
clowning.

Their comic characters had similar origins but

took different paths to maturity.

Harpo and Chaplin are

cinematic representatives of the Commedia dell'Arte, the /

living theatre of the Renaissance.

Their evolutionary

developments may be traced by identifying their use of

Commedia techniques at various points in their careers.
While

Chaplin used the Commedia as a tool to progress to

something else, Harpo and the Marx Brothers employed

Commedia lazzi in order to strengthen the effect of their
comedy.
Harpo Marx and Charlie Chaplin were unconscious
representatives of the Commedia dell'Arte.

Their

backgrounds in vaudeville led to their adaptation of

Commedia lazzi and characters, which they used to different
ends.

Harpo used lazzi to strengthen the comedic value of

his performance, while Chaplin used the lazzi as one

technique while developing a three-dimensional character.
The study is divided into nine chapters, consisting of
theoretical discussion, comparative analysis, and a
comprehensive application of the theory to existing films of
Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, followed by a concluding
section.

The first two chapters include the introduction

and a review of the existing literature.

This review

reveals a lack of critical scholarship regarding Harpo Marx.

Most of the works addressing the Marx Brothers consist of
photographs or biographical studies without critical
commentary; none of them compare Harpo's qualities with the
characteristics of a Commedia dell'Arte character.

Critical

study of Charlie Chaplin ranges from biographies to lessthan-academic attempts to equate him with the Commedia
Pierrot.

l/

These studies make sweeping generalizations about

Chaplin and his Commedia counterpart.

None of them make an

effort to trace the historical development of Chaplin into

the Pierrot's personality and style.

The introduction and literature review will establish

an academic need for the research by showing that the
existing body of literature does not address Harpo and
Chaplin at the same time and that existing scholarship has
not completely connected their traits to the Commedia
dell'Arte.

This study will demonstrate that Charlie Chaplin

was not the only star of vaudeville and film to be

influenced by the Commedia dell'Arte, as evidenced by

Harpo's use of Commedia technique without attempting to
progress beyond the slapstixik routines and lazzi most often
associated with it.

Proving that both Chaplin and Harpo are

linked to the Commedia dell'Arte strengthens the validity of

their work because it connects them with a classical
tradition in theatre.

Harpo was an outstanding comic who

concentrated on comedic technique and discovered "bits of

business" or lazzi to evoke laughter; Chaplin was a skilled
dramatist who fused comedy with tragedy to establish pathos,
or sympathetic identification with his character.

He was

also willing to experiment, abandoning the "Little Tramp"

character, his makeup, and even his place in front of the
camera in order to progress and develop his art.

Chaplin

evolved from farce to tragicomedy, while Harpo perfected one

style of comedy and remained there.
The third and fourth chapters will address the origins
of Chaplin and Harlequin and tie them to the Commedia
dell'Arte.

Chapter III lists recognizable traits of the

Commedia Harlequin and then compares them with the

characteristics of Chaplin and Harpo, showing that both men
were Harlequinesque characters at one point in their
careers.

The evidence suggests that Harpo remained a

Harlequin throughout his career, relying on many of the same

lazzi in his final films that he had created in vaudeville
and on Broadway.

Harpo developed a comedic mask and

retained it, failing to explore the regions outside of that

mask.

In contrast, although the early "Tramp" possesses the

Harlequin's traits, Chaplin continued exploring and sought a

more fully developed character that did not rely on
slapstick in order to convey emotion.
Chapter IV reveals the character into which Chaplin
evolved.

It includes a brief history of the Pierrot and a

list of his dominant traits, noting that the Pierrot and the
Harlequin come from the same roots since they are variations
on the "zanni" character.

The character known as "Pierrot"

to twentieth-century audiences is distinct from the

Harlequin because he .evelope. the characteristic
sympathetic pity.

o f ^ ^ .

Chaplin attained this quality from the

Pierrot, evolving, like the original character, from the

trickster qualities of the Harlequin into a comedic figure
plagued by tragedy.

The Pierrot's characteristics will be

applied to Harpo and Chaplin's stage characters, and it will

be demonstrated that Chaplin's later "Tramp" was a fully
developed Pierrot.

Harpo stopped at an early point on the

evolutionary ladder, assuming the identity of the symbolic

Harlequin;

Chaplin continued to explore and progress

throughout his career, assuming the identity of the symbolic

Pierrot.
Chapter V is a comparative analysis of the Marx
Brothers and Chaplin.

The Marx Brothers' work is often

equated with the Theatre of Cruelty described by Antonin

Artaud.

This association is erroneous; the Marx Brothers

were not unique in their attack on society, and their comedy

has been mislabeled.

The Marx Brothers' work is a

combination of Commedia dell'Arte routines and lazzi, and

critics should not seek a deeper meaning.

This chapter

considers Irving Thalberg's attempt to transform Harpo into

a sympathetic character and the resultant destruction of the
team's sense of the Surreal.

Harpo did not progress beyond

the Commedia dell'Arte Harlequin; beneath their academic

jargon, the "Artaudian" and "Thalbergian" critics recognize
an attempt and failure on the part of the Marx Brothers to
reach beyond the use of the comic lazzi for the development
of pathos.
Chapter VI demonstrates that Chaplin did succeed in
making a transformation from the Harlequin.

Artaud's

theories of the theatre are listed and discussed, and an

attempt will be made to demonstrate Chaplin's use of the
same techniques Artaud envisioned.

A review of Artaud's

concepts yields interesting results; Artaud's theories may

not be applied to Harpo and the Marx Brothers, but they are
easily applicable to Chaplin's work.

The examination

demonstrates theory and application:

Chaplin unconsciously

used the principles enunciated by Artaud in his own

theatrical exploration.

It is essential to discover the

similarities between Artaud's theories and Chaplin's work in

order to understand better the progression of Chaplin from

comedy to tragicomedy and from the Harlequin into the

Pierrot.

Chaplin's unconscious adherence to Artaudian

principles is evidence that he developed, progressed, and

evolved as an experimental artist.
Chapters VII and VIII further explore Chaplin's
progression as an artist from comedy into tragicomedy.

The

transformation may be attributed to several factors:

Chaplin sought a higher form of drama on film; Chaplin never
discarded ideas and searched for the right moment to use
lazzi as an element of character development; Chaplin
controlled all production elements as an actor and director.
These traits may be applied to the ideas of Russian theorist
Vsevolod Meyerhold, whose controlling techniques tempered
every aspect of his productions.

An examination of

Meyerhold in comparison with Chaplin adds depth to the

understanding of Chaplin's evolution from a Harlequin to a
Pierrot.
ideas:

Chaplin unconsciously used many of Meyerhold's

He took his character and some of the characters

around him from the Commedia dell'Arte;

he established a

Commedia-style "mask" for Charlie, the "Little Tramp";

he

concentrated on a physicalization of the actor to attain an

emotion, exploring a technique Meyerhold called
"Biomechanics."

Chapter VII documents Chaplin's search for

style and his stylistic similarities with Meyerhold.

It is

important to note that Chaplin may be aligned with the

theories of both Meyerhold and Artaud, while Harpo and the

Marx Brothers adhere to only a few of their principles.

Chaplin is most easily compared with Meyerhold, and
Meyerhold's use of Commedia in experimental theatre is most
important to this study.

Like Meyerhold, Chaplin controlled

the complete piece of art.

In contrast, the Marx Brothers

were immersed in the Hollywood studio system and were

influenced by directors, producers, and writers.
To complete the comparison between the comedians, it is
important to identify and list Commedia lazzi and apply them
to their films.

Chaplin's progression through the Keystone,

Essanay, and Mutual films provides scholars with a

workshopping process in which Chaplin experimented with both
character and style.

It is not enough to identify Chaplin

and Harpo as the Harlequin and the Pierrot.

A detailed

examination of their approach to and use of Commedia lazzi

is essential in tracing their development.

Although they

often used the same lazzi, their approaches may be

contrasted by their ultimate purpose.

This chapter shows

that there is some demonstration of nearly all of the

traditional lazzi by the Marx Brothers.

In contrast,

Chaplin used lazzi after determining that they would add to

the personality of his character.

The detailed examination

of lazzi in this chapter is imperative to the completion of

this study because it is a comprehensive application of
theory to performance.

8
Although Chaplin penned little theory, his experimental
process is an application of many of the most important
theories of the twentieth century.

His work may be compared

with Meyerhold, Artaud, and other theorists who have

dominated modern theatre.

Chaplin's progression from the

Commedia Harlequin to the Pierrot parallels his maturation

from a cast member in the Keystone studio to his directoral
work as a tragicomedian.
Harpo was a Harlequin, and the efforts of producers
like Thalberg to make Harpo something else were failures.
The Marx Brothers were dependent on writers, and their work
is an application of Commedia lazzi to modern stage.

There

was no underlying purpose behind the Marx Brothers' humor;

they played vaudeville on film with little desire to explore
other techniques.

They were a part of the transformation of

comedy from the Vaudevillian stage to the Hollywood studio

system.
The progression of Chaplin from a Harlequin into a
Pierrot parallels the historical progression of the Commedia
characters.

The historical Pierrot outlived his ancestor

and slowly gained his own personality, mixing the comic with
the tragic.

Like the Pierrot, Chaplin began as a comic and

then grew into something much more mature.

Exploring the lazzi and how they apply to both Chaplin
and Harpo reveals that comic technique may be effectively
used in both comedy and tragedy.

Chaplin's use of a comic

mask to produce a sympathetic character was an evolutionary

step forward in the history of the theatre.

The historical

importance of both Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx cannot be

denied.

They are direct descendants of Commedia dell'Arte

masks as well as demonstrations of the Commedia technique.

CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW

The large number of books available on Charlie Chaplin

have seemingly saturated the field of study on the subject,
but many elements of Chaplin's work have not been examined
in any detail.

The great majority of Chaplin studies are

biographical, and Robert Payne's comparison of Chaplin with

traditional clowns is typical of critical works before 1970.
Apart from comparisons by theater critics during their
lifetimes, there has been no study of Charlie Chaplin and
Harpo Marx at the same time.

Although most Marx Brothers'

criticism mentions anarchy and Antonin Artaud, there has not

been a detailed effort to apply Artaud's actual writings to
the Marx Brothers' work.

The vast majority of the work on

the Marx Brothers is not scholarly, and countless

biographies and criticisms deteriorate into simple
recapitulation of Marx Brothers' dialogue.

Nothing like

this study has been previously attempted.

This chapter will give a detailed discussion of the
works examined in preparation for the study.

It will begin

by discussing the available literature on the Marx Brothers,

and then it will evaluate the numerous items on Chaplin.
The chapter will conclude with a brief discussion about
additional material necessary to this research.

10

11
The Marx Brothers
General and Critical Books
The first work to be sought in any study of the Marx
Brothers is Wes Gehring's The Marx Brothers: A BioBiblioaraphy (1987).

This excellent volume is filled with

biographical information, piecing together a detailed

chronology of the Marx Brothers' lives and combining it with
the best available survey of literature.

This volume was

indispensable during the early part of the study because it

gave the researcher an overview and pinpointed hard-to-find
volumes and references.

After a resurgence of the team's

popularity in the 1970s, the Marx Brothers have fallen from

the literary spotlight, and few works have examined them in
the last decade.
Gehring, who also completed a bio-bibliography on
Chaplin, occasionally makes comment about Chaplin and Harpo,
but he does not go into any detail in comparing or
contrasting them.

He draws attention to Chaplin's

relationship with his mother, suggesting that his boyhood

idolization of her was like the Marx Brothers and their
relationship with their mother, Minnie.
most fully applied to Groucho.

This statement is

Gehring goes on to compare

Groucho and Chaplin as old men, suggesting that both were

unhappy and that neither was very pleasant company.
Finally, in his commentary on articles, Gehring lists
several works that provide short comparisons of Harpo and

12
Chaplin.

None of the works, however, goes into any detail.

Gehring makes a comment that such a comparison is very

interesting but had become "standard" by the mid-1920s
(161).

It should be noted that all of these comparisons

were by theater critics who compared their films and that

there has been no extended study of Harpo and Chaplin.
One of the most famous works about the Marx Brothers is
Joe Adamson's Groucho. Harpo. Chico and Sometimes Zeppo: A
History of the Marx Brothers and a Satire on the Rest of the
World (1973).

Adamson's book is part biography and part

stand-up comedy routine.

It reads like a best-selling novel

and consists of photographs, interviews, fragments of

script, anecdotal stories about production, and detailed
plot synopses.

Adamson also offers criticism, occasionally

making profound statements, but often tempering them with

overly detailed plot synopses.

His is, however, the most

detailed criticism to date.

There are several strengths to Adamson's study.

First,

he does an excellent job of covering the basic biographical

facts, and he mixes stories with his own entertaining
commentary.

This book is also filled with outstanding

interviews and quotations from the team and directors,

actors, and people who worked with the Marx Brothers.

Of

particular interest to this study is the section that asks

whether or not the Marx Brothers were difficult to control.
In a series of statements by directors, producers, writers

13
and other actors, Adamson presents every possible answer to
the question, leaving the truth to the interpretation of the
reader.

Adamson discusses all of the Marx Brothers films

but hardly touches on the later works, instead dismissing

them with wit and sarcasm.*
Adamson also mentions Chaplin and the Marx Brothers
together on several occasions, but he does not attempt any
kind of comparison between Harpo and Charlie.

He does,

however, identify a major difference between Chaplin and the

Marxes.

Commenting on the 1931 releases of City Lights and

Monkey Business. Adamson explains, "Chaplin, like most filmmakers, appeals to our sympathies.
to our drives" (143).

Monkey Business appeals

Later, he equates Chaplin with the

rest of Hollywood by explaining, "When Chaplin or Keaton (or

almost anybody) made features, they used stories as
something to help them sustain audience interest.

The Marx

Brothers insisted on working against their story, as if it

were some sort of referee" (166).
Adamson should receive credit for the outstanding film
documentary. The Marx Brothers in a Nutshell.

The film is a

collection of Marx Brothers scenes and routines along with

interviews of writers, producers, and living relatives.
* For instance, the three-page review of Room Service
includes the Webster's Dictionary definition of a Marx
Brothers movie. Adamson argues that Room Service was not
intended for their personalities and, therefore, does not
fit the definition. The film is dismissed entirely. Such
eccentricities make it difficult to categorize Adamson's
work as scholarly.

14
Although this documentary does not mention Chaplin and
Harpo, it is an outstanding source for commentary on the
Marx Brothers.

Of special interest to this study is the

interview with Morrie Ryskind, who describes writing for the

team and then listening with amazement at the seeming
immediacy of their performances.
Two books accompany the Adamson book.

First, Zimmerman

and Goldblatt's The Marx Brothers at the Movies (1968)

attempts to mix photographs, plot synopses, and criticism.
The book is heavy on the plot synopsis, with only occasional
comment that is relevant to the critic.

The authors spend

much too much time reprinting dialogue from the films, and
this book often deteriorates into being a scrapbook rather
than a critical book.

The authors refer to the Marx

Brothers films as being anarchical, and they believe that

the best films were made under Thalberg.
Allen Eyles' The Marx Brothers: Their World of Comedy
(1969) concentrates more heavily on criticism and gives
social commentary in order to set the Marx Brothers in
proper historical context.

Eyles' criticism is well-written

and insightful, and it contributes to a better understanding

of the films and their importance in American film history.
He does not, however, contribute anything to this study's
comparison between Harpo and

Chaplin.

The book is relevant

to any study of the Marx Brothers, but it was only of

marginal help for this study.

15
Martin Gardner's doctoral dissertation. The Marx
Brothers: An Investigation of Their Films as Satirical
Social Criticism (1970), also concentrates on the team in a
historical perspective.

Gardner, however, concentrates on

how the Marx Brothers fit into American history.

Although

the work is interesting, it does little to further this

study.
The Anatomy of Cinematic Humor (1975) by Thomas H.
Jordan contains a lengthy essay on the Marx Brothers in
which he explains the appeal of the Marx Brothers as being a
mix of verbal and visual wit.

Jordan spends a great deal of

time trying to describe the characters and explain their

comedic style.

Apart from discussing their style of humor,

character analysis for any Marx Brothers' film seems

inappropriate.

Illustrated History
Most books about the Marx Brothers are biographical or
anecdotal compilations containing countless pages full of
plot synopses and snippets of dialogue.

The invention of

VCRs has greatly lessened the need for plot synopses and
dialogue publication; however, most of the Marx Brothers
scripts are not in print.

Scripts survive of the George S.

Kaufman stage plays (Animal Crackers) and three screenplays:

A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, and a combined
publication of Monkev Business/Duck Soup.

In 1971, Richard

16
Anobile edited Why a Duck: Visual and Verbal Gems from the
Marx Brothers Movies.

Because of legal battles over the

rights to Animal Crackers, a sequel concentrating on that

film was published in 1974.
The Marx Brothers (1950) by Kyle Crichton was published
while all the brothers were alive, and it amounts to little
more than a series of anecdotes probably read and approved
by the family.

It yields little in the way of criticism.

Crichton obviously had direct access to the Marx family, and

the copyright for the book is owned by the Marx Brothers.
Like Maxine Marx's later work, Crichton's book credits Chico
with being an integral part of the team.

Writer Wes Gehring

suggests Chico's import was lessened partially by the flood

of material written by Groucho, whose opinion of Chico was
quite poor.
The Marx Brothers; A Pyramid Illustrated History of the
Movies by William Wolf is typical of most publications about
the Marx Brothers.

This tiny volume is filled with pictures

and tidbits, pausing occasionally for reviews or facts.

In

the same vein, two new collections of Marx Brothers material

have recently appeared.

In 1992, Allen Eyles published an

excellent volume. The Complete Films of the Marx Brothers.

His work is a collection of stills and plot summaries from
all of the team's movies, and Eyles includes a detailed
biographical essay.

Also published in 1992, Ronald Bergan's

The Life and Times of the Marx Brothers is less a work of

17
scholarship than of pop-culture, and it is filled with
glossy reproductions of stills and publicity shots.

Eyles

filled an academic need by printing a complete listing of

the Marx Brothers' movies, and Bergan added to the "popdiefication" of the team.

The publication of such works in

the early 1990s indicates another revival of their

popularity.

Biography
Of Marx Brothers biographies and autobiographies, by
far the most important is Harpo's autobiography, Harpo
Speaks!

Written with Rowland Barber, the book is 482 pages

of anecdotal material and occasional comment.

The majority

of the book discusses Harpo's relationships, especially his

long-lasting friendship with theatre critic Alexander
Woollcott, whose name and character profile dominate the
book.

The relationship is quite interesting; the ill-

tempered, snobbish, cultural Woollcott befriended the softspoken, uneducated Harpo, and, through a series of contrasts
and opposites, the two complemented each other quite nicely.
Woollcott was responsible for getting the Marx Brothers
national attention:

his articles made the team famous; his

reviews extolled their virtues long before other critics

began noticing them; Woollcott was responsible for arranging
Harpo's tour of Russia.

The book loses a bit of steam after

18
Woollcott's death, and the reader can see signs of a pure
affection for his friend from Harpo's writing.
Apart from being the Alexander Woollcott story, Harpo
Speaks! offers great insight into the Marx Brothers' early
stage careers.

Harpo goes into great detail of the team's

early organization, and he devotes most of two chapters to

discussing his original personality in the team, a stock
character named Patsy Brannigan.

Harpo also chronicles how

the team was put together, how many of their more famous
gags were created, and how he learned to play on his own
during the tour of Russia.

Since Harpo had no education

past the second grade, very little insight was given as to

theatrical theory or Commedia tradition.

Harpo Speaks!

mentions Chaplin occasionally, but Harpo does not compare

himself to Chaplin.

He does, however, show a great respect

for Chaplin and his work.

Chico did not write an autobiography, and very few
details are known about his private life.

The only book to

address Chico alone is Growing Up with Chico (1980), written

by daughter Maxine.

Ms. Marx refers to her father as the

organizer of the team and the one who instigated their rise
on Broadway and transition to the movies.

She is not

terribly fond of Groucho, but she tells several endearing

stories about her relationship with Harpo.

Chico's

reputation as a philanderer and irresponsible gambler are

well earned, but he is rarely credited with being more than

19
a supporting member of the team.

Maxine Marx helps provide

a new perspective on Chico's importance.

Groucho wrote a large number of autobiographies and has
been the subject of countless works.

The most important of

these works is his first autobiography, Groucho and Me, in

which the comedian describes in detail how the act got
started and gives his impressions of vaudeville and early
film.

Several of the stories slightly contradict Harpo's

versions; however, for the most part, their stories

coincide.

Groucho and Harpo plainly differed on their

opinion of Chico; Harpo admired his older brother and

credits him with teaching Harpo the realities of life on the
street, and Groucho admits that Chico talked him into
playing Broadway instead of vaudeville (156).
Groucho mentions Charlie Chaplin in passing several
times, but his story of how the Marx Brothers met Chaplin is
one of the most important statements any Marx Brother made
about Chaplin.

Groucho describes him as "shy," and he

claims that the logical successor to Chaplin's style of

comedy is Red Skelton.

In short, Groucho concludes that

Chaplin is "the greatest comic figure that the movies, or

any other medium, ever spawned" (135).
One of the most helpful works in this study is The Marx
Brothers Scrapbook (1973).

Written with Richard Anoible,

the book is quite explicit, and Groucho expresses an

uncensored opinion on everything from how much he hated

20
Chico to the list of actresses with whom he wished to have
sex.

Several passages are nearly unreadable, but several

others are rich with information about the time period and
other actors.

In addition. The Marx Brothers Scrapbook is

filled with pictures, reviews, articles, and interviews.

Harpo's wife, Susan, shares an especially poignant
interview, shedding insight into Harpo's gentle personality
offstage.

Jack Benny, Nat Perrin, Morrie Ryskind, and

director Robert Florey all contribute interviews.

The Groucho Phile (1976) is a similar book, but
Groucho's language and sexual content are considerably toned
down.

This book was important because Groucho commented on

the Marx Brothers as a stock company, of which he, Chico,

Harpo, Zeppo, and Margaret Dumont were all members.
Groucho Marx published several interviews and articles,
but none of them are useful to this study.

Groucho wrote a

number of humor books before his first autobiography

(Groucho and Me), including Beds (1930), Many Happy Returns:
An Unofficial Guide to Your Income-Tax Problems (1942).

The

Groucho Letters: Letters to and From Groucho Marx (1967) was

full of verbal witticisms, but it had little to do with this
study.

The Secret Word is Groucho (1976), written with

Hector Arce, is a series of stories about the television

show You Bet Your Life.
Groucho granted several important interviews.

"GROUCHO

Looks at CHARLIE: The Maddest Marx Looks Back on the Day

21
When he ^Discovered' the Genius of Chaplin," originally
published in the May, 1936 issue of Motion Picture, recounts
the story of Chaplin and the Marx Brothers meeting when they
first began their stage careers.

Several versions of this

meeting exist, and the Marx Brothers are said to have talked
Chaplin into taking a film contract rather than staying with
vaudeville and the Music Hall.

Groucho also refers several

times to Chaplin's personality, calling him shy and

insecure, somehow unaware of his greatness:
was the greatest fellow on the stage.
never be anyone like him.

"I said then he

I know now there will

He's in a class by himself, just

as he has always been" (39).

"Groucho Marx: Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man,"
an interview with Robert Altman and others, was published in
Take One in 1970.

Groucho commented on everything from

politics to the interviewers' clothing, but the work is

especially telling when he describes the team's original
intentions.

Unlike Chaplin, the Marx Brothers were never

very interested in producing artistic statements or mixing

pathos into their work.

Groucho explains that the Marx

Brothers were trying to be funny and that they paid very

little attention to anything else.
Groucho's son, Arthur, wrote two biographies of his
father. Life With Groucho (1954) and Son of Groucho (1972).
The former contained editorial comments supposedly by
Groucho, but the document caused quite a bit of controversy

22
between father and son.

The latter book was not quite as

cheerful in tone, and Groucho's bitterness as an old man was

emphasized.

The two books are essential for an

understanding of Groucho as a person, but they reveal very

little that is new in the range of Marx Brothers studies.
Groucho's son does not discuss Commedia.
Two other Marx Brothers biographies were used in this
study.

Hello. I Must Be Going (1978), by Charlotte

Chandler, was the result of a Playboy interview in the late

1970s.

The book, which stretches over 500 pages, consists

of Chandler's following Groucho about and writing down

everything that he did and said.

Several passages clarify

the team's origins, but they add little to this study.

second book, Groucho (1979), by Hector Arce, is a detailed

biography published just after Groucho's death.

He goes

into detail about the first meeting between Groucho and

Chaplin, and he maintains that Chaplin admired Groucho as
well, saying, "I wish I could talk like you" (155).

This

work is, of course, much more concerned with Groucho than

the rest of the team.
Mention should be made of a series of articles written
by Harpo's friend, critic Alexander Woollcott, who reviewed
the Marx Brothers both on stage and in film, and who
occasionally wrote about Chaplin as well.

He spotlighted

Harpo in his review of I'll Say She Is. entitled, "Harpo

Marx and Some Brothers," and he profiled Harpo throughout

23
his career.

Several articles are interesting to this study.

In "Portrait of a Man With Red Hair," Woollcott writes that

Harpo's art, "like . . .Mr. Chaplin's, does know no
frontier, and, in a deeper sense he will never be a in a
strange land at all" (36). In "Mother of a Two-a-Day,"
Woollcott describes Harpo as a "Chaplinesque mute."
Furthermore, the Marx Brothers are unique because the
"infinite sadness" in the eyes of Chaplin would be "wasted
utterly" on the Marx Brothers, because their lives,
"especially their darkest dayshave been full of a crazy
laughter" (109).

In "Charlie, As Ever Was" (1931),

Woollcott describes Chaplin:

"Primarily Chaplin is innocent

courage, gallantrythe unquenchable in mankindtaking on

flesh and walking this earth to give us heart" (312).
Woollcott's articles are important to this study because
they are among the most dynamic comparisons between Chaplin
and Harpo.

Critical Essays
Two critical essays are essential to this study.

The

first, Raymond Durgnat's "Four Against Alienation" appears

in The Crazy Mirror; Hollywood Comedy and the American Image
(1970).

Durgnat calls the Marx Brothers "Surrealistic," and

he briefly compares them with Artaud, Jarry, and Lewis

Carroll.

He finds their vulgarity like Chaplin without the

pathos, and calls Harpo a "magic baby" who can eat anything

24
(154).

Although it is short, this essay is well written and

essential to any critical study of the Marx Brothers.

Durgnat's book also includes a critical essay on Chaplin and
all of the major film comedians.
A second essay of great importance to this study is a
section from Henry Jenkins' recent book. What Made Pistachio
Nuts?
(1992).

Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic

Jenkins theorizes that early sound comedians,

including the Marx Brothers and Eddie Cantor, took

vaudeville, the theater of the people, off the stage and put
it on screen.

He draws on the tradition of criticism that

calls the Marx Brothers "anarchists" and applies that

traditional criticism to what was happening in the rest of
Hollywood at the same time.

Jenkins focuses his book on

Hollywood's attempt to "absorb" those things in vaudeville

that were most compatible with the norms of society.

The

book is both well documented and quite humorous, and it

makes outstanding reading.

The section on the Marx Brothers

is an excellent synopsis of past criticism.

William Donnelly draws a similar conclusion to Jenkins
in his 1972 article, "A Theory of the Comedy of the Marx
Brothers."

For Donnelly, the Marx Brothers are only labled

as "surrealistic" because critics cannot seem to classify

them in any other category.

Donnelly gives an excellent

overview of the criticisms from Artaud, Eyles, and Sarris,

and he concludes that the Marx Brothers comedy was "molded

25
from the inferno of American vaudeville into a form of
comedy that is unified and effective" (15).
Andrew Sarris includes an essay on the Marx Brothers in
his book. The American Cinema (1968).

Sarris is critical of

the structure of the team's films, and he is bothered by the

extraneous harp, piano, and dance numbers.

Sarris'

conclusion is that "the Marx Brothers try to be mad in a

sane world, whereas the Beatles try to be sane in a mad
world"

(246-248).

The majority of the works about the Marx Brothers

concentrate on placing the team in a historical perspective.
Most critics call them "anarchists," and they loosely apply
Artaud to the Marx Brothers' "revolt" against society.
There has not, however, been a full examination of the Marx
Brothers in the context of Artaud's actual theories.
Although Harpo and Chaplin are sometimes mentioned in the
same breath, no study links Harpo to Chaplin, and there has
not been any kind of study that examines the comedic styles
of the two comedians side-by-side.

In addition, there have

been few attempts to look at the Marx Brothers in the

context of the Commedia dell'Arte.

Most work written about

the Marx Brothers is biographical; the few critical works

concentrate on placing the Marx Brothers in a generic
category labeled "anarchy."

26
Charlie Chaplin
In contrast to Marx Brothers criticism, there has been
an abundance of works on Charlie Chaplin, and it is very
difficult to sort through them in order to determine what
has and has not been covered.

Most of the early biographies

were, of course, published during Chaplin's lifetime, and,

consequently, they are unable to evaluate him as a
historical figure.

Several important works come from

France, where more emphasis is placed on the criticism of

film than in the U.S.

An inherent weakness exists in most

Chaplin criticism; like the criticism of the Marx Brothers'

films, most critics spend far too much time concentrating on
plot synopses and rarely pay attention to themes or
cinematic techniques.

Recent criticism has been more

thematic, and the most recent biography of Chaplin, David

Robinspn's Chaplin: His Life and Art (1985), examines
previously unseen documents.
changing.

In short, Chaplin criticism is

Although there is are numerous works written

about Chaplin, there is still plenty of room for scholarly

study.

This dissertation attempts to concentrate on works

that could be applied to the subject at hand.

An excellent

listing of all of the scholarly works on Chaplin until 1983

can be found in Wes Gehring's bio-bibliography.

27
General/Critical Books
Gehring's work must be listed first in the Chaplin
study because it was instrumental in locating material and
sorting through the countless references to Chaplin.

The

biographical section is informative but short; Gehring's

work is important as an overview but not as a groundbreaking
volume.

The book contains a short section of "Chaplin on

Chaplin," and Gehring divides his bibliography into

subjects, such as "Chaplin's Working Style" and "Chaplin's
World View."

It is interesting to note that, although

Gehring completed a bio-bibliography on the Marx Brothers,

he does not spend any time comparing Chaplin with Harpo
Marx.

Harpo is mentioned only once in the text, when

Gehring briefly compares Chaplin's walk with Harpo's gookie.

Both must be considered individual lazzi that the performer
tailored for his own act.

In addition, Gehring's work is

over ten years old, and several important studies of Chaplin

have come out since its publication.

It might be time for

someone to update the material in Gehring's book, because a

great deal of material is missing.
Two books were indispensable.

The Complete Films of

Charlie Chaplin (1990), by Gerald McDonald, Michael Conway,

and Mark Ricci, is a delightful collection of pictures,
criticisms, and plot synopses, giving detailed discussion of
every one of Chaplin's pictures.

The work also includes

excellent introductory essays by McDonald on early

28
Chaplin and Conway on Chaplin's body of work.

Not only does

it make wonderful trivia, this volume is quite helpful to

the researcher in keeping the films in perspective.
other works are similar;

Two

Timothy Lyons' Charles Chaplin; A

Guide to References and Resources (1979) and Asplund's

Chaplin's Films (1971).
Dan Kamin's Charlie Chaplin's One Man Show (1984) is a
unique Chaplin study, and it was essential to completing
this study.

Unlike the critics before him, Kamin identifies

physical movements of Chaplin and makes a detailed study of

how Chaplin uses his body in order to convey feeling.

Kamin

identifies several elements within Chaplin's comedy,

including the use of transformation of one object to
resemble another.

Kamin lists eight transformations;

object/object, setting/ setting, body/object, animated

object, person/animal, body part/body part, action/action,
and relationship/relationship.

In addition, Kamin makes a

vvww

close examination of Chaplin's full-length films, and he

analyzes how each fits into Chaplinjs progression.

This

book is an outstanding piece of work, and other Chaplin

critics should pay close attention to both its style and its
findings.

A similar study of Harpo's physical gags and use

of his physical body does not exist.

Although several writers have compared Chaplin with the
Pierrot, the most in-depth study of Chaplin in the context
of Commedia lazzi was Raoul Sobel and David Francis'

29
Chaplin: Genesis of a Clown (1977).

This work is both

\y^

useful and confusing in its attempts to identify commedia

lazzi used by Chaplin.

Several of the lazzi are not

applicable, and they do not fully explore all possibilities.

It may be questioned, for instance, if Chaplin's feeling a
woman's foot in The Floorwalker is a variation of the
Harlequin's typical gesture of placing his leg over a
woman's lap or touching part of her body.

This gesture

seems much more consistent with Harpo than with Chaplin,

although Chaplin often orients himself toward women
physically in highly suggestive ways.

Sobel and Francis do,

however, demonstrate several lazzi that may be applied to

Chaplin, and their free use of photographs helps illustrate
their point.

Several statements may be questioned,

including their claim that Chaplin did not know he was using
the Commedia dell'Arte technique until after his career was
over.

Several statements in the Chaplin autobiographies

contradict this idea.

In addition, most of the lazzi

mentioned by Sobel and Francis involve vulgar bodily gags,

such as the use of the posterior as a device for comedy.
They do not, however, go into a detailed listing of commedia
lazzi, and they do not examine any shift in Chaplin's
character from the Harlequin to the Pierrot.
Brothers are not discussed in this book.

The Marx

30
Biographical
Mv Autobiography (1992), is highly readable and much
more relevant to Chaplin study.

Although Chaplin does not

go into detail about some unpleasant events (he hardly

mentions his marriages), he reveals a great deal about his
working techniques.

Chaplin occasionally takes time out

from recounting the facts about his life and theorizes on

film and film theory.

He admits to not understanding

Stanislavsky's "Method," and he describes a system of

directing that sounds very much like Meyerhold.
His description of work techniques, however, is quite
important.

Chaplin's other autobiographical works include

My Trip Abroad (1922), A Comedian Sees the World (1933),

(both travel books which bear little relevance to this
study) and My Life in Pictures (1974).
The best and fullest Chaplin biography is David
Robinson's Chaplin: His Life and Art (1985), providing over
700 pages of meticulously documented discussion.

Robinson

peppers his writing with criticism, and his style is both

readable and intelligent.

This biography is superior to

those before it for several reasons;

Chaplin died in 1977,

and Robinson was able to examine the complete life as

opposed to the life up to a point; Robinson had all of the
preceding biographies as points of reference; Robinson was
allowed to look at many documents other biographers never
saw, including the FBI file examining Chaplin and his

31
political beliefs (Robinson concludes that much of the FBI's
information was erroneous, thus condemning the FBI and not
Chaplin).

Among the book's most interesting passages are

those identifying Chaplin's desire to have a dream scene

open Citv Lights, and his life-long passion to play
Napoleon.
The first major biography of Chaplin is Theodore Huff's
Charlie Chaplin (1951), published while Chaplin was still
working.

Gehring calls it a "foundation" for later studies,

and the work sets the standard for the method of Chaplin
criticism.

Huff spends most of his time talking about

films, delving into detailed plot synopses rather than

attempting to criticize.

Since Chaplin was both alive and

working at the time of publication. Huff was limited in what

his research could find for him.

He was, however,

successful in producing a good volume on the known facts of

Chaplin's life, and his work is an important step in Chaplin
criticism.
John McCabe's Charlie Chaplin (1978) is, essentially,
an update of Huff's biography.

McCabe takes the same basic

approach as Huff, and he spends a great amount of time on

plot synopsis.

He does, however, make some interesting

critical statements and is most especially concerned with

the development of pathos in Chaplin's work.

For McCabe,

the use of happy endings in such films as The Vagabond and

The Gold Rush negates the statement Chaplin tried to make.

32
McCabe briefly mentions dream imagery, and he identifies
several works in which dreams play a part.

McCabe's only

mention of the Marx Brothers is a footnote telling the

reader that the team stole their mirror scene in Duck Soup
from Chaplin's The Floorwalker.
There are several books that take a biographical
approach but which become almost metaphysical in execution.
The most important is Robert Payne's The Great God Pan
(1952), a discussion of Chaplin in the context of Puck, Pan,
and the Commedia Pierrot.

Payne's work is stylized and

exaggerated, painting Chaplin and his historical tradition

in broad strokes: and he does not back up his ideas with
documentation.

Payne's thesis is quite interesting;

Chaplin comes from a long line of clowns that may be

identified with the Pierrot and other characters like him,
and Chaplin took portions of all of these characters in
order to create the Little Tramp.

The book itself is

somewhat confusing in its conclusions, and the flowery

language is distracting.

No bibliography exists.

In

addition, Payne's ideas are in desperate need of factual

support. Nevertheless, Payne's work is well-known, and
although its ideas are quite interesting and certainly
relevant to this dissertation, the work is useless apart
from being one writer's viewpoint.

Essayist Graham Petrie

calls this book "a disgrace" and "a sad comment on the state

33
of Chaplin criticism that it remains in print as one of the
standard accounts of his life and art" (123).

Historical/Critical
The Comic Mind; Comedy and the Movies (1973) by Gerald
Mast concentrates on themes in Chaplin's work.

Most

important to this dissertation is Mast's occasional

discussion of dreams as a minor theme.

Mast provides an

interesting perspective, and he theorizes that several of

Chaplin's happily ending films are, essentially, dream films
because they provide an unrealistic ending.

Mast also

spends a lot of time discussing food and food images, both

of which are relevant to the Commedia dell'Arte.

Mast's

work is well designed and quite interesting, and he is

unique in his disussion of major themes in Chaplin's films.
A study of Mast was essential to this work, and his
discussion of Chaplin's themes aided in a compilation of
Commedia-style lazzi and actions.

Mast, furthermore, does

not use the broad strokes painted by Robert Payne and others
who drew similarities between Chaplin and other clowns.
Mast evaluates Chaplin's films quite well, and he provides
researchers with an excellent source.
In A .qhort History of the Movies (1981), Mast includes
an essay on Chaplin and the development of character.

Mast

points to the short films with Essanay and Mutual as being a

workshop where Chaplin abandoned the Mack Sennett/Keystone

34
approach of stringing together multiple gags without paying
attention to character development.

Mast credits Chaplin

with discovering how to add to the character's personality

by using actions consistent with the character.
The Silent Clowns (1975) by Walter Kerr is a pictorial
and critical discussion of Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and
Hardy, Harold Lloyd and Harry Langdon.

The chapters on

Chaplin are rich in detail, but they are focused on a

difficult-to-defend thesis; Chaplin as a person did not
belong to anything, and, therefore, Charlie the Tramp was
unable to belong to anything either.

It is through this

idea that Kerr explains Charlie's remarkable ability to

change jobs and even dispositions from one silent film to
another without actually changing his personality.

Kerr

believes that City Lights was the peak of Chaplin's career,

and he describes it as being a culmination of all that
Chaplin had used in his previous films.

Kerr is easy to

read and entertaining, but he has difficulty defending his

broad thesis.

He does, however, lend a great deal of

insight to Chaplin study, and the importance of his work

should not be overlooked.
In addition to his essay about the Marx Brothers,
Raymond Durgnat writes a great deal about Chaplin in The
Crazy Mirror.

Chapter 11, "Aimless Odysseus of the

Alleyways," commends Chaplin's silent films as "the only

works of art ever created which can spin the spectator from

35
laughter to tears and back in a few seconds" (78). Durgnat
only sweeps through a few ideas, but then he gives an
excellent overview of Chaplin's importance.

Durgnat

stresses that the Little Tramp should not be idolized

because turning him into a "Saint Chaplin" misses half of
Chaplin's humor.

Chaplin is, instead, a combination of the

devilish and the saintly.

Donald McCaffrey published an outstanding volume of
essays on Chaplin with his Focus on Chaplin (1971).

This

volume is made up of extracts from numerous works, and

McCaffrey does an excellent job of organizing and centering
the essays around themes.

He publishes several essays by

Chaplin that reveal how Chaplin thought.

Paramount among

these essays is "A Rejection of Talkies," originally

published as "Pantomime and Comedy" (1931).

Chaplin also

makes interesting commentary on the development of the Tramp

in an essay originally titled, "How I Made My Success"
(1915).

Discrepancy occurs over the authorship of several

of Chaplin's early articles; however, they detail Chaplin's

theories and are an indispensable source of information.
A superb explanation of the work habits of Chaplin may
be found in Louis Delluc's Charlie Chaplin (1922).

In it,

Delluc reprints articles by Chaplin, Max Linder, and

Chaplin's secretary, Elise Codd.

Codd's description of

Chaplin as a director is particuarly interesting:

repeats the most important direction, "Don't act."

She
Delluc's

36
discussion of the films is not as intersting as his chapter
entitled "The Method."

The most helpful documentary on

Chaplin and his work methods is Kevin Brownlow and David

Gill's The Unknown Chaplin (1983).

Like most other

directors of the time, Chaplin destroyed his film rushes

after the completion of the film; however, the few rushes
that remain are instrumental in understanding Chaplin's
vision and his methodology as a director.

In this BBC

documentary, Brownlow and Gill analyze the rushes and

include interviews with Virginia Cherrill, Jackie Coogan,
and other actors who worked with Chaplin.

The documentary

is especially interesting to this study because it provides

access to pieces of film that have never before been
available.

Chaplin and Commedia

David Madden combines elements of Chaplin and the
Commedia dell'Arte in his study. Harlequin's Stick
Charlie's Cane (1975).

This book pairs pictures of Commedia

'^

dell'Arte characters with early film comedians, including

Chaplin, Fields, Eddie Cantor and Harry Langdon.

The

weaknesses of Madden's work far outweigh any scholarly

significance.

The text gives way to the pictures, much like

Sobel and Francis' study of a similar subject.

Madden fails

to cite sources, and most of the ideas stated in the book

unsupported are opinion.

Madden also fails to study

37
Chaplin's use of lazzi or make a comprehensive comparison of
Chaplin with other film comedians.

The strength of his

argument, in fact, is in the pictures alone; Madden's work

has the appearance of a coffee table book rather than a
serious study.
Books about the Commedia dell'Arte, however, all fall
into a similar category, and a great number of them are
highly unsatisfying.

Uraneff's statement about the Commedia

evolving into American vaudeville and the movie screen comes

from a magazine article, and his comments are largely
unexplored.

There are, however, several decent studies of

the Commedia.

Commedia dell'Arte
A primary source for this study was John Rudlin's
excellent work, Commedia dell'Arte; An Actor's Handbook
(1994).

Rudlin spends time describing the characters in

detail and giving a partial background.

He also lists

predominant character traits and descriptions, and he

occasionally lists lazzi.

Rudlin's book has a limited

bibliography, and he sometimes makes far-reaching

statements.

One of the weaknesses of Rudlin's book is his

tendency to tell actors how to hold their bodies in order to

play a particular character.

Such suggestions are rarely

based on documents, but he presents the suggestions as fact.

38
This book also provides "hands-on" material for actors
hoping to play Commedia-type roles.
Winifred Smith's book. The Commedia dell'Arte (1912),
is accepted as a standard text on the subject, but it is
difficult to read and sometimes missing relevant
information.

Smith makes assumptions as to the reader's

knowledge of the characters, and she fills the book with

Commedia scenarios.

A similar problem is encountered with

Allardyce Nicoll's book. The World of the Harlequin (1963).

Nicoll's work contains a short bibliography, but his welldeveloped descriptions of the Commedia characters are based
mostly on the scenarios collected by Scala.

He is

especially helpful in his description of the Pierrot.

Nicoll is also opinionated; he writes Charlie Chaplin out of
the Commedia tradition in one swift but sincerely argued
passage.

Writers like David Madden argue against Nicoll's

conclusions.
Maurice Sand's Harlequinade (1915) is the most famous
and most often cited book on the Commedia dell'Arte.

It is

also the among the most difficult to read, and it contains

no citations of sources.

Sand's greatest contributions to

Commedia study are his full-color sketches of the Commedia

characters.

Several researchers have suggested that Sand's

sketches were erroneous and, therefore, corrupted the

standard opinion of how the characters should appear.

Sand

alternates between scholarly study and a dramatization of

39
the characters' lives.

In the chapter on Harlequin, the

reader is bombarded first with a monologue by the character,

then with historical commentary by Sand, and then with
segments and dialogue from a scenario.

The result is a

difficult-to-read and often unintelligible blend of fact and

fiction.

The work is, nevertheless, an exhaustive

exploration of the world of the Commedia.

Several sources in addition provide good description of
the Harlequin.

Cyril Beaumont's The History of Harlequin

(1926) is a mix of pictures, dialogue, and commentary.

K.

M. Lea's Italian Popular Comedy (1934) describes Commedia

characters in a chapter titled "The Masks."

Thelma Niklaus'

Harlequin or The Rise and Fall of a Bergamask Rogue (1956)

is an outstanding history of the Harlequin character.
Traits of the Pierrot are covered in numerous sources.
Studies of the Pierrot are more recent than those on the
Harlequin, and it may be argued that Chaplin's manifestation
of the character helped the Pierrot to become one of the
dominant figures of the twentieth century.

Martin Green and

John Swan's The Triumph of the Pierrot (1986) is the most

detailed of the studies.

Green and Swan touch on several of

the subjects covered in this study, including Chaplin as a

Pierrot, and they make a brief statement about the Marx
Brothers being a Commedia dell'Arte team.

Green and Swan do

not limit themselves to vaudeville or to the screen, and

they attempt to trace the Pierrot's influence through all of

40
the arts.

Of particular interest to this study is Chapter

V, "Chaplin, Caligari, Hollywood, and Harlequin," in which

the authors theorize that Chaplin has a Harlequinesque set
of tricks but a Pierrot's personality and heart.
Robert Storey's Pierrot; A Critical History (1978)
pieces together the historical progression of the character
and his transformation from a minor figure in the Commedia
dell'Arte to a dominant figure of the twentieth century.
Storey's writing is particularly dry, and his language is
often quite overblown.

He does, however, provide a detailed

history of the character, and he gives an impressive

bibliography.
Kay Dick's Pierrot (1960) makes the most interesting
reading of the books on Pierrot, but it takes, perhaps, the
least scholarly approach.

Dick's work is a conglomeration

of fact and fiction, and she draws a character profile based

on existing documents much like a playwright would gather
traits in order to form a character for a play.

Dick does

not cite sources within the work, but she lists several
pages full of works on the subject.
In addition, several sources list Commedia lazzi.

The

most obvious listing is Mel Gordon's Lazzi (1983), a tiny

volume filled with various lazzi and their descriptions.
similar approach is taken by Bari Rolfe in Commedia
dell'Arte; A Scene Study Book (1977).

Gordon's volume is

the more interesting of the two, and it contains the most

41
complete list.

Rolfe's work contains not only lazzi but an

extensive list of Commedia scenes and a practical

description of each character.

Meyerhold
The most important work pertaining to the study of
Meyerhold was completed by Edward Braun.

Meyerhold on

Theatre (1969) is a compilation of work by Meyerhold, edited

with commentary by Braun.

The later work. The Theater of

Meyerhold: Revolution on the Modern Stage (1986), is a

biographical look at the director with commentary and
analysis.

Braun later published articles dealing with the

death of Meyerhold in one of Stalin's concentration camps.

The dissolving of the Soviet Union aided Meyerholdian study,
but a great deal of research is left to be done.
Paul Schmidt's collection of essays, Meyerhold at Work
(1980) is an outstanding aid to the study of Meyerhold's
directorial technique.

Schmidt translates interviews and

essays concerning Meyerhold and his relationship to actors.

Schmidt's collection is especially helpful in comparing
Meyerhold's technique to that of Chaplin.
Meyerhold's life and work is an especially interesting
topic for graduate work.
Oregon address his style;

Two theses from the University of

Powell's The Major Aspects of the

Directorial Philosophy of V. E. Meyerhold (1956) and Flom's

Vsevolod Meyerhold: His Theory of Biomechanics (1967).

42
Cecile Brahy's graduate thesis at the University of
Southwestern Louisiana puts Meyerhold in perspective with
other directors;

Acting Methods and Training Techniques in

the Twentieth Century as Espoused by Four Classic Artists:

Stanislavsky. Meverhold. M. Chekov and Grotowski (1983).
Two other graduate documents were later published:
Katherine Bliss Eaton's The Theater of Meyerhold and Brecht
(1985), and James Symons' Meyerhold's Theatre of the
Grotesgue; The Post Revolutionary Productions, 1920-1932
(1971).
Robert Leach's Vsevolod Meyerhold (1989) and Hoover's
The Art of Concious Theatre (1974) both demonstrate
Meyerholdian theory and are rich with illustrations and
photographs.

Artaud
The commentaries on Antonin Artaud are often as
confusing as Artaud's own writing.

His principlal work is

The Theater and its Double (1958), and the most interesting
of the commentaries is Mark Rose's tiny work. The Actor and
His Double; Mime and Movement for the Theater of Cruelty
(1986).

Rose makes the first major attempt to put all of

Artaud's concepts together, and he lists traits drawn from

the writings of Artaud that may be applied directly to both
Chaplin and Harpo Marx.
too brief.

The volume is compact and sometimes

The most famous commentary on Artaud is Martin

43
Esslin's Artaud (1976), a densely packed but readable
discussion of his life and works.

Application of Artaud's

theories is an open field of study.

Summary
This dissertation will concentrate on a comparison of
Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx, and it will specifically
look at the two comedians in the context of Artaudian
Cruelty, Meyerholdian Biomechanics, and Commedia dell'Arte
lazzi.

The works discussed in this chapter were major

sources of information for this study.

A great many other

works were examined, but most of them have little to do with

the subject at hand.
kind.

There is no similar study of this

CHAPTER III
ORIGINS; CHAPLIN, HARPO, AND THE
COMMEDIA HARLEQUIN

The next two chapters will explore the connection

between Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx and their ancestors
in the Commedia dell'Arte.

This chapter will examine the

characteristics of the Harlequin, and then it will compare

them to the traits of Harpo and Chaplin.

The chapter will

also draw parallels between the Commedia dell'Arte and the

Marx Brothers' work as a team.

It will be demonstrated that

both Harpo Marx and Charlie Chaplin display characteristics

of the Harlequin, but while Harpo never used another mask,
Chaplin continued experimentation throughout his career.
In order to understand the remarkable similarities
between Chaplin and Harpo, one must first identify their
similarities with their Commedia ancestors.

The etymology

of the two characters is complex, but they are descended

from the same "family" and demonstrate the similar
evolutions of comedic style within the Commedia dell'Arte.
In addition, a list of traits may be identified as being
specific to the commedia Harlequin;

the use of props in

x /

defining character; the unique manipulation of the body in

defining character; elements of childishness; the use of V
acrobatics; the tendency to dress as a female and to
masquerade; a voracious sexual appetite; an inability to
44

45
concentrate; and an identification with the common man
because of hunger and poverty.

Harlequin
Origins
The origin of the Harlequin (or Arlequino) is quite
difficult to trace.

Nicoll struggles to separate the

Harlequin from other servant characters in his examination

of early Commedia documents.

He suggests that much of the

confusion occurs because there was actually a character

named "Zanni" who, when lumped together with other
characters of his kind, might be called a "zanni," or
servant character.

Nicoll concludes that the Harlequin

often appeared alongside a character named "Zanni," but

admits that the "whole question becomes, of course,
hopelessly complicated by the bewildering complexity of
names and qualities assumed by these serving-men" (67). To
add to the complexity, the Harlequin character often goes by
different names, and there is little pattern in his various
identities.

Suffice it to say that Harlequin may be classed

with a series of servants who adopt the name "zannies" and

who are variations on the same, disruptive personality.
Because of his ability to change and adapt to new audiences.
Harlequin's is the name most often associated with the zanni
character.

The variations on the Harlequin are not

important to this study; however, it must be remembered that

46
the variations do exist, and the character adapts to and
changes with the passage of time.
Smith suggests that the Harlequin character got his
name from the devil himself, being, as he is, a prince of
mischief whose greatest pleasure is reeking havoc on the
civilized world.

Lea links the Harlequin to a hellish witch

(74-45), and Schwartz traces his costume (and makes the

assumption that the personality should be similarly traced)
back to the Roman Atellane farces (20). Sand goes so far as
to suggest a link between Harlequin and the Greek satyr
(59).

Since such an array of theories exists, it is safe to

assume that the Harlequin figure is a familiar archetypal

image.

It is only natural that the figure should still be

alive in the theater today.

Personality
The traits of the Harlequin may be applied to both
Harpo and early Chaplin.

Making a list of these traits,

however, is not as easy as it might seem.

Commedia critics

often assume that their readers already know the traits, and
therefore make sweeping descriptive statements without
documentation.

Schwartz, Lea, and others often quote the

scenarios constructed by Flamino Scala, attempting to

display Harlequin's personality through dialogue.

Since the

Commedia dell'Arte was a theater of improvisation, little

may be construed

from the dialogue, and the scenarios seem

47
important as historical documents and little else.

The

first trait of the Harlequin, then, is the possession of a

consistent character that, despite evolution, kept many of
the same physical and verbal traits throughout his
existence.

An examination of the scenario does little good

to this study, for, as Nicoll explains, Commedia was not

based on strong plots and dialogue;
What the commedia dell'arte discovered was
something entirely different. Here, a single
person, Pantalone let us say, retains his name,
costume and essential basic characteristics in
successive plays, but he is made to appear in
diverse circumstances and in diverse relationships
with his companions. (21)
Like Charlie in the early Chaplin silent movies, the
commedia character retained a personality and reacted to a
variety of circumstances and situations.

The personality

remained paramount.
In his 1994 study, Commedia dell'Arte: An Actor's
Handbook. John Rudlin attempted to list the physical and
personality traits of the Harlequin.

Rudlin's bibliography

is brief; he relies heavily on Nicoll, Sand, Ducharte and

Smith, and none of the works are contemporary.

Rudlin's

problems in this study are valid, no definitive study exits

on the Commedia characters and their traits.

Rudlin

completes his study as a guide to the actor, supplying three

to four page discussions of the characters and then
attempting to apply them to twentieth century theaters like
the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

Rudlin and other Commedia

48
scholars forever encounter difficulty sorting through rough
scenarios, often indistinguishable dialogue, and poorly
documented accounts of performances.
Rudlin's work, however, is quite useful to this study
in that it provides a good starting point in an examination
of both the Harlequin and the Pierrot.

He lists a series of

physical and psychological attributes of the two characters

in order to give actors a model for future productions.
These attributes are very helpful in linking Harpo and
Chaplin to the Harlequin.

Costumes, Props, and Posture

First, in discussing the patches in Harlequin's
costume, Rudlin claims that the patches are representative
of his personality and that the character is a "shapeshifter" because "he frequently adopts disguises and crossdresses without demur."

The Harlequin carries a stick or

bat, often discovering and defining his character by his use

of the prop.

Rudlin goes so far as to describe the

Harlequin's stance, a "continuously lowered" position

compensated by energy from the upper torso.

He does not

document the source description, but it must be assumed that

Rudlin drew these characteristics from drawings and
paintings of the Harlequin in action.

He also fails to

document his description of the Harlequin's "balletic" walk.

49
Which sounds similar to the walk Chaplin developed for
Charlie:
Begin with the left foot forward with the ball
of the right coming to meet the heel of the
left after which the left slides forward. The
right foot then steps forward into the opposite
starting position. (77)
Rudlin continues listing traits by describing the
Harlequin as an acrobat whose brain cannot keep up with his
agile body.

He is a simpleton who "never contemplated the

consequences of an action or learned from the experience of

it" (79). He has a sexual appetite that may be refocused at
any moment.

(Rudlin actually mentions Harpo as an example

of this trait.)

Finally, Rudlin describes the Harlequin as

either speaking continuously or keeping silent (77-79).

Although this trait will not be further discussed, it
justifies looking at both Harpo and Chaplin in the context
of the Commedia.

Nicoll argues that Chaplin cannot be a

Commedia character partly because he is silent.

If the

Harlequin alternated between silence and sound, however,

then the silence of Chaplin and Harpo may be consistent with
the character.

General Traits of the Harlequin

In addition to Rudlin's traits, commedia studies cite a
few more specific traits.

Nicoll describes the Harlequin as

often frantically entering the stage with unbent legs,

manipulating the length of his body, and using his cap and

50
stick as extensions of his personality (71). He also points
out that the Harlequin is rarely angered for long because of
his inability to think about more than one thing at a time.
Lea comments that "wit is the exception, stupidity is the
rule" for the early Harlequin, but the character slowly
developed a more defined personality and nature (78).
Nicoll agrees that the character did change, but
"fundamentally Harlequin remained the same from the start of
his career to the end, and he is recognizable in all his
guises" (70).
Various contradictions exist between Maurice Sand and
later Commedia studies.

Sand argues that in the seventeenth

century. Harlequin "became witty, astute, an utterer of

quips and something of a philosopher" (65). He lists actors
and the innovations they brought to the role, but his work
is best remembered for the full color illustrations of
Commedia characters that often dominate modern costuming
approaches to Commedia figures. Most of Sand's work is a
dialogue between the Harlequin and the reader, and although
entertaining, it is not a very good source of information
for modern scholars.
Ducharte helps clarify the apparent discrepancies.
Quoting the memoirs of Marmontel, Ducharte describes the

51

final development of the Harlequin as a complex combination

of opposites:
His character is a mixture of ignorance,
naivete, wit, stupidity and grace. He is
both a rake and an overgrown boy. . . His
acting is patterned on the lithe, agile
grace of a young cat, and he has a superficial
coarseness which makes his performance all
the more amusing. He plays the role of a
faithful valet, always patient, credulous,
and greedy. . . He is hurt and comforted in
turn as easily as a child, and his grief is
almost as comic as his joy. (13 2)
In The Theatre of Yesterday. Today and Tomorrow. James
Fisher adds an important trait to the study of the
Harlequin, citing his symbolic representation of common men.
Fisher explains that Harlequin "embodies their
rebelliousness against authority and power and their will to
survive in the face of adversity" (4). Fisher also notes an
important trait overlooked by other scholars;

as a

representative of the common man. Harlequin is always

hungry.

Chaplin, Harpo, and the Harlequin

Both Chaplin and Harpo demonstrate the qualities
identified as being part of Harlequin's personality.

It is

interesting to note, however, that Chaplin outgrew many of

the more devilish traits when he moved from short silent
films into full-length features.

He is especially

Harlequinesque during the Keystone years, and Chaplin slowly

52
abandoned many of the Harlequin's traits as he further
developed his character.

In contrast, Harpo stays forever

in the Harlequin tradition.

Transvestite Lazzo
First, Rudlin suggests that the Harlequin is a
masquerader, willing to put on disguises and even going so
far as to dress like a woman.

Mel Gordon agrees with

Rudlin, and he names female impersonation as one of the most

frequently-used lazzi in the Commedia.

Both Chaplin and

Harpo display this tendency, but Chaplin abandoned it after

his "workshopping" period.

Dressing in women's clothing is

a lazzo that Harpo retained for his entire career.

Chaplin
Chaplin dressed as a woman three times, once for
Essanay and twice for Keystone.

In A Busy Day (1914),

Chaplin actually plays a woman who catches "husband" Mack

Swain with a lover.

In The Masquerader (1914), Chaplin

plays an actor whom

we first see without costume or makeup.

He actually puts on the tramp costume in front of the

camera, and he undergoes a physical transformation to fit
the character.

His dressing on film establishes the

moustache and makeup as a mask, and it lets the audience

know the actor's secret identity.

Later in the film,

Charlie fools the other actors by dressing as a woman, and

53
he goes through an elaborate masquerade to get the best of
them.

In the 1915 Essanay film, A Woman. Chaplin again

dresses as a female, this time in order to get downstairs

and past an angry enemy.

All three cases are fine examples

of "the transvestite lazzo."

It should be noted that

Chaplin did not dress as a woman again after 1916.

Unlike the Marx Brothers, Chaplin allowed other actors
in his films to use the transvestite lazzo.

Henry Bergman,

who started working with Chaplin during the Mutual films (he
began with The Pawnshop') and stayed with Chaplin through The
Great Dictator. often dressed as a woman.

Chaplin did not

attempt to make Bergman into a man in a woman's dress;

Bergman was constantly cast as ugly wives and angry old
women.

Bergman plays the astoundingly unattractive wife of

antagonist Eric Campbell in The Rink.

He is a peasant woman

in The Immigrant and an old lady who cries while hearing

Edna Purviance sing in A Dog's Life.

Bergman was a bachelor

in real life who was so devoted to Chaplin that Chaplin

claimed "he'd have kissed me if I'd let him" (Kerr, 356).
Another important instance of the transvestite lazzo is Edna
Purviance's dressing like a boy in Behind the Screen.

After

discovering that Purvaince is actually a woman, Charlie

kisses her just as Eric Campbell enters the scene and
declares, "Oh, naughty boys!"

Biographer David Robinson

calls the scene the most "overt representation of a

homosexual situation anywhere in the Anglo-Saxon commercial

54
cinema before the 1950s" (177).

Purviance and Bergman

participate in transvestite lazzo long after Chaplin

abandoned making them part of his own act.
However, a case may be made for Chaplin's continuing to
display feminine qualities.

For instance, in The Kid.

Charlie serves as both a mother and father figure to Jackie

Coogan.

He is forced into the "motherly" duties of feeding

a child and changing its diapers while trying to keep his

masculine dignity.

Faced with these challenges, Charlie

creates a masculine contraption to feed Jackie his bottle,

and goes about the house in an androgynous manner, acting as
both a man and a woman.

This androgyny has a purpose,

however, being designed to gain audience sympathy for

Charlie and build the relationship between him and the
child.

Chaplin thus extends the transvestite lazzo into a

manifestation of the Pierrot's supreme characteristic:

ability to feel.

the

This extension is a part of Chaplin's

transformation from the trickster Harlequin into a more

tragicomic figure.
Chaplin occasionally adopts feminine mannerisms to
ingratiate himself; for example, in City Lights he tries to
look sweet and harmless to win friendship from a boxing
opponent.

The action backfires, and Charlie's mannerisms

activate his opponent's homophobia.

55
Harpo
Applying the transvestite lazzo to Harpo is tricky;
although he never actually masqueraded as a woman the way
that Chaplin did, a feminine quality exists in his
performance, and Harpo dresses in women's clothing or makes
effeminate gestures in nearly every Marx Brothers' film.

He

actually steals and wears a woman's high heeled shoe during

a card game in Animal Crackers.

He poses like a naked woman

when stripped of his coat in Horsefeathers.

He climbs

inside a woman's bustle in Monkey Business, and he dresses

as a gypsy woman in A Night at the Opera.

In addition, it

may be argued that Harpo wore a woman's wig in all of his

films.

His

display of this Harlequinesque virtue is not as

obvious or as blatant as Chaplin's; however, Harpo used

variations on the transvestite lazzo throughout his career.
It was never used to gain audience sympathy or develop
character.

Instead, Harpo's feminine side was strictly a

comedic element and a part of his "trickster" personality.

It may be noted that one of Harpo's first "acts"
involved wearing a dress.

In his autobiography, Harpo

recounts having dressed as a trollop to invade his home.

Most of the family was fooled, and his grandfather even gave
him a pinch and asked Harpo to sit on his knee.

This

"transvestite act" helped give Harpo the confidence to go on

stage.

"It was a performance I was proud of.

the family character" (64).

It made me

56
Props
Chaplin
Rudlin's second characteristic for the Harlequin is the
stick or bat that the figure carries.

Chaplin made a cane

part of his costume and kept it until he dropped the tramp

makeup after The Great Dictator.

Even when temporarily

discarding the cane and the Charlie character, Chaplin often

used a similar object.

He carried a golf club through much

of The Idle Class, a gun in Shoulder Arms. and an umbrella

in Monsieur Verdoux.
Prehistoric Past.

He even gave the caveman a cane in His

One exception to Chaplin's use of the

cane is when he completely abandoned it in

The Pilgrim.

He

kept the tramp makeup, however, and created a new figurea

criminal on the run dressed as a clergyman.

Despite the

absence of the cane in this film, the audience feels as if

the cane is missing simply because Charlie is in disguise,
frantically trying to shed all aspects of his former
identity.

In this case, the makeup and mask take the place

of the cane, identifying him as a character similar to the

familiar Charlie.
The cane and the derby are extensions of Charlie's
personality, fulfilling one of the Harlequin's traits as
identified by Nicoll.

A gentle and caring Charlie uses the

cane to try and save a drowning man in City Lights, and a

violent and foul-tempered Charlie uses it as a weapon in the
short film, A Night Out.

He also uses it to trip skaters in

57
The Rink and, at one point, uses it as a key to "wind up"
Eric Campbell like a toy before pounding it into his
stomach.
In the early films the cane is a Harlequinesque
slapstick; later, it actually defines Charlie as a genteel
man who wishes to learn grace and sophistication.
opposites in appearance and behavior.

He plays

The audience expects

someone dressed as a tramp to be quite unsophisticated and

rugged.

Chaplin uses the cane and the derby, however, to

create actions that contradict his appearance.

Despite

being dressed in rags, he insists on carrying a gentleman's

cane and acting like a member of the upper crust.

A similar

objective is achieved through the use of the derby.

Charlie

the Tramp keeps his dignity in all situations, actually

tipping his hat to both ladies and gentlemen and, on several
occasions, to inanimate objects and animals.

It is through

the use of this hat and cane that Chaplin achieves some of
his greatest moments of humor; he tries to fit into the
upper crust but gives away his lack of sophistication by
mishandling other objects and relationships.

His hat and

cane reveal the inner desire to be a part of the upper class

and to fit into a society where he obviously does not
belong.

For this reason, Chaplin found it necessary to keep

his Harlequinesque props, even after leaving the studios and

developing the Pierrot character in his feature films.

58
Harpo
Harpo uses props for a different end than Chaplin.
Instead of carrying a cane, Harpo carries a bicycle horn,
often mounted on the end of a cane or a large stick.

The

horn becomes an instigator of lazzi, and it serves as one of

Harpo's most effective methods of communication.

He also

uses it as a weapon (The Cocoanuts and Monkey Business') and

a band leader's baton (Duck Soup').

In a variation on the

horn-cane, Harpo often stuffed a collection of horns into a

belt.

These horns were the sources of countless lazzi, one

of the most common of which involved Harpo's bumping into

passers-by in order to make a honking sound.

The horns will

be further discussed in a later chapter exploring Harpo's

lazzo of communicating without sound.

Like the canes,

Harpo's top hat was not used in the same manner as Chaplin's
derby.

While Chaplin was able to define character and

create contradictions with the derby, Harpo rarely used his

hat for more than decoration, and the hat was most
frequently a tool for lazzi.

In the lemonade scene in Duck

Soup. Harpo and Chico drive Edgar Kennedy to the point of

insanity with a hat-switching routine.

(It has been

suggested that the hat routine, like the mirror routine, was
the brainchild of Leo McCrary and came from his work with
Laurel and Hardy.)

It was used as a bowl to catch milk

falling from the "udders" of his glove in a publicity short

filmed for ffnrsefeathers.

Harpo occasionally tips his hat

59
to passing women, but it signals the beginning of a chasegame rather than adding to character development.
he is inconsistent with the use of his hat.

Finally,

It remains a

part of the costume from Cocoanuts to Love Happy, but it is

never a consistent extension of his character.

Instead, the

hat is used as a prop for lazzi whenever it is convenient.

Body Positioning
Chaplin
Rudlin's ideas on the positioning of the Harlequin's
body cannot be proven or disproven.

Nevertheless, both

Chaplin and Harpo use body positioning in the portrayal of

their characters, although Chaplin uses many more techniques
than Harpo, and he concentrates more effort on body
positioning for the conveyance of emotion.

Dan Kamin

devoted an entire book on Chaplin's use of the body, and

there is little need to add anything to Kamin's findings.
Kamin describes Chaplin's energy during the Keystone and
Essanay years as being focused in the positioning of the
head and trunk.

Kamin writes,

"The combination of a small,

helpless, open presentation of his trunk invites both

sympathy and trust, which, taken together with the head
movements further induces vicarious participation in
Charlie's adventures" (12). This description may be
compared with Rudlin's formula for the Harlequin, who keeps
his head in a "lowered position" and compensates it with

60
"energy from the upper torso."

Kamin describes Chaplin's

head positioning as an indication of "self containment" by

keeping it "directly and squarely above the trunk" (8).
During his most Harlequinesque period, however, Chaplin
forced the head in front of the torso.
Mimicking some of Sterling's gestures,
Chaplin, during this early period,
occasionally thrusts his head forward to
indicate aggression, strikingly altering
his character. He soon abandons the headfar-forward position, and in fact increases
the use of its opposite: the head pulled
backward over the trunk, to indicate prideful
elegance, in comic contrast to his seedy
appearance. . . (8)
This body positioning adds to the effect Chaplin
achieved by the use of his derby and cane.

Kamin refers to

a distinct difference in Chaplin's body positioning between

his early and later films.
also important.

Kamin's use of adjectives is

His trunk invites "sympathy and trust."

Pulling back the head indicates "prideful elegance" and

allows laughter and sympathy with the Charlie the Tramp.
Obviously, Chaplin was unafraid to explore techniques and
body positioning, but he maintained a Harlequinesque focus
of energy, even after abandoning many of the Harlequin's
other traits.

Harpo
In contrast, Harpo used body positioning similar to
that used during Chaplin's early period.

After discovery of

61
this Harlequinesque positioning, Harpo did not deviate from
his use of it, and he did not experiment the way Chaplin
did.

Like the Chaplin of the Keystone period, Harpo's

character constantly thrusts his head forward from his

shoulders.

In his first appearance in The Cocoanuts. Harpo

throws his shoulders forward and leads from his chest as he

chases women.

He cranes his neck forward and sticks the

head out in front of his body when standing still.

This

position does not change during his career, and he is still

doing the same thing when he gawks at a beer in Go West, and
when he holds a gun to his head and forces himself to eat an
apple in Love Happy.

Harpo does not evoke the audience

sympathy that Chaplin evoked, and he does not invite anyone

to live vicariously through him.

In fact, Harpo's thrusting

his head forward, combined with concealing his body in the

confines of an overcoat, add to the air of mystery that
surrounds him.

Furthermore, the audience is kept in a

perpetual state of mystery concerning the items that Harpo

conceals on his person.

He is likely to produce anything

from within the pockets of the coat, and such a trait keeps
any audience from making a spiritual or mental connection
with the character.

Instead, he forces the audience to

stare in awe at this apparition that defies the confines of

logic and social behavior.
In addition to head positioning, Harpo often distorts
the shape of his body.

He is frequently shown leaning

62
against a wall (such as the wall in front of a women's
restroom in Monkey Business^, over a desk (Duck Soup^, or on
another person's body.

Harpo leans toward speakers and

gawks at their faces, and he violates personal space when he

touches and climbs on top of other actors.

When running,

Harpo throws his body forward like a child, and he keeps his
head placed in front of his torso.

Despite the childlike

movement, however, Harpo rests his weight on his heels

instead of his toes.

This may be a result of his age.

Harpo was over 40 when the Marx Brothers first reached the
screen, making his childlike appearance even more
astounding.

Childishness
Rudlin next describes the Harlequin as an acrobat whose
brain cannot keep up with his body.

He does not learn from

his mistakes and is likely to repeat behavior despite its

consequences.

Marmontel refers to him as a man-child, both

a "rake and an overgrown boy."

Once again, these

descriptions apply to Chaplin's earlier character, but they

may be applied to Harpo throughout his career.

Chaplin
Chaplin is very childlike and unforgiving in the short
films for Keystone and Essanay.

Chaplin's films at Keystone

usually consist of one or two reels, and he rarely does more

63
than react to the world around him.

He is, however, very

childlike in his ability to play tricks on other characters;

in The Masguerader he plays a trick on an entire studio; in
Laughing Gas he outwits a dentist rival; in the films with
Mabel Normand he battles Normand for control.

Because the

films are so short, Chaplin's "character" is reduced to

little more than a trickster who manages to outcombat his
enemies despite his physical limitations.
Charlie begins to lose his childlike character in The
Bank and The Tramp, but there are glimpses of an the
tragicomic in Keystone films such as His New Job.

Chaplin

did not develop a full Pierrot until he completed a

sacrificial action in City Lights; however, he accepts a
melancholy existence in films such as The Vagabond.

Charlie

loses his childlike innocence over time by enduring cruel

disappointments in life.

The Tramp, in a sense, grows up.

Harpo remains a child because he does not feel adult

feelings; Charlie evolves from a child into an adult by
sacrificing his own will and looking out for the happiness
of those people he loves.
By the time Charlie the Tramp reaches full development,
his childlike innocence is partially hardened as a result of
life's cruelty.

He goes to prison in Citv Lights when he

accepts the blame for stealing for a flower girl (Virginia

Cherrel).

In this film, Charlie is promised things when a

rich man is drunk, but when the man is sober, he forgets all

64
about Charlie and eventually accuses him of theft.

This

film is a turning point for the Little Tramp, because he

slowly learns that he cannot trust his rich companion.
However, eager to help the girl, Charlie takes what has been
promised to him and later pays for it by going to prison.
Charlie is no longer a happy-go-lucky character who learns
nothing from his mistakes.

Now he makes a deliberate choice

to go to prison in order to help the girl he loves.

Modern Times marks the last appearance of the Little
Tramp character.

It also is a landmark in Chaplin's

development into the Pierrot.

In this film, Charlie is

punished countless times for things he did not do.

He loses

his sanity at the workplace and is carted off to prison.

Later he is mistakenly identified as the leader of a
worker's strike and is put in prison again.

He quickly

loses his childlike innocence and learns that prison life is

easier for him than life in the free world.

As a result,

after being released from prison a second time, he tries to

take the blame for someone else's crime; and when that
fails, he deliberately commits a crime in front of a
policeman.

Later in the film Charlie discovers love for a

young girl (Paulette Goddard), and he becomes a father

figure to her.

This time there is no androgenous aspect to

his parenting; Charlie is both a father and a love interest.

By taking this role, Charlie loses his childlike innocence
and makes the transformation from Harlequin to Pierrot.

65

Harpo
Harpo does not lose his innocence, and the Harpo in
Love Happy is still as childish as the far-younger Harpo in
The Cocoanutc:.

He is often referred to as a boy.

In Animal

Crackers, he motions to a woman that he is five years old,

and she responds that she likes "little boys like you."

He

reciprocates her love in a childish fashion by trying to

break her arm.

After he wrestles with Margaret Dumont in

the same film, Chico steps in as a big brother and demands

of Dumont, "Why don't you leave him alone?"

In A Day at the

Races, Harpo cries and whimpers when Chico takes him to the
doctor, and he bolts for an open window at the mention of
spinach.
Harpo never learns from the consequences of his
actions.

He is as likely to knock out friend as foein

fact, he often knocks himself out.

His pranks continually

backfire, but he gets up and does the same thing again. A

good example of Harpo's obsession with tricks comes in the
football scene in Horsefeathers.

He is a child in an

adult's game and outwits everyone, including himself.

First, he is shown taking off a jersey three times his size,
suggesting that he is not old enough to play.

Then he

unleashes a host of tricks on the other players, first tying

a string to the football and tossing it about like a yoyo,
and later helping his team almost score a touchdown by

66
throwing banana peels at opposing team members.

In his

childishness, Harpo gets carried away with the joke and

throws a banana peel at his own player, thus making the
"tackle" himself.

Harpo saves the game by riding his horse-

drawn street cleaner's cart onto the field.

The cart

becomes a chariot, and it carries the four Marx Brothers to

victory.

The Marx Brothers made the cover of Time after

Horsefeathers, and the reviewer quipped that Harpo "never

speaks, doesn't need to.

His appalling brain expresses

itself in a language more disastrous than words" (25).

While it is easy to describe Chaplin's development as a
character in his full-length films, little can be said about
Harpo apart from describing his lazzi.

Harpo's character in

Duck Soup is most representative of his childlike qualities

and inconsistencies.

In this film, Harpo and Chico change

sides in the war as frequently as Groucho changes war

uniforms.

Harpo has no intention of joining the winning

side; he is following Chico, a big brother figure, and

looking for the best way to complicate the game.

The two

characters are introduced as spies, but they are less

interested in spying than they are in playing a childish
game with authority.

As a child, Harpo is able to get away

with actions no adult could ever take;

He cuts the tails

off a tuxedo; he lights a cigarette with a blowtorch; he

glues a man's pants to a chair; he dances barefoot in a
lemonade wagon; he defies the laws of physics and drives a

67
motorcycle sidecar.
not evolve.

Unlike Chaplin, the childishness does

Late in his career Harpo still pulls the same

childish pranks;

He fights a gunfight with a capgun (Go

West); he pulls a door off a limousine (The Big Store'); he

counts sheep under his pillow and rides bareback on a live
ostrich (At the Circus); and he has a conversation over the
phone using bicycle horns (Love Happy') .
Harpo is not a part of a surrealistic daydream.
a child and behaves like a child.
representative of childhood.

He is

His childishness is

He is a scheming kid, a

devilish prankster, looking for a good joke, unaware of the

consequences.

His lazzi are carefree and ridiculous, and

only occasionally do they have far-reaching implications.

They are, simply, a childlike romp through an adult's world.
One of Harpo's most frequently discussed lazzo is both
ironic and shocking because of its implications.

In

Horsefeathers Harpo picks up a book, laughs at its contents,

and then throws it into a fire.

Later in the scene Harpo is

shown again, this time shoveling a large stack of books into

the fire and reacting with glee.

This lazzo is typical;

Harpo destroys or eats anything he does not understand.

The

bookburning image, of course, has become quite surrealistic

in itself, but as seen in the context of Harpo as a
character, it is consistent with his other actions.

note should be made that countless other gags were discarded

from Marx Brothers films, usually because they were not

68
considered funny enough material.

Adamson lists numerous

gags that were left out of the final scripts.

Harpo and gag

writers concentrated on being funny, in a childlike,

Harlequinesque manner.

Sexual Appetite
Chaplin
Rudlin's next trait for the Harlequin is the sexual
appetite that may be refocused at any moment.

Chaplin's

devotion to single female figures in his later films has

been discussed.

In the Keystone films, however, Chaplin is

as wild as Harpo^^^^^^
^ F o r instance, in Mabel's Strange Predicament, a drunk
Charlie follows Mabel Normand through a hotel, flirting
outrageously and making a general nuisance of himself.
Later, he makes moves on her when she is in her pajamas.

In

Twenty Minutes of Love, the devilish Charlie sits next to a

couple as they kiss, and he openly flirts with the woman.
Later, Charlie steals a kiss from a second woman when her
boyfriend leaves.

He is obsessed with chasing women in

other Keystone films:

He loses his love after flirting with

a maid in His Favorite Passtime; he flirts with a married

woman in Caught in the Rain; he drools over a woman's
picture and then fights a sailor for his girl in Recreation:
he flirts with any woman in sight in Those Love Pangs,

in

y/Tfibel's Busy Day he even makes the Harpo-esque gesture of

69
putting his leg in a woman's hand (this gesture will be
discussed in the chapter on lazzi).
Chaplin's character at Essanay is much more refined,
although he is still a woman-chaser in A Woman.

By The

Bank, Chaplin is a romantic who displays love and devotion

for an individual woman.

When Chaplin made full length-

films, his character had developed to the point that he was

willing to go beyond dreaming about relationships and make
self-sacrifices for the good of the woman he loved.

definite change occurs in Chaplin's relationship with women

from the Keystone to the Essanay films.

He abandons the

Harlequinesqe characteristic of bouncing from woman to

woman, and he develops a three-dimensional character.

Harpo
Harpo, in contrast, chases women as another childish
game.

During his first appearance in The Cocoanuts, Harpo

chases three separate women in the same scene.

Later, upon

discovering that he can ring a bell and summon female

bellhops, Harpo chases a crowd of women across the hotel.
The girl-chasing lazzo only changed when Harpo the actor was
physically unable to chase women across the set.

In Love

Happy. he is, nevertheless, continually turned by pretty

heads and is only interested in the female directly in front
of him.

70
Inability to Concentrate
Chaplin
Nicoll writes that the Harlequin is never angry for
long because he cannot concentrate on more than one thing at
a time.

This trait applies more easily to Harpo than to

Chaplin.

In his early period Chaplin was vengeful and

aggressive.

For instance, in The Fireman Charlie is kicked

and mistreated by his boss, Eric Campbell.

Later in the

film one of the other firemen treats him the same way, and
Charlie takes out his vengeance on that fireman.

As the

character evolves, Charlie learns to outwit his enemies with

a combination of brains and force.

He is rarely distracted

from a task; even though he often proves incompetent or

unequipped for the job at hand, Chaplin usually concentrates
his efforts on something.

True, he may be distracted from

chores, but he is not incapable of thinking about his work.

Harpo
Harpo, on the other hand, never concentrates on
anything.

He interrupts speeches by placing his leg in the

speaker's hand, and he is far more concerned with how he can

start a game than with what any given speaker is ever
saying.

Harpo claims to be five, but his short attention

span makes him seem even younger.

In Duck Soup, Chico

lectures him because he is not doing his job, and Harpo

responds to the lecture by putting a bread stick in Chico's

71
flapping mouth.

Then, when Chico complains to Edgar

Kennedy, Harpo and Chico somehow join sides and play tricks
on him.

Apart from women, the most common focus of Harpo's

attention is stealing everything in sight, often for the

sole purpose of getting caught.

His continual game playing

is slowed only when Harpo sees a harp.

In the harp scenes,

Harpo drops the childish character and quits acting

entirely.

In the opening pages of Harpo Speaks. Harpo

explains the change;

If you've ever seen a Marx Brothers picture
you know the difference between him and me.
When he's chasing a girl across the screen,
it's Him. When he sits down to play the
harp, it's Me. Whenever I touched the
strings of a harp, I stopped being an actor. (12)
Acrobatics
Another Harlequinesque trait shared by both men is the
use of acrobatics.

Chaplin is far more likely to be

considered an acrobat than Harpo, but both men defy physical

logic and do acrobatic things.

Chaplin's outgrowing

acrobatic "tricks" will be discussed in a later chapter, but

it should be noted that, even after developing pathos for
his character, Chaplin still used his physical agility
within the context of the film.

The discussion of One AM in

the chapter on Meyerhold is a good example of Chaplin's

Harlequin-like ability to move.

72
Chaplin
Acrobatics in Chaplin films may be divided into several
categories.

First, Chaplin uses a series of acrobatic

stunts, (usually a combination of pratfalls, twists and

kicks) in chase scenes.

For instance, in A Dog's Life.

Charlie is being chased by a policeman around a wooden

fence.

He quickly discovers that he can roll through a hole

in the ground and take swings and kicks at the policeman as

he runs by.

A similar lazzo was used in Twenty Minutes of

Love when a policeman chases Charlie in and out of the

bushes, and in The Adventurer, when Chaplin as an escaped
convict goes through an elaborate chase scene on the beach.
Chase scene acrobatics dominate his early career, and some
variation occurs in nearly all of his Keystone and most of
his Essanay films.

He uses the acrobatics lazzo later as

well, especially in The Circus. City Lights. and Modern

Times, when authorities chase him.
A second category of acrobatics includes Chaplin's
execution of extreme physical feats.

The pratfalls in One

AM and the skating in The Rink and Modern Times demonstrate

his outstanding physical ability.

He also walks a tightrope

in The Circus and outruns an escalator in The Floorwalker.

Although he does not make a career out of death defying
feats like comedians Buster Keaton and, to some extent,
Harold Lloyd, Chaplin demonstrates extreme physical ability
and control of the body on numerous occasions.

73
Finally, countless demonstrations may be found of his
agility during everyday interaction.

For instance, the

simple pratfalls and physical "rough-housing" in the

Keystone films demonstrate an athletic ability far beyond
his fellow actors.

His teaming with giant Eric Campbell in

the Essanay films further accentuates his bodily control.

He also completes acts of gymnastics when trying to keep
other characters from pushing him around.

For instance, in

The Cure (1917), Chaplin watches a masseuse manhandle a

customer and decides that he will not allow the masseuse to
touch him.

When his turn comes, Chaplin slides back and

forth on the masseuses' table, and then he poses as a

wrestler and dodges the larger man's advances.

Their fight

is a dance as they advance on each other in a rumba-like

manner.
Chaplin restrained his use of acrobatics in his later
films, and he stopped relying on his physical capabilities
alone to define his character.

Instead of making his films

a showcase to display his athleticism, Chaplin used

acrobatics in the later films to support his
characterization.

Harpo
In contrast, although Harpo often commits acts that
defy natural laws, his middle-aged body rarely accomplished
acrobatic feats.

He is, however, at his best when in

74
motion, and in the early films his perpetual movement
included running in and out of scenes without any
explanation as to his presence.

These quick entrances and

exits may also be applied to a trait Nicoll identified in

the Harlequinentering and exiting the scene in great
haste.

Harpo's body is squeezed into all sorts of unlikely

places;

He sleeps in Groucho's trunk and then climbs into

the catwalks in A Night at the Opera; he climbs out of Edgar

Kennedy's bath in Duck Soup; all four brothers make an
appearance in kippered herring barrels in Monkey Business.
Harpo spends a long chase scene on roller skates in The Big
Store. but his jumping from the top of one aisle to another
cannot be compared with Chaplin's acrobatics on roller
skates in The Rink.

It also seems that the older Harpo got,

the more writers asked him to participate in acrobatics.

Unfortunately, his body did not hold up well.

According to

show business lore, it was the stunts in The Big Store or

another later Marx Brothers film that hastened the team's
decision to retire.

Hunger
Chaplin
Fisher cites two important aspects of the Harlequin:
He is a representative of the common man, and, therefore, he
is always hungry.

It is easier to call Chaplin a common man

than Harpo because of Chaplin's relationship with the

75
audience.

As discussed, Harpo is somewhat mysterious, and

the audience is never quite sure what he is going to do

next.

Chaplin is common in stature, nature and appearance.

Since he is small, Chaplin often pits himself against much

larger men, and the audience becomes interested in the small
man or underdog.

Since Charlie is always poor, he bonds

with the audience in his struggle to survive.

This trait

may not be applied to Harpo; although the Marx Brothers

often battle villains and are sometimes physically
threatened, they show little concern about surviving until
tomorrow.

Chaplin, on the other hand, is fighting to live.

This is especially important to remember when examining the

food lazzo (there will be a full discussion of both men's
use of food in a later chapter).
because he is poor.

Chaplin is always hungry

He eats some odd things;

He feasts on

a shoe in The Gold Rush; he eats a child's food in The

Circus; he shares a frankfurter with his dog in The
Champion.

Chaplin's odd eating habits are a result of his

struggle for survival.

he were not starving.

He would not boil and eat a shoe if

Somehow, despite having to choke down

spaghetti-like shoelaces and suck cobbler's nails, he

manages to enjoy the meal.

Chaplin's continual hunger is a

result of his character's dilemma; that is, he has no money,

and he must eat anything he can find.

76
Harpo
In contrast, Harpo eats things he does not understand.
He is always hungry, but not because he is poor.
of food exists in Marx Brothers films.

A plethora

Harpo and Chico

exchange sausages as gifts in A Night at the Opera.

brothers feast on hotel food in Room Service.

The

Even when

food is available, Harpo does not discriminate between

edible and inedible objects.

He eats ties, thermometers,

ink wells, buttons, and practically anything else that

catches his eye.
quality.

Harpo's eating is related to his childlike

Whenever he is confronted with a new object, Harpo

snatches it and puts it in his mouth, just like a child.

His continual hunger is not related to Charlie's hunger, and
while Chaplin uses hunger to gain audience sympathy, Harpo
uses it as a source for gags.

Characteristics of the Harlequin

A word may be said about the various interpretations of
the Harlequin's character.

While Nicoll and others call

Harlequin simple. Sand calls him a philosopher.

Although

these two descriptions seem contradictory, they may be

applied to both Harpo and Chaplin.

Both characters appear

stupid in their childlike simplicity, but they display great

understanding of the world around them.

The idea of an

idiot philosopher may especially be applied to Harpo, who

defies the rules of nature in his everyday life.

Harpo

77
takes the most difficult course of action possible.

He and

Chico keep locking each other out when they try to break
into a house in Duck Soup.

Harpo intentionally bangs his

thumb with a hammer and then locks himself in a jail cell

during a prison break in The Cocoanuts.

These childlike

actions are examples of Harpo's game playing, not his

stupidity.

When looked at from this angle, Harpo's actions

seem almost sensible.

For instance, when they attempt to

escape the second floor of a house in Horsefeathers, Chico

hands Harpo a rope and tells him, "Tie on the bed, throw the
rope out of the window."

Harpo does exactly what he is

told, taking off his tie and putting it on the bed, and then
throwing the rope outside.

When they realize they cannot

escape through the window, Harpo and big brother Chico take
the most logical course of action:
through the floor.

They saw themselves

In an essay on the Marx Brothers humor,

Mellencamp deftly describes Harpo's actions;

"Harpo

liberalizes every metaphor, wreaking havoc. . . on the

cliches of language and the mise-en-scene" (65).
Chaplin's actions also have an odd logic to them, but
they are not easily labeled as the actions of an idiot
philosopher.

For one thing, Chaplin did not have the luxury

of being able to react to words.

Chaplin was a mime; he

could only rely on his body to display action, and once he

broke through the talking barrier, the character underwent
an extreme change.

In contrast, although Harpo did not

78
speak, much of his humor is derived from words.

In a 1976

article, "The Marx Brothers and How They Grew," Walter Kerr
raises serious questions over whether or not Harpo should be
considered a mime at all.
Harpo . . . depended on a running commentary
from Groucho or urgent prodding from Chico
for his best, most inappropriately responsive
effects. After all, you can't slice an ax
through a freshly shuffled bridge deck unless
someone's first asked you to cut the cards. (37)
Harpo is, therefore, dependent on the rest of the team
to help him create his lazzi.

This teamwork may also be

applied to the idea of Harpo being a Harlequin and Chaplin's

progressing beyond characteristics of the Commedia
character.

Nicoll argues that Chaplin is not actually a

representative of Commedia dell'Arte at all because he was

not an ensemble player:

"Although Chaplin appears with

other actors in his films, quite clearly he is dominant; the

others hardly matter at all" (18). In contrast, the
Commedia dell'Arte did not provide "vehicles for a single
star," and the emphasis is upon the "entire company" (18).
It may be argued that the supporting characters gained
greater importance in Chaplin's later films as he relied
less on his physical ability to carry the picture.

Harpo,

on the other hand, was always dependent upon a supporting

cast.
Groucho, an avid reader, takes a rather intellectual
look at the Marx Brothers team in The Groucho Phile, and he

79
places them in the context of Commedia.

Without actually

using the technical terms for a commedia team, Groucho

acknowledged that the Marx Brothers made up a "stock
company" in which each actor played the same character in a
series of shows.

The Groucho character is described as

"obnoxious, irreverent, egomaniacal. . . he was, in a way,

the synopsis of the story."

Harpo is the rabble-rouser of

the group, "sweet, innocent, disarming," and the girls he

chased "were in no danger."

Chico was "dumb like a fox,"

but lacked "depth and soul" in both character and real life.
Zeppo was "handsome, wooden. . . the fill-in."

In Monkey

Business, Zeppo discovered the romantic character, and

Groucho later comments that, although the brothers believed
Zeppo was disposable, they always kept a "Zeppo-like"
character in their later films.

For Groucho, the final

member of the stock company became Margaret Dumont, who

represented the establishment.

Groucho writes, "She never

could quite understand what was going on.

She never

understood any of the jokes" (84-86).

In this manner, Harpo is more easily applied to the
Commedia than Chaplin, and he is easily identified as a
Harlequin figure.

Harpo demonstrates nearly all of the

identified traits of the Harlequin, and once he discovered

them, he never varied on their use.

Chaplin began his

career like a Harlequin, but he progressed past the

trickster qualities of the character and experimented with

80
Other methods in his development of pathos.

In addition,

Chaplin did not rely on other characters to support him, and

during the Keystone and Essanay years, when he was
demonstrating his most Harlequinesque behavior, Chaplin
dominated the action of his films.

In contrast, Harpo

relied on a supporting cast in order to complete his lazzi.

Harpo without other characters is ineffective, but as part
of a team, he is indispensable.

While Harpo demonstrates

the characteristics of the Harlequin throughout his career,

Chaplin first experiments with the Harlequin and then
abandons him in his quest for a tragicomic figure.

Summary
This chapter has demonstrated how both Harpo and
Chaplin used traits of the Harlequin.

While Harpo remained

a Harlequin throughout his career, Chaplin progressed into

something else.

It is, therefore, important to examine the

traits of the Pierrot in context with Chaplin's abandonment

of some of the more obnoxious quirks in the Harlequin's
character.
Final evidence that Harpo and the Marx Brothers were
satisfied with using the Harlequin and Commedia traits
solely for comedy comes from Groucho's commentary on
Chaplin.

The Marx Brothers were all big fans of Chaplin's,

and Groucho himself recognized a difference in their styles.

81
In The Groucho Phile he told readers that the Marx Brothers
had a different goal than Chaplin.
All good comedians are good dramatic actors.
What actor could create the pathos of a
Chaplin? For many years I've said that
Chaplin is the greatest comedian of the
century, and yet no one has brought a
bigger lump to my throat through the heart
and soul of his performances. There was,
however, a need in him to accomplish such
effects. This was a need my brothers and
I seldom felt. (298)
The need in Chaplin to accomplish a more meaningful
blend of comedy with tragedy drove him to abandon most of
the traits of the Harlequin and to search for other ways of
developing a character.

The next chapter will place Chaplin

in the context of one of the Harlequin's grandchildren;

Pierrot.

The

CHAPTER IV
ORIGINS; CHAPLIN, HARPO AND THE PIERROT

Although Chaplin is often compared with the Pierrot, no

detailed study of the two characters has been completed.
This chapter will trace the origins of the Pierrot, listing
his

traits and emphasizing the difference between his

character and that of the Harlequin.

applied to both Chaplin and Harpo.

The traits will be

While Harpo may be

equated with the Harlequin throughout his career, Charlie

the Tramp evolved into a Pierrot.

Six major traits of the

Pierrot may be identified with Chaplin:

the adaptability of

the character, the character mask, servitude, stoicism in

the face of misery, suicidal tendencies, and the use of
mime.
The link between Chaplin and the Pierrot is important
to this study because it has already been established that
Harpo Marx and Charlie Chaplin both began their careers
using the Harlequin mask.
to the develop a new mask.

Chaplin's experimentation led him

Had he chosen to keep the

Harlequin mask, Chaplin would not have progressed as an

artist; however, as his art progressed beyond comedy into an
exploration of comic and tragic technique, the Pierrot mask
became the most important tool in Chaplin's art.
Several studies have drawn similarities between Chaplin
and the Pierrot. In The Triumph of the Pierrot, Green and
82

83
Swan devote one-third of a chapter to discussing Chaplin's
development of a Pierrot-like heart.

Robert Payne traces

Charlie the Tramp to a recurring character that he claims

evolved from the Commedia Pulcinella into the Pierrot.
Meyerhold identifies the element of pathos in Chaplin's
work.

Additional researchers have tried to link Chaplin to

the Commedia in general.

In Chaplin: Genesis of a Clown,

Francis and Sobel list a few Commedia lazzi Chaplin

incorporated in his silent films.

Included in this list are

the uses of props, gags about bodily functions, acrobatics,

lewdness, and teamwork between actors during the Keystone
and Essanay years (200-205).

They make little effort,

however, to distinguish between Commedia characters, and

they incorrectly attribute several lazzi to Chaplin.
Although they mention the Pierrot, they do not positively
identify traits that Chaplin and the Pierrot have in common.
Another study. Harlequin's Stick. Charlie's Cane, by
David Madden, attempts to link Chaplin with the Harlequin by
displaying a series of sketches and pictures.

For instance.

Madden shows a series of vaudeville personalities side-byside with Commedia characters from which he claims they have
descended.

Madden does not document most of his ideas, and,

with the exception of a few interesting visual parallels

between comedians and Commedia, he breaks very little
ground.

He does, however, spend a great deal of time

attempting to justify a link between Chaplin and the

84
Harlequin.

Madden also makes an elaborate attempt to refute

Allardyce Nicoll, who claimed that Chaplin should not be

compared with Commedia for two reasons;

first, because he

did not work with a team; and second, because his character
was silent.
Some confusion occurs as to whether or not Chaplin
understood what he was doing.

After listing a few Commedia

lazzi, Sobel and Francis claim that "years later, after

someone had drawn his attention to the Commedia's work,
Chaplin was astonished to find how close it was to his own"
(205).

They fail, however, to cite a source.

In contrast,

Chaplin actually mentions the Pierrot as a source of

inspiration in selected writings.

In My Autobiography,

Chaplin describes the change from his Keystone films to his

later films.

Chaplin describes Charlie's brain during the

Keystone days as "less active" and concerned with the

essentials of "food, warmth, and shelter," much like the
attributes of the Harlequin discussed in the previous
chapter.

These characteristics did not fully suit Chaplin

because "with each succeeding comedy, the Tramp was growing

more complex."

Chaplin had to discover a manner of evolving

from Harlequinesque slapstick comedy into something with

more substance.

"The solution," he writes, "came when I

thought of the Tramp as a sort of Pierrot" (208).

In his

1915 essay, "How I Made My Success," Chaplin claims to find

his characters in real life because the funniest situations

85
in a play are "an exaggeration of such action in real life
that I have seen my counterpart pass through, but which was
not at all funny in itself" (121).

In other words, Charlie

the Tramp is a successful character because he is a

manifestation of the common man, much like both Pierrot and
Harlequin.
In The Great God Pan, Robert Payne quotes Chaplin as
saying, "Charlie was a shabby Pierrot.

The more I studied

the Commedia dell'Arte, the more I realized that Charlie was

in existence long before I invented him."

Chaplin was not,

however, concerned with the Commedia dell'Arte when he began

acting.

His thought process at the beginning was much like

the Marx Brothers' thought processes throughout their

careers.

"I was after fifty dollars a week.

It was only

later on that I saw that everything I was trying to do was

in some way derived from the Commedia dell'Arte" (42). This
comment may be compared to Groucho's statement that the Marx
Brothers were just "trying to be funny" (Altman, 12).
Chaplin's comedy evolved from slapstick to the creation of
pathos, but the Marx Brothers were concerned with little
more than slapstick humor.

Pierrot
History
The Pierrot figure was born nearly a century after the
Harlequin, but he is related to Harlequin, Zanni, and the

86
zanni characters.

While Harlequin is associated with the

Italian Commedia, the Pierrot was born in France.

Although

he is from the same lineage, the Pierrot demonstrates a

different series of traits than Harlequin.

In Commedia

dell'Arte: An Actor's Handbook, Rudlin attempts to trace the

Pierrot family tree:
Although there is a record of a Piero in 1547,
throughout the rest of the sixteenth century the
character was obscure until re-emerging as
Pagliaccio (1570), then Gian-Farina (1598),
becoming Pedrolino as the creation of Giovanni
Pellesini who played first with a company known
simply as Pedrolino's (1576), then with Gelosi,
then with the Uniti, and finally the Confidenti.
The name Pedrolino was used throughout the
seventeenth century, finally being adapted in
France as a minor variant, Pierrotto, into
Pierrot in 1665. (134)

The history of the Pierrot as a figure is well-detailed

in Robert Storey's excellent book, Pierrot; A Critical
History of a Mask.

He also traces the Pierrot through the

Commedia to the Pedrolino, and Storey demonstrates that the

mask of the Pierrot was developed and evolved by the actors
who played him.

In contrast to the Harlequin and the other

characters, all of whom wore masks during performances, the

Pierrot played in white face, and thus, he was more
vulnerable than other Commedia personalities.

"Harlequin

seems always ready to pull off his mask and put his role
aside . . . but Pierrot's pathetic white face cannot be
unmasked; creator and role are fused into a single

87
Character" (31). it is this fusion that, in many respects,
makes the Pierrot one of the most important individuals in
Commedia.

He appeared late on the scene, and although other

characters were defined by actors who played them, the

Pierrot is unique because he undergoes such a dramatic
series of transformations.

The Pierrot is, in effect, an

actor's character; he is a figure that evolved from other

masks and that provided individual actors with a living
character that grew as they grew.

Since the confines of a

physical mask were eliminated, the Pierrot was forced to

rely on his body rather than his mask to demonstrate his
character.

Although he still sported a mask, it was a

physical part of the Pierrot and his unique costume, thus

affording him more mobility in acting.

Characteristics of the Pierrot

Mask
The development of an actor-based mask was a major step
in the evolution of Commedia characters toward the twentieth
century.

After the Pierrot broke away from the use of a

physical mask and relied instead on his face in conjunction

with other elements, other characters did the same, thus
allowing the Commedia dell'Arte to extend itself into new
areas.

Uraneff's idea that the Commedia would be reborn in

vaudeville and silent film is based on and supported by the

Pierrot's break from the traditional mask.

These comedians

88
relied on their bodies and physical contortion of their
faces to create new masks, as demonstrated by photographs in
David Madden's study.

It is this use of makeup and facial

distortion that may be identified as the first important

trait of the Pierrot.

Pathos/Feelings
In his introduction to the text. Storey describes a
second trait of the Pierrot when he explains that the
character was influenced by two separate literary figures.
Storey identifies elements of the Harlequin as a foundation
for the Pierrot:
At one pole stands his Italian predecessor
Pedrolino, who, like the Gallicized Harlequin,
is a creature of insouciance and activity, a
character of almost no psychological "depth,"
a symbol of comic irrepresibility and unselfconscious verve. He inhabits a dense social
world, but curiously, rarely suffers pangs of
social conscience. At the other pole stands
Hamleta figure of melancholy indolence, a
character of inscrutable depth and complexity,
a symbol of human vulnerability and mortality,
a moralist tortured by consciencebut just as
curiously, an egoist who is profoundly asocial
and solipsistic. (xiv)
It is interesting to note that Storey chose Hamlet,
since Nicoll also compares Hamlet with the Commedia
dell'Arte.

In Nicoll's mind, however, Hamlet is the

opposite of all Commedia characters since he is and always

will be the same Hamlet, as created by Shakespeare.

In

contrast, Pierrot, Harlequin, and the rest of the Commedia

89
Characters keep their basic attributes but have the
potential to change with every performance because the
Commedia dell'Arte is a theater of improvisation.
Identifying the Pierrot with Hamlet is also important
because it demonstrates that the Pierrot has a dramatic side
that other Commedia characters did not have.

Instead of

being a tool for the development of lazzi, the Pierrot

developed feelings and became a three-dimensional character,
unlike most of his Commedia ancestors.
The second element to identify with the Pierrot is,
therefore, the element of pathos as a part of the
performance and mask.

Defined by Webster's Ninth Collegiate

Dictionary as an element of sympathetic pity, "pathos" is

often misinterpreted and misdefined.

A definition from

Chaplin scholar Timothy Lyons is necessary to clarify the

meaning and use of the word:
The emotion of pathos is a complex one,
open to a number of interpretations.
Confusion exists between three relatively
similar feelings: pity, pathos, and bathos.
Pity is a feeling of compassion or
understanding accompanying a shared grief
for the humanity of a situation. Bathos,
however, is based on a sentimentalized
and highly personal identification along
with a compulsive desire to express sadness,
regardless of the seriousness of the
situation. Borrowing elements from both
of these emotions is pathos, an
identification with the humanity in a
grieved situation. (113)
The quality of empathy demonstrated by Pierrot was used in
Chaplin's development of Charlie the Tramp.

Elements of

90
pity and bathos also exist in the Pierrot and other Commedia
figures, but only the Pierrot reaches a full integration of
bathos and pity.

Servitude
In addition to the use of the white-faced mask and the
achievement of pathos, John Rudlin identifies a number of
elements that may be applied to the Pierrot.

First, since

the Pierrot was one of the final members of the Commedia

team to evolve, he is the lowest member of the "pecking
order" and is, therefore, often mistreated or forced to live
with and feed with animals.

Rudlin identifies the

derivation of the Pierrot character from Pagliaccio, or

"pagliaio," meaning "a pile of straw," or "one who sleeps in
the straw with the animals."

On a related note, the Pierrot

is the butt of jokes, but he manages never to lose his

dignity (134).

Rudlin also identifies a special

relationship between the Pierrot and dogs because "he shares

their abused, half-starved lives" (136).

Stoicism in the Face of Misery

Rudlin's Pierrot is "stoic in the face of misery" and
survives challenges by displaying simplicity in his daily
life.

In addition, Rudlin identifies two characteristics

that may be applied to the idea of pathos.

First, the

Pierrot has "anaesthetized his sensitivity by pretending to

91
have no feelings," but the audience knows that the Pierrot
is sensitive because he "gives vent to feelings only when
alone" (136).

In other words, the character's actions do

not necessarily reflect what the audience knows to be his

inner desires.

Rudlin also identifies the Pierrot as being

somewhat love-stricken with Colombine, and he blames himself

when Colombine is unfaithful to him.

Rudlin suggests that

the Pierrot will "suffer eternally" for unrequited love.

Mime and Costume

In addition to those things identified by Rudlin,
several other personality traits of the Pierrot are of
interest to this study.

First, Robert Payne argues that by

the early 19th century, the Pierrot's costume became an

essential part of his character, and he stopped speaking and
worked as a mime.
Gradually the tears vanished, and he became
the emblematic figure of the giggle, the man
cast in adversity who laughs triumphantly at
fate. At this point one of the great masterstrokes occurred; his sleeves lengthened, so
that he appeared to be without hands, and those
long flapping sleeves, like the wings of an
ungainly bird, conveyed his emotions. In the
early plays he spoke. Now he had no need to
speak: it was enough if he raised a protesting
sleeve, smiled, shook his poor dumb head, uttered
the faintest of protesting sighs. Poor
Pierrot 1 (43)
Payne's poorly documented work may hardly be taken as
an ultimate source for the development of the character, but

92
there is some evidence that, as the Pierrot evolved, actors
began playing him in mime.

Perhaps the best supporting

evidence is the long history of the character itself, since

the Pierrot developed attributes based on the individual
actors who took the mask.

Adaptability
To a greater extent than any other character in the
Commedia dell'Arte, the Pierrot was subject to the actors
who played him.

By the 19th century the Pierrot was no

longer chained to the Commedia dell'Arte; and, more than any

other character in Commedia, the Pierrot developed a
personality outside of his relationship to the other
Commedia characters.

Green and Swan discuss the strange

case of the actor Deberau, who, after being charged offstage

as a murderer, began playing the Pierrot as a murderer as
well (6). Kay Dick writes that the Deberau murder happened
in 1836, and, in a passage comprised of partial truth and
partial Commedia scenario, she describes Deberau/Pierrot as
lashing out at a group of youths who taunted his Colombine
(176-177).

Dick is of the opinion that all subsequent

Pierrots carried the memory of the murder.

Sand writes that

Deberau "made Pierrot now good, and generous out of

carelessness, now a thief, false and sometimes miserly, now
cowardly, now daring, and almost always poor. . ." (219).
In other words, the Pierrot searched for an identity despite

keeping a highly recognizable and identifiable personality

The Pierrot could be good or bad, and, despite being poor,
he could accomplish almost any task to which he set his
mind.

Unique Characteristics of the Pierrot

In a poorly documented (though highly interesting and
useful) work, Kay Dick identifies several more traits that
the Pierrot developed before the end of the nineteenth
century.

Dick lists his ability to walk the tightrope (168)

and his belonging to all places, for "all Pierrots, all

comedians, have their birthplace in that mythical land of
Bohemia, which is everywhere" (167).

Dick also identifies a

suicidal tendency in the Pierrot, a result of his seeming

melancholy that is resolved by his discovery of a passion
for art (168).

Finally, Dick identifies Deberau's son as

bringing about the final evolution of the character.

"He

became entirely a mime, enacting his drama with silence that

was awe-inspiring and certainly, judging from contemporary
accounts, intensely impressive" (176).
Whatever the name, the costume, or the style, the
Pierrot may be identified by easily recognizable attributes;
a white mask that incorporates the actor's face; an element
of pathos; feeling and sensitivity on the inside that are
masked by the character's attempt to keep dignity in the
face of adversity; an identification with animals and a low

94
place in society; the willingness to suffer eternally for
unrequited love; the individual characteristics of the actor
manifested in the character itself; and finally, the ability
to abandon words in order to express feelings.

These

characteristics are certainly manifested in the character of

the Little Tramp, but few of them are actually a part of the
repertoire of Harpo Marx.

Chaplin. Harpo. and the Pierrot

Adaptability
The most easily addressed characteristic of the Pierrot
is his chameleon-like ability to envelop the personality of
the actor and adapt to the changing world around him.

This

trait is easily exemplified in Chaplin, but it is not

evident in Harpo's work.

Chaplin
Chaplin's films demonstrate an artistic progression,
and it is evident that he allowed his own personality to
touch the character.

In The Silent Clowns. Walter Kerr

writes that Chaplin created a universal character that is

equally at home in the role of a fireman, policeman, or
vagabond.

The character remains in a state of progression

95
and flux because he is constantly evolving, and because he
really does not belong to anyone or anything.
The secret of Chaplin, as a character, is that
he can be anyone. That is his problem. The
secret is a devastating one. For the man who
can, with the flick of a finger or the blink
of an eyelash, instantly transform himself into
absolutely anyone is a man who must, in his
heart, remain no one. (85)
This willingness to take on any personality may also be
compared with the Pierrot's attribute of belonging to all
places at all times.

Chaplin's own identification with two

countries, England and America, and the inconsistent reports

about his birthplace and ethnic background are indicative of
the Pierrot.
This ability to transform instantly is reminiscent of
the evolutionary transformation of the historical Pierrot.
Like Pierrot, Chaplin took his character from a variety of
sources, and he adapted it to fit his general needs.

Kerr

maintains that Chaplin developed a popular comic image at

Keystone (80) and afterward used that image to grow into a
character.

It is this growth that separates Chaplin from

Harpo; Chaplin was not content to play the same character

throughout his career.
An outstanding example of Chaplin's willingness to
adapt the character to change comes in his decision to
convert to talking pictures.

Kerr contends that Chaplin was

one of the last silent film artists to make the transition,

96
and after Modern Times, the Pierrot/Tramp character was
retired.

This is not entirely true.

Chaplin hesitated to

abandon silent films, but once he committed himself to

making a film with sound, he adapted the character to the
situation.

By playing both Hynkel and the Jewish Barber in

The Great Dictator, Chaplin was able to use much of

Charlie's personality and attributes without actually
resurrecting Charlie.

Chaplin the barber is a talking

Pierrot; he wears the white mask and the tiny moustache on

his face; he uses pantomime and music in a shaving scene; he
and his friends are excluded from society and forced to live
like animals; he falls in love with a young woman and is
willing to risk execution in order to voice the cry for
freedom that he and the Jews must voice.

In addition, the

infamous speech at the end of The Great Dictator is a fusion

of Chaplin's personality with the Pierrot's committment to
self-sacrifice.

Critics often describe the segment as an

impassioned plea from Chaplin's own mouth.

When taken in

the context of the Pierrot, however, the plea is a logical

step in Chaplin's progression.

Like Deberau's playing the

Pierrot as a murderer, Chaplin voiced his views through the

mouth of his character, and he made a statement on the world
situation through his film.
Before making the transition to sound, Chaplin took two
steps to complete Charlie's character, and both of them
proved that, like the Pierrot, he was willing to adapt to

97
Change.

In Citv Lights, Chaplin dramatized the eternal

plight of Charlie.

In Modern Times, he used a blend of

silence and sound to aid his own transition from silent

films.
City Lights is clearly influenced by all of the films
that proceeded it, and Walter Kerr calls it a consummation
of Charlie the Tramp.

Kerr says that the close of the film

is a finale for the character.

Upon revealing to the flower

girl that he, a tramp, was responsible for restoring her

sight, Charlie looks at Cherrill without saying or doing
anything.

Kerr asks;

"What else can it do, what else can

Charlie do, what else can Chaplin doever?

arrived at stalemate, is stalemate.
the truth is a stone wall" (351).

His meaning has

The truth is out and

For Kerr, Charlie at the

end of City Lights is a personification of Charlie's

archetypal dilemma.

All of the previous films led up to

this scene of discovery, where Charlie the Pierrot has

sacrificed himself but will not receive any kind of reward.
Charlie achieves the characteristics of the Pierrot, and he
becomes Christ-like in his display of unconditional love.
In Modern Times. Chaplin makes a transition between
silent film and sound.
sound and images;

The film's world is a curious mix of

Charlie dances a ballet both in the

workplace and in a recreational skating scene; Charlie and

Paulette Goddard communicate through gesture and glances;
machines break the silence and actually bark out orders to

98
Charlie and the other workers.

Charlie remains silent until

the end of the film when, in a song and dance routine,

audiences hear Chaplin's voice for the first time.

He does

not speak during this scene; it is a performance much like

Chaplin's work in the London Music Hall.

The nonsensical

song, however, breaks the sound barrier and serves as a

transition into talking film.

After consummating the

character in City Lights and then building a smooth

transition into sound film in Modern Times. Chaplin split
and expanded the Tramp character in The Great Dictator, and
then created new characters in Limelight and Monsieur
Verdoux.

Harpo
The previous chapter established that Harpo's character
remained stable through most of the Marx Brothers' films.
The flirtation with pathos during the Thalberg years
establishes a somewhat more refined Harpo, but the character
is still much the same as the early sprite.

Thalberg

attempted to give him human flesh by justifying his absurd

actions.

By the end of his career, however, Harpo had gone

back to the old lazzi of hiding items in his coat.

The

interrogation scene in Love Happy begins when thugs search

Harpo for a can of sardines.

Instead, they find most of a

mannequin, a barber's pole, a live dog, and a kitchen sink.

99
In other words, Harpo did not continue to develop the
changes imposed by Thalberg after the producer's death.
A second example of Harpo's inability to adapt to
change comes from the failed film. Room Service.

This time

the Marx Brothers' characters are imposed upon an already

established script, and Harpo seems at a loss for something
to do.

The writers reduce themselves to repeating old

visual gags, such as an eating lazzi in which the Marx

Brothers fight over a table full of food.

Unlike the

Pierrot, Harpo's character was not built on what happened to

him in the past; in fact, apart from the repetition of gags
and the occasional reference to old jokes, the Marx
Brothers' films are hardly related at all.

There is no

overriding character development, and, at the end of his

career, Harpo still played the character he established in
The Cocoanuts.

Furthermore, during the Thalberg years, when

Harpo attempted to refine his actions, film audiences were

slow to accept his evolution.

Wes Gerhing describes the

1936 Walt Disney cartoon, Mickey's Polo Team, in which

Mickey Mouse competes with Chaplin, Harpo, and Laurel and
Hardy.

Although the cartoon was released the year after A

Night at the Opera. Harpo is a trickster, more resembling

the early character than the Thalberg variation. Gehring
calls him "easily the roughest player, no small
accomplishment when your competition includes the Big Bad
Wolf."

Gehring suggests Harpo's trickery indicates "a

100
comically unsympathetic Harpo had not yet overstayed his
welcome" (74).

The Mask
A second element of the Pierrot is the human mask,
usually made up of white powder or makeup.

Both Chaplin and

Harpo created masks with a combination of makeup and their

natural faces, and a number of similarities between their
"masks" may be identified.

Chaplin
Chaplin also uses white makeup at the beginning of his
career, but as the character becomes more and more like the
Pierrot, he increases the amount of eye makeup and attempts
to call attention to the white mask around his face.

Walter

Kerr identifies the use of hollowed cheeks in A Dog's Life,

(166) and Chaplin experimented with shading various parts of
the face.

The mask became more evident with each passing

film until City Lights, in which a definite contrast occurs

between the whiteness of his face and the dark makeup above
and underneath his eyes.

The inhuman contrast gives Chaplin

the appearance of a puppet and conjures images of Craig's

uber-marionette.

The barber's makeup for The Great Dictator

is far less exaggerated, since Chaplin developed a new

character for sound films.

101
A note should be made about the general use of
exaggerated makeup during Chaplin's work at Keystone, Mutual
and Essanay.

When compared with the people around him,

Chaplin's makeup seems rather tame.

A particularly good

example is Eric Campbell, who starred in the Mutual films,

and who is often rendered unrecognizable by overuse of eye
shadow and facial hair.

In Behind the Scenes. Eric Cambpell

and The Immigrant, Campbell uses heavy eye makeup that

distorts his features and makes him look unreal.

In The

Floorwalker, Campbell has a heavy beard and giant,

villainous pointed eyebrows.

His beard is so thick in this

movie that his mouth cannot be seen.

In Easy Street

Campbell loses both his beard and his hair.

It has been

suggested that Campbell brought his makeup from Gilbert and

Sullivan operettas on the stage.

All of the actors at the

three studios, however, used heavy makeup to match their

broad, stylized acting.

Harpo
Harpo's makeup is difficult to categorize.

In The

Cocoanuts he appears to be heavily powdered, almost to the

extent of Chaplin.
than-usual wig.

The pale face is contrasted by a darker-

By Animal Crackers. Harpo's wig is lighter,

and the contrast with his face is not as intense.

Nevertheless, the makeup in his first two films appears to
be much heavier than it does in later films.

This may be

102
^"ttributable to poor makeup techniques; Chico also wears
heavy amounts of makeup and loses much of his natural
expression.
not film.

They both appear to be made up for the stage,

The general effect of the powdering is for both

men to look young,

Harpo, in fact, appears childish in the

early films, and since his character is sprite-like, makeup

artists attempted to keep the same appearance throughout his
career.

By Room Service, however, Harpo is showing serious

signs of age.

The wrinkles in his face are compensated for

by heavily outlining the eyes.

Harpo's hair also loses a

few curls, and his wig appears to grow flat in the later
films.

In Room Service and Go West, the makeup artist

attempts to redden Harpo's cheeks to make him look younger.

The effect might work in color; however, since both films
are in black and white, the action has an adverse effect,
and Harpo's cheeks appear hollow.

By Love Happy, the makeup

artist simply outlines Harpo's eyes to make them stand out

when he gawks.
Harpo actually uses his face to create mood masks,
establishing a series of expressions to exhibit emotion
ranging from pure joy to engagement.

His most famous facial

expression is, of course, the gookie, an odd combination

eye-cross and raspberry Harpo picked up by imitating a local

103
cigar-store worker.

Harpo describes it in his

autobiography:
His tongue lolled out in a flat roll, his
cheeks puffed out, and his eyes popped out
and crossed themselves. I used to stand
there and practice imitating Cookie's look
for fifteen, twenty minutes at a time, using
the window glass as a mirror. . . Over the
years, in every comic act or movie I've ever
worked in, I've "thrown a Gookie" at least
once. (53)
By the end of his career, the Gookie became a lazzi
upon which Harpo would rely, even when screenwriters gave
him little else to do.

The gookie also found itself the

subject of a few variations.

For instance, Harpo achieves

rage in Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, and Horsefeathers by

squinting his crossed eyes and clinching his teeth.

He uses

a frightening gookie in Love Happy in order to silence a

yapping dog.

He also used facial expressions to display

various degrees of interest.

His full smile is a complete

distortion of all the muscles in his face.

In Animal

Crackers. Harpo displays greed by using a full smile and

rubbing his hands together.

He uses a half-smile and a nod

of the head to indicate affirmation; in At the Circus, Harpo

demonstrates that he has an official seal to get on a train
by smiling and nodding to the live seal following him.
Harpo's closed-mouth grin is a device for flirtation, and it
usually instigates a chase scene with a female.

Only

extremes exist in Harpo's repertoire; his smiles are

childish exaggerations of real life.

104
Finally, Harpo's eyes are essential in making him
appear young, even after he has reached retirement age.
There are few scenes when the eyes are not fully open and
gawking.

Harpo ages around the eyes, however, and by At the

Circus noticeable bags appear underneath them.

The childish

grin is betrayed by tired eyes.

Pathos/Feelings
The Pierrot achieved an element of pathos by moving
away from the slapstick humor of the Commedia dell'Arte and
allowing the audience to see his feelings.

Rudlin

identifies him as hiding his true feelings from others and

displaying them only when he is alone.

Such an action makes

the Pierrot special to an audience; after all, they know a

secret that the other actors do not know.
creates intimacy.

Such an action

This same level of intimacy was certainly

achieved by Chaplin, but it was never fully accomplished by

Harpo Marx.

Chaplin at Keystone
A number of interesting elements may be observed in
Chaplin's progression towards the dramatic.

During his

Keystone films, he begins touching aspects of humanity that

would later be fully developed as themes for tragicomedy.
For instance, in Twenty Minutes of Love Charlie wants a
girlfriend.

He plays a Harlequinesque trickster who imposes

105
upon^everal couples, but his motivation of finding love is
well-defined.

Even in this slapstick treatment of kissing

in the park, Chaplin's inner desires are quite clear, and

the audience can see that he is motivated by loneliness.
Desire becomes a theme in the Keystone films, and it
foreshadows the eventual self-sacrifice for love
demonstrated in later full-length films.

Even when Chaplin

dropped the Charlie disguise in the Keystone films, he was

usually motivated by either love or money.

In contrast,

Harpo's motivations can rarely, if ever, be defined.

Charlie is moved by love or the need for love; Harpo seems
moved by nothing.

Chaplin After Keystone

After completing the contract with Keystone, Chaplin
joined Essanay and slowly developed a character that stood
out against the world.

In A Short History of the Movies,

Gerald Mast identifies a shift in the structure of Chaplin's

films from Keystone to Essanay to Mutual.

Mast identifies

an evolution from a series of gags to more detailed

sequences requiring "attention to either the situation or
the characterrather than the gags aloneto sustain it"
(85).

Charlie the Tramp, therefore, slowly developed

Pierrot-like characteristics, becoming a loner and moving

from situation to situation in which he struggled simply to

106
survive.

In addition, Chaplin addressed the idea of self-

sacrifice and the possibility of reward.

It is difficult to pinpoint when Chaplin began his
transition from slapstick comedy to more thoughtful
tragicomedy. Walter Kerr names the Essanay film. Police
(May, 1916), as the turning point, for it is at that point
that Chaplin fully realizes his chameleon-like ability to
change (82). Kerr's thesis is that Chaplin does not fit
into anything and, therefore, is able to transform at will.
It may be argued, however, that the first element of pathos
came in The Tramp (an Essanay film) in which Charlie rescues
Edna Purviance from robbers and then accepts an invitation
to work for her father.

He Edna to love him for what he has

done, but his dreams are squelched when he sees that Edna is
enfatuated with someone else.

Chaplin uses the same device

he used in the Keystone films; that is, he is lonely and

looking for love.

For the first time, however, Chaplin

dreams of change and then accepts thing the way they are.
In The Comic Mind. Gerald Mast identifies a series of
themes in Chaplin's work, one of which is dreaming.

Mast

discusses Chaplin's struggle to find a happy medium between

tragedy and comedy for Charlie.

The "happy endings" were

"painfully facile evasions" of the fact that, although

Charlie may be inherently good, he will never gain his
reward on earth.

Endings that left Charlie alone on the

road Mast identifies as "consistent with the Tramp's

107
Character," but he complains that they avoided the paradox
of why bad things happen to good people by "emphasizing the
emotional effects of pathos."

Mast identifies the greatest

films as being those that emphasize "the tension between

poetic justice and earthly justice, personal morality and
public definitions of morality, fiction and life, wish and
reality" (113-114).

In other words, Chaplin is at his best

when he demonstrates the Pierrot as a self-sacrificing

character who will never achieve reward and is a misfit in
his world.

Harpo before Thalberg

Four instances occur in which Harpo showed some form of
feelings.

None of them amount to much separately, but

together they demonstrate the futility of attempting to

achieve pathos in a Marx Brothers' film.

The first occurs

in The Cocoanuts. and it is one of the most simple and

touching scenes in all of the Marx Brothers' movies.
Saddened by a grieving woman, Harpo pulls a lollipop from
his coat and offers it to her.

The scene is quick; there is

no superfluous action, and he gains no reward.

Harpo is,

however, human, and after all the chases and games have
stopped, he is sensitive to the needs of other people.

This

scene comes closer to achieving pathos than any other scene

in a Marx Brothers film, and it occurred in their very first
endeavor.

108
A similar scene occurred in Love Happy.

This time,

Harpo goes through a series of silly gags to make a grieving

woman laugh.

He pretends to pull his eyes out of their

sockets and wash them, and then he rolls them around his
head.

This scene has far less impact than the scene in The

Cocoanuts; by Love Happy. Harpo's boyish face is so wrinkled

that he looks out of place in his traditional mask.

The

scene is further flawed when Harpo uses it as an opportunity

to play a harp solo.

In neither scene is Harpo

demonstrating unrequited love; the two women are the films'

love interests, and Harpo and his brothers are helping them.
Instead, the two scenes demonstrate Harpo showing empathy to
a grieving character.

In The Cocoanuts. the scene goes so

far as to achieve a feeling of sympathetic emotion in the

audience, and Harpo is more like a Pierrot at that moment
than any other time.
A second demonstration of pathos occurs in
Horsefeathers. but it is far less effective and seems
obtrusive.

After he and Chico have been locked in an

upstairs room, Harpo panics and actually cries.

The scene

only lasts a few seconds, and the next time the action cuts
to Harpo, he and Chico are busily sawing through the floor.
The crying scene seems particularly puzzling.

Does the

director show Harpo crying to gain audience sympathy?

If

so, it must be asked if the crying scene is at all

consistent with the character established in the rest of the

109
movie.

Only moments before, Harpo was actively bouncing

across the room, and in his quest to help Chico figure a way
out, he managed to cut off their escape.

The only answer

can be that Harpo cries because he is a child, and, like

other children, relies on tears when he runs out of
alternatives.

Harpo demonstrates no actual feelings in the

tears because, after all, for whom could he be feeling?

They are locked in the room when they attempt to kidnap the
star players on a football team.

There is no life and death

situation, and Harpo is not demonstrating love or feelings

for another character.

The cry is a puzzling demonstration

of his childlike inability to understand the world.

Harpo with Thalberg

The Thalberg attempt at pathos may be explained in a
few simple sentences.

Instead of being a clown with no

motivations, Harpo is transformed into a man with severe

limitations who is often physically abused.

Harpo seems out

of place when given motivations; after all, how can the

presence of a sprite-like child be justified in the opera or
at the race track?

Thalberg opens A Night at the Qper^ with

a scene in which Harpo is beaten by the film's antagonist.

The beating makes Harpo a sympathetic character in the eyes
of the audience, but it does not necessarily achieve the
element of pathos sought by Chaplin and the Pierrot.

Harpo

supplies reason for his superior to be angry since he is

110
wearing the man's costumes.

As Harpo strips the offending

costume, he reveals another, and then a third.

The audience may feel sorry for him, but it is a
feeling of bathos, that is, a "sentimentalized and highly
personal identification along with a compulsive desire to
express sadness, regardless of the seriousness of the
situation" (Lyons).

After all, audiences side with

underdogs, and Harpo is obviously the smaller and less

powerful of the two men in the scene.
sense of humanity in the situation.

When Groucho enters the

scene, he demands, "Hey you big bully!

picking on that little bully?"

There is, however, no

What's the idea of

The words are profound;

Harpo would be doing the same thing if he had the chance.

In fact, when he manages to knock the man out, Harpo brings
him to conciousness with smelling salts in order to knock
him out again.
Less attempt at pathos occurs in A Day at the Races.
Harpo is a jockey this time, and he is beaten in the film's
opening scene.

There is little else in the film, however,

to indicate Harpo's possession of any feelings at all.

Harpo is once again treated like a child, and in this film
more than perhaps any other, Harpo's inability to speak
appears to be an affliction.

The audience is given little

clue as to Harpo's motivations, and in order to achieve a

feeling of pathos, some sort of bond must be established.

Ill
Groucho stated that the Marx Brothers were little
interested in achieving any sense of drama.

In contrast,

Chaplin made the achievement of pathos a goal.

In a 1924

article, Chaplin makes a rather profound statement:

"We, as

audiences, like the tragic in the comic and not tragedy

itself" (Koszarski, 105). He goes on to argue that
slapstick is an art, just like tragedy, and it is structured
so that a climax much be reached "through the channels of
character, surprise and suspense."

Chaplin identified a

need to reach for something further and, therefore, sought

to find the element of drama in his comedies.

Servitude
Another attribute of the Pierrot is his low position in
the pecking order and his special relationship with dogs
because his life is little better than a dog's.

Although

both Chaplin and Harpo are often seen with animals, it is

Chaplin who displays the most recognizable aspects of the
Pierrot.

Chaplin
Charlie is certainly the low member of the pecking
order, and he often sleeps on the street with dogs and other
animals.

In A Dog's Life. Charlie and his dog. Scraps,

sleep next to a fence and try to shelter themselves from the

wind.

He lives and eats like an animal in The Gold Rush,

112
and at one point is actually tied to a dog.

Later, in a

dancing scene, Charlie tries to hold up his pants with a

rope that is, unknown to him, attached to a canine.

In

Caught in a Cabaret, Charlie is stuck with taking care of a

dachshund.

In The Champion, Charlie is aided by an animal

when his bulldog jumps into the boxing ring and takes a bite
from his opponent's buttocks.
Even when he escapes the streets, Charlie demonstrates
a relationship with animals and a less-than human aspect to
his personality.

In City Lights, he accidentally swallows a

dog whistle, and, because of a serious case of the hiccups,

he attracts a large group of dogs to a socialite party.
When Charlie masquerades as a rich man, he often gives
himself away by scavenging like an animal.

In City Lights.

he jumps out of a limousine and beats a bum to a cigar butt

on the street.

In The Pilgrim, he steals a liquor bottle

from a fellow "preacher" and almost gets caught when the

bottle breaks in his pocket.

In A Dog's Life, he becomes a

dog stealing food when he stuffs pastries in his mouth each

time the shop owner turns his back.

Finally, in The

Immigrant and as the Jewish barber in The Great Dictator.

Charlie and the people around him are herded like cattle in
their respective worlds.
Charlie shares a dog's life because he is constantly
hungry and must scavenge for food; in only a few instances
is Charlie not faced with a daily struggle to eat, even when

113
he is involved with a love interest.

In The Immigrani-,

Charlie gives money to Edna Purviance and her mother, who

have just been robbed.

By doing so he demonstrates a

genuine concern which, of course, is hidden from Edna and

the other characters around her.

Charlie attempts to appear

without needs, but by giving away the money, he robs himself

of a meal.

Later, upon meeting Edna in a restaurant,

Charlie orders beans and coffee and must find a way to pay
for it.

When an artist offers to pay, Charlie saves his own

face by refusing the payment, and by doing so, he almost

loses his opportunity to get out of the problem.

This

action is an excellent example of Charlie's ability to

remain stoic in the face of misery.

He maintains a serious

face without showing others his feelings.

Harpo
Harpo is especially fond of horses, but he is often
pictured with dogs.

In Horsefeathers, Harpo plays a dog

catcher, and there is distinct animal imagery in the titles

of Animal Crackers. Duck Soup. Horsefeathers, and Monkey
Business.

Harpo does not, however, live like a dog.

certainly sleeps a lot, but he rarely sleeps outside.

He
Harpo

comes out of a bed in the wall in The Big Store; he sleeps

in a trunk in A Night at the Opera; and he emerges from a
kippered herring barrel in Monkey Business.

He does not

live on the street, and he appears more like a sprite than a

114
bum.

Harpo comes out of nowhere and returns to nowhere.

The audience is not given a chance to see how he lives or to

understand his origins.

Harpo is, therefore, not low in the

pecking order because the pecking order is not displayed.

Neither is he low in the pecking order when relating to his
brothers.

Their odd relationship concerns working as a team

to devastate the social order.

Stoicism in the Face of Misery

Chaplin is unique in his display of this special trait
of the Pierrot.

On the rare occasion that Harpo is

miserable, he quickly turns the situation around.

In short,

Charlie the Tramp is long-suffering, but Harpo suffers

little because he does not seem to understand the world.

Chaplin
City Lights is an outstanding example of Charlie's
being anesthetized to sensitivity by pretending to have no
feelings.

A blind flower girl mistakes Charlie for a rich

man and, when he realizes that she cannot see, Charlie takes
up the masquerade.

After a series of sacrifices (including

losing his underwear when a thread from his boxer shorts

gets caught in the girl's ball of yarn), Charlie learns that
the girl and her mother will be evicted if they cannot pay
their past-due rent.

Charlie insists that the money means

nothing, snapping his fingers in the air as a symbol of how

115
simply he can take care of it.

He realizes, however, that

paying the bill will take a great deal of sacrifice, and, by

pretending to be without feeling, he draws attention away
from the sacrifice he will make.
This stoicism in the face of misery is repeated in
several films, and Charlie is often willing to sacrifice
himself, even though he is often unwilling to reveal his
true feelings.

In Modern Times, Charlie risks prison to

order to take care of Paulette Goddard.

In The Kid, he

works to raise a child, even though he obviously cannot

support it.
In several other films, Charlie denies his past and
actually tries to reform himself because of love.

In The

Tramp, Charlie fights off robbers and even gives money back
to Edna after stealing it.

In Easy Street, he joins a

church out of love for Edna and actually turns the town
around after managing to outwit local tyrant, Eric Campbell.
In The Adventurer, he is an escaped convict who rescues Edna
Purviance and her mother from drowning, and makes a poor
attempt to fit into their society.

In The Pilgrim, Charlie,

the escaped convict beats another convict away from Edna's

home and returns stolen money, even though he knows it may
result in his being arrested.
In each of these instances, Charlie refuses to take
credit for what he has done.

In fact, Charlie never gets

full credit for anything, yet he preserves the illusion of

116
living without pain or care.

The Tramp established the

image of Charlie walking dejectedly off into the sunset.

Just before the screen irises out, however, Charlie regains
a bit of energy in his gait, and he finds hope for the
future.

This glimmer of hope is present in all of the films

with Charlie the Tramp; even though he does not win the day,
Charlie will come back again.

After Chaplin dropped Charlie

as a character, Calvero in Limelight actually received

recognition for what he had done.

Unlike any of his

previous films, Chaplin's character died at the end, content

that his life had actually meant something.

Ironically, he

does not get to see the girl dance before he dies.

Harpo
In order to be stoic in the face of misery, one must
first be miserable.

In his childlike approach to life,

Harpo cannot show real emotion, displaying instead childlish

outbursts of sheer joy and complete disgust.

The beating

scenes in A Day at the Races and A Night at the Opera show a

vulnerable Harpo; however, after the beatings are finished,
Harpo returns to being childish and hyperactive.

The

unusual crying scene in Horsefeathers is the closest Harpo

comes to displaying a state of misery, and his tears do not
betray any sense of stoicism.

Harpo quickly forgets his

misery when he and Chico solve the situation.

Although

Harpo never gets the women he is chasing, one must assume

117
that he would not know what to do if he caught them.

The

chase is a game, not a result of any misery or loneliness on

Harpo's part.
Harpo does not show stoicism in the face of trouble in
any Marx Brothers' film.

With the exception of the three

examples of pathos, Harpo rarely seems to understand what is

happening around him.

Charlie is an adult; he faces trouble

and selflessly gives, even when he cannot afford to do so.

Harpo is incapable of doing such things; he often joins
causes simply because they are interesting (Duck Soup^, and
his approach to life is childish and irresponsible.

Harpo

displays the opposite of stoicism in the face of danger.

is jovial at all times, even without reason.

He

In Love Happy,

Harpo is the most popular figure in the theater because he

has taken it upon himself to steal food in order to feed the
young actors in the company.

Most of the time, however,

Harpo steals as a game, just as he chases women and wreaks

havoc for the sake of a game.

While Chaplin steals in order

to feed himself, Harpo steals for the sheer joy of stealing.

He does not discriminate in his victims; everyone from
Groucho and Chico to Margaret Dumont is victim to his
thievery.
Several instances apart from Love Happy may be
identified in which Harpo commits theft to help others.

He

and Chico steal a painting and replace it with a duplicate

in T^^e Cocoanuts in order to help a young artist get a

118
break.

His antics at the end of A Night at the Opera are

intended to give a young singer the opportunity to perform.

Harpo is, however, just as likely to steal out of
mischievousness.

The celebrated mirror scene in Duck Soup

occurs because Harpo and Chico, working as spies, attempt to

steal military documents from Groucho.

The opening sequence

of At the Circus involves Harpo and Chico robbing Groucho of

every penny he has in order to gain the money for a train
ticket.

In addition, one of Harpo's most famous moments

occurs in The Cocoanuts. when an officer shakes his hand and

a bundle of knives cascades to the ground.

However, his

thievery may not be equated with stoicism in the face of

misery.

Instead, it is an example of his childish approach

to the world.

Suicidal Tendencies
The Pierrot displays a sadness that often leads him to
plan his own demise.

Neither Chaplin nor Harpo ever commit

suicide, but a distinct sadness may be found in Charlie the

Tramp that is not evident in Harpo.

Chaplin
Charlie's walk into the sunset in The Tramp first has
an appearance of despair, but soon it lightens in hope.

In

a similar situation in Sunnyside, Charlie throws himself in

front of a car only to wake up and realize that he is

119
dreaming.

Constance Kuriyama suggests that the scene is far

too realistic, and that the attempted suicide has undertones

of what was happening at the time in Charlie's life.

The

feeling of despair in Charlie's character may be equated

with the establishment of pathos.

Charlie does, however,

retain a hope for tomorrow, thus confirming his alreadyestablished bond with the common man.
Chaplin's supporting characters often contemplate
suicide.

The millionaire in City Lights actually tries to

drown himself and, through a series of blunders, nearly

drowns Charlie in the process.

Harpo
In contrast, Harpo occasionally makes a gesture
suggesting suicide, but the gestures cannot be taken
seriously.

For instance, in Go West, when Chico asks Harpo

what they should do now, Harpo gestures suicide.

Chico

immediately dismisses the idea, and the two go on planning.

In his Saturday Evening Post article on Minnie Marx, "Mother
of a Two-A-Day," Alexander Woollcott describes the "infinite
sadness" in the eyes of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp.

In

the case of the Marx Brothers, writes Woollcott, "sympathy

would be wasted utterly.

For their daysespecially their

darkest dayshave been full of crazy laughter" (109).

The

suicidal Pierrot is, therefore, not applicable to Harpo.

120
Mime
Perhaps the most important aspect of the Pierrot that
may be applied to both Harpo and Chaplin is the use of mime.
Both men developed silent characters, but they evolved in
unique manners and for different reasons.

It has been

established that the Pierrot evolved into a mime as the need

for verbal language became less and less important.

This

quality may be more easily attributed to Harpo than to

Chaplin.

The true mime, however, is certainly Chaplin, and

the use of mime as an artistic expression is more indicative

of Chaplin than Harpo.

Chaplin
Chaplin began his career on the London Music Hall
stage, and his various autobiographies document several
different versions of his acts.

His acts with the Karno

company involved a great deal of pantomime.

In The Mumming

Birds (described in McCabe's book, Mr. Laurel and Mr.

Hardy). Chaplin pantomimed a drunk arriving at the theatre.
His experience with the Karno troupe allowed him to perfect
the art of pantomime through practice and repetition.

He

also spoke on stage, and the Music Hall scenes in Limelight

give a clue as to possible musical acts in which he
participated.

When Chaplin signed a contract to do film,

however, he did not have the luxury of using sound, and he

created Charlie as a character for silent film.

Whatever

121
characters may have influenced his creation of Charlie the
Tramp, it is quite evident that Chaplin created the
character specifically for his new career.

Like the

Pierrot, Chaplin was highly adaptive, and he anticipated how

his character might need to evolve in order to be accepted
in the future.

In a 1924 article entitled, "Can Art Be

Popular," Chaplin explains how a film comedian must be

willing to change with the times.
The films can be preserved longer than plays
on the stage, but it is a good deal of a
question whether people one hundred years
from now will care to look at the pictures
of the present day. We laugh at the films
that were done fifteen years ago, but add
fifty years to their life and how can we tell
that someone, looking at them, might fail
to recognize any difference between those that
we now think are foolish and those that we are
working on seriously this month to release two
or three months hence. (Koszarski, 107-108)
Chaplin had an eye fixed upon the future as he
developed Charlie.
use of pantomime:

Two things are important about Chaplin's

first, he never intended Charlie to

appear in sound film because, when he finally made the

conversion to sound, he retired Charlie and developed new
characters; and second, his experimental technique evolved
through his career, and he mimed in order to tell a story

122

rather than to indicate an emotion or an object.

Biographer

David Robinson clarifies Chaplin's use of mime;

Keystone comedy was created from without;
anecdote and situation were explained in
pantomime and gesture. Chaplin's comedy
was created from within. What the audience
saw in him was the expression of thoughts
and feelings, and the comedy lay in the
relation of those thoughts and feelings to
the things that happened around him. (113)
Harpo's use of mime involved pantomime and gesture,
just like the Keystone comedians'.

He indicated emotion by

displaying a wide smile or an evil grin.

Charlie the Tramp

did not speak because there was no need to speak.

He could

use his body to physically communicate anything he had to

say.

Harpo's lack of speech was never fully defined.

It

changed during the course of his career, and as directors

and producers attempted to make him a more sympathetic
character, Harpo took on the appearance of a mute rather
than that of a mime.

Harpo and Chaplin take their style of

miming to opposite extremes.

Chaplin expresses the inner

emotions, and Harpo indicates broad, sweeping thoughts and

gestures.
Although not all of the descriptions of Chaplin's Music
Hall career are reliable, a variation of one of his most
popular acts was adapted to film in A Night at the Show
(1915).

This 20-minute short film is a series of stunts and

pratfalls connected with two drunks attending a performance

123
of the Music Hall.

The film is considerably different than

the stage play; however, it demonstrates Chaplin's style and

approach to stage pantomime.

The existence of the film

shows that Chaplin was willing to go back to his past and

rework old gags and stories.

This technique became a habit,

and by the end of his career, Chaplin often incorporated

successful gags or old ideas in new material.
Chaplin, furthermore, used pantomime to create the
entire world in his films.

Unlike Harpo, who was the only

nonspeaking character in the Marx Brothers' movies, Chaplin

existed in a world without sound, and he used actions to
tell stories.

His refusal to enter the sound-film era was

based on his belief that pantomime is a universal means of

expression.

In his 1931 article, "Pantomime and Comedy,"

Chaplin predicted that films would eventually return to the

use of pantomime.
Silent comedy is more satisfying entertainment
for the masses than talking comedy, because most
comedy depends on swiftness of action, and an
event can happen and be laughed at before it can
be told in words. Of course, pantomime is
invaluable in drama, too, because it serves to
effect the gradual transition from farce to pathos
or from comedy to tragedy much more smoothly and
with less effort than speech can ever do. (64)
Harpo
In contrast to Chaplin's using silence as an expressive
tool, Harpo adopted his silent character because nothing
else seemed to work for him.

He chronicles the team's early

124
development in Chapters 7 and 8 of Harpo Speaks.

Harpo

became an actor when his mother, Minnie, demanded he leave a

job and join the musical review, "The Four Nightingales."
Intended to be a showcase for Groucho's singing voice, the
act matched Groucho, Gummo, and Harpo with a young female
singer whom Harpo described as a nymphomaniac with a crossed
eye and a voice that began in one key and ended in the
other.

Chico later joined the act, and Uncle Al Shean wrote

them a skit called School Days.

vaudeville

A variation of a popular

routine. School Days required the brothers to

draw highly exaggerated characters, often using immigrant

accents as a gimmick.

Groucho played a German teacher, and

Harpo played an Irish idiot based on a traditional character

named Patsy Brannigan.

Harpo's voice was weak, and he could

not keep up with the other actors, but the act was so
successful that Shean wrote them another skit.

Home Again

would be much less musical review and more clowning around

for the comedy team, but Harpo had a problem:
It all sounded great to me except for one thing;
Uncle Al didn't write a single line for me. I
protested. Uncle Al said I could add a wonderful
contrast to the act if I played in pantomime. The
hell with that. I would ad lib all the lines I
wanted to, I said. (121)
Becoming a mime was, therefore, not Harpo's choice, and
he did not understand Al Shean's idea.

It may be argued

that the Harpo Marx on the movie screen is simply a mime

version of the Patsy Brannigan character.

Since Brannigan

125
was already well-established by the time Harpo began playing
him, a possible attempt may be made to trace the character's
roots to the Commedia dell'Arte.

Brannigan has the

attributes of many zanni characters, and he often serves as

a comic rube.

Harpo describes his Patsy Brannigan costume

in detail in Harpo Speaks;

Minnie got out the wig she'd made up for
Jenny . . . and dyed the wig red for me.
She sewed bright patches onto my traveling
pants, which were pretty well shot anyway,
and I used a piece of rope for a
suspender. . . For a final touch before
going onstage, I reddened my ears, painted on
some freckles and blacked out three of my
front teeth. (108)
Harpo did not keep the blacked-out teeth, but he did
keep the red wig when he became a mime.

His description of

Patsy Brannigan may also be compared with the "Toby"

character in Texas Tent Shows during the early part of the
twentieth century.

Harpo chronicles playing in small Texas

towns during the Marx Brothers' vaudeville tours, and it is

possible that Texas audiences during the late teens saw two
different versions of what would become Harpo Marx.
Clifford Ashby and Suzanne May describe Toby as having
"woolly chaps, freckles, blacked-out-teeth and a silly-kid
grin" (39). Neil Schaffner, who made a career out of
playing Toby, writes that behind the "unsophisticated
manner" of Toby there lurked "deep currents of native wit,
of cunning and resourcefulness" (2). Given the Harlequin's

126

hidden wit, it is possible that Harpo, Toby, and Patsy

Brannigan all came from the same archetypal character.
Toby was not always a happy character, and he
occasionally suffered unrequited love like the Pierrot.
Ashby and May interviewed Mary Roberts, who recalled an
occasional element of pathos in the Texas Tent Shows:

"Toby

made you laugh at the start of the play but toward the end
when he lost the beautiful girl to the handsome leading man
only a very cold heart would have left the theater dry-eyed"
(73).

Perhaps Patsy Brannigan and the Texas Toby are

variations on the Commedia Harlequin and the Pierrot.

Harpo's Patsy Brannigan became unique to him when he
gave up speaking and became a mime.

The character was

completed one evening in San Francisco when Harpo was caught

in a rainstorm and bought an old raincoat that fell apart at
the seams.

It soon found use on the stage because "it was

perfect with my battered plug hat, ratty wig, and underslung

pants with the clothesline belt" (133).
Unlike Chaplin, Harpo quit speaking on the stage and
brought a silent character to film.

He did not, however,

study mime, and in his autobiography Harpo readily admits to

having no talent.

Elements of mime are, instead, used to

indicate emotions and to complement Chico's verbal puns.

The silent character evolved because he was unable to keep
up vocally with the other actors, and, as Harpo applied more

127
and more of his own personality to the character, he
discovered gags and miming movements that worked as a part
of the act.
Harpo's obsession with the harp was similar to the
development of his stage character; he decided one day that
he wanted to become a harpist and taught himself to play.
Although he could not read a note of music, he somehow
plucked strings and experimented with the instrument until
he was able to play songs.

During adulthood he accidentally

discovered he that he held the instrument on the wrong side.

His discovery was not the result of a music lesson; Harpo
happened to see a figurine of an angel playing a harp.

In

recounting his first music lesson, Harpo writes that a famed

musician listened to him play and, when Harpo asked for his
advice, told Harpo to be quiet and continue playing.

Harpo

never went back because he refused to pay money to play for

someone else.
The harp became Harpo's link to acting.
to learn to play that he taught himself.

He so desired

Although the form

and technique are, according to experts, incorrect, Harpo

nevertheless got a sound from the harp and accomplished his
goal.

Likewise, without formal training of any kind and

with only the push of Mother Minnie and Al Shean, the Marx
Brothers attacked the stage the only way they knew howin
an unprecedented manner defying theatrical conventions and
doing whatever worked.

128

Summary
Both Harpo and Chaplin display several elements of the
Pierrot, but it is clear that Chaplin more closely to
resembles a Pierrot character than Harpo.

Chaplin displayed

emotions to the audience, but he kept other characters from

knowing his inner thoughts.

He used Pierrot makeup and

worked as a mime in order to express inner emotion.

Finally, he achieved an element of pathos within his
productions because he made the audience feel for the
universal plight of Charlie.

Maurice Sand describes the

difference between the Harlequin and the Pierrot in terms of

their universality.
The original character of Harlequin after it
had been transformed by Domenico was bound to,
and did, go out of fashion. Wit is a thing
relative to every epoch and to every environment;
the jests of that comedian do not now always seem
witty to us; among those which have been collected
it is impossible to cite more than a certain
number. Pierrot, however, might be cited in full;
for he exists, and always will exist, on the stage
of life itself. (Sand 211)
Sand's words express the universality and durability of
Chaplin as a Pierrot.

Harpo, however, certainly seems to

have lasted longer than the normal Harlequin, and his humor
has not gone completely out of fashion.

Perhaps this is due

to his incorporation of the Pierrot-like use of mime.

An

element of the Harlequin and the Pierrot exists in both men;

however, Harpo Marx never fully developed the aspects of the

129
Pierrot, and Charlie Chaplin definitely progressed past the
playfulness of the Harlequin.

CHAPTER V
THE MARX BROTHERS AND THE THEATER
OF CRUELTY: UNIQUE SURREALISM
OR VAUDEVILLIAN STYLE?
Critics apply theory to Marx Brothers' films, but the
applications are often erroneous and forced.

A review of

major lines of Marx Brothers' criticism demonstrates that

the team cannot be categorized.

Traditional criticism of

the Marx Brothers does not stand up to scrutiny, and no

evidence exists that the Marx Brothers attempted to conform
to any known theory or to produce anything more than comedy.
In contrast to Chaplin, the Marx Brothers focused on comedy
for the sake of comedy, and they were deeply influenced by
the Hollywood studio system of which they were a part.

This

chapter will identify the two major schools of Marx

Brothers' criticism and then demonstrate that the team is a
cinematic manifestation of vaudevillian comedy.
Antoinin Artaud himself singled out the Marx Brothers
and their physical comedy as being representative of his
ideas.

He said that it was anarchistic and surrealistic,

claiming that "if there is a definite characteristic, a

distinct poetic state of mind that can be called surrealism.
Animal Crackers participated in that state altogether"
(142).

Although there has been a great deal of criticism

attempting to prove or disprove the validity of Artaud's

labeling the Marx Brothers as "surrealistic," no critic has

130

131
taken a detailed approach in examining Harpo in the context
of Artaud's actual ideas.

Artaud's Theater of Cruelty often

consists of no more than a few vague comments and obscure

passages in The Theatre and its Double, but the traits
Artaud identified in the Marx Brother films, and especially
in the two movies he specifically criticized. Animal
Crackers and Monkey Business, may be examined.
The scholarship on the Marx Brothers follows two lines
of thought.

First, and most prevalent during their

lifetimes, is the belief that before meeting Irving

Thalberg, the team dabbled in the surreal and took a
misguided tour through the realms of

comedy.

The "Thalberg

critics" believe that the death of Irving Thalberg destroyed

the Marx Brothers' careers and that they reached the height
of their talent during the time they worked at MetroGoldwyn-Mayer.

Zimmerman and Goldblatt write that Thalberg

"replaced the wild, reckless terrain of the old films with a

beautifully ordered garden of romance, music and
recognizable plot" (104).

Eyles admits a validity to what

the brothers did before Thalberg and concedes that the

producer imposed major changes on their characters.
Nevertheless, Eyles claims that "few will hold it (A Night
at the Opera) in less than high esteem" (108).
The second line of criticism deals with Artaud; that
is, "Artaudian" critics see the brothers as surrealistic
anarchists and point fingers at Thalberg for having taken

132
the team offtrack.

The Artaudians believe that the movies

before Thalberg are rich with an element of rebellion

against the establishment, and they see the basis of the
team's humor in their ability to tear down the social mores
and values that existed in American society during the early
part of the century.

Unfortunately, although Artaud's

theories are often studied in conjunction with the brothers,

few "Artaudian" critics have applied Artaudian ideas other
than the sweeping term "anarchy" directly to the Marx
Brothers' work.

Thalbergian Criticism
Thalberg and the Marx Brothers
In order to analyze the significance of Thalberg
criticism, one must understand exactly what Thalberg did.
First, in contrast to Chaplin's evolution from commedia
technique into a

mixture of comedy and pathos by use of

Meyerholdian Biomechanical control of the body, the Marx

Brothers made little attempt to incorporate dramatic themes
in their films.

The turning point of their careers came in

1935, when Irving Thalberg, producer at MGM, suggested that

the 1933 flop. Duck

SOUP,

was a victim of the team's

"building insanity on insanity."

Thalberg produced the two

most financially successful Marx films, A Night at the Opera

and A Day at the Races, by using a formula in which the
team's antics were justified by a complex story and

. 133
character development.

In other words, Thalberg attempted

to bring a human dimension to the Marx personifications, and

he built a sane, real world in which they existed.
Included in this "real world" were attempts to paint
three-dimensional characters and to make the brothers a part
of "reality."

Adamson explains that in the MGM films "Harpo

can never step outside the bounds of reality anymore, for

one example; he may use an ax for a job as simple as slicing
salami, but now it must be lying handily on a nearby barrel,
not concealed mysteriously on his person" (282).
Furthermore, the Harpo character was made into a mute idiot,
and Thalberg evoked audience sympathy for the character by
having him abused physically.

In A Night at the Opera,

Harpo plays the valet to the antagonist, Lasspari.

Harpo's

opening sequence shows him trying on Lasspari's costumes and

clowning in front of a mirror.

This time, unlike the

earlier Marx Brothers films, Harpo is caught and beaten for

misbehaving.

The beating scene is twofold:

first, it

evokes hatred and mistrust of Lasspari; second, and more

important, it evokes pathos and sympathy for Harpo.

The

formula was so successful that it was used again in A Day at

the Races.

By the last Marx Brothers film. Love Happy,

beating Harpo had become a cliche.

In the case of A Night at the Opera, however, the
beating scene evoked sympathy and moved the brothers closer
to an element of drama within their comedy.

In his review

134
of A Night at the Opera, Clifton Fadiman identifies the
Thalberg influence on Harpo as "combined pathos and humor"
that borders on "Chaplinesque."

Fadiman believed Harpo

should leave the act and accept more Chaplinesque projects,

arguing that, if Harpo did not believe that "everything
depends on a proper balance among three brothers, (he) could
develop into one of the greatest clowns in the entire
history of entertainment" (38). It is ironic that A Night
at the Opera marked the first time the "three brothers"
performed alone, because Zeppo quit the act between Duck
Soup and A Night at the Opera.

Fadiman evidently did not

consider Zeppo a part of the "proper balance."

The Marx Brothers after Thalberg

The element of pathos disappeared when Thalberg died
and the brothers signed with RKO to film the already
successful stage play. Room Service.

Zeppo worked as their

agent in an attempt to secure "a good story" because of the

continual complaint that their films suffered from weak
plots.

Several years later in reviewing A Night in

Casablanca, Rowland quipped; There can scarcely be too much

plot for the Marx Brothers; script writers may build
skyscrapers of plots; the Brothers will destroy them. . .
(267).

In the case of Room Service, however, it seemed that

there was too much plot, as Ryskind's adaptation of the

stage play did not provide the team with any justification

135
for their insane characters, nor did it design gags with the
Marx Brothers in mind.

Chico later blamed the failure of

Room Service on the attempt to stretch their styles; after

all, it was the first (and only) time that they had ever
played characters not written specifically for them.

As

most of the critics suggested, Groucho, Harpo, and Chico

were unable to impose their screen personalities on the
fully developed characters in the film.

Room Service also

marked their break with MGM studios, and its weaknesses

emphasized the team's vulnerability.

Without good writers

and gags designed for their already-established characters,

the Marx Brothers seemed mediocre at best.
After Room Service, the team's success dwindled, and
they accepted a variety of projects that most critics agreed
were beneath their talents.

The films after Room Service

never returned the team to their surrealistic world, and

instead, the brothers became caught in a series of scripts
that simply rehashed old routines and lazzi.

In terms of

financial success, the Marx Brothers' careers may be

displayed like an Aristotilian model for plotting the play;
after reaching a climax in A Night at the Opera and A Day at
the Races, the team died a long, slow death in a series of
films that may only be described as a coda to their earlier
work.

136
The Unique Style of the Marx Brothers
Dependence on Writers
Although Charlie Chaplin also reached a peak of
financial success and continued his experimentation with
style throughout his career, the difference between the
careers of the Marx Brothers and Chaplin may be reduced to a
question of artistic control.

Critic Andrew Sarris says

that the Marx Brothers did not reach Chaplin's success

because of their "failure to achieve the degree of
production control held by Chaplin throughout his career"
(247).

Although Chaplin made changes in style from the

silent shorts to Modern Times to his first "talkie," The

Great Dictator, and beyond, the changes were Chaplin's own
deliberate choices as a director, and he may be credited or
blamed for the outcome.

In the case of the Marx Brothers,

their "surrealistic" beginning was often controlled by the

producer and the playwright.

It gave way to Thalberg's

element of "pathos" and then deteriorated into a series of

attempts to regain the edge of the insanity they once
achieved.

In his review of A Night in Casablanca. Richard

Rowland writes, "Charlie Chaplin's films are escape

literature which does not escape . . . But the Marx Brothers
offer a pure escape; they do not falsify the world. . . but
they show us another world, a moon world which illuminates
our own, revealing our familiar surroundings as so much
nonsense" (268-269).

In other words, Chaplin's tramp

137
existed as a three-dimensional character in a real world,
but the Marx Brothers, especially in their pre-Thalberg
years, provided pure escapism from any sense of reality.

Improvisation
The Marx dependence on writers and directors must be
contrasted with the folk tales about their improvisation.
Evidence shows that they improvised at various times; all
the biographers recount some variation on the story of
George S. Kaufman's stopping a conversation because he
"thought he heard an original line in the script."

Adamson

quotes director Robert Pirosh as saying that a lot of what

went on screen was their material.

Screenwriter Harry Ruby

told him, "Sometimes you'd walk in and they were doing

something you didn't even write!" (169).

Kitty Carlisle

recounts how Groucho went back and forth in "deadly earnest"

between actors, trying out new gags and asking, "Is this
funny?" (Zimmerman and Goldblatt, 105). Harpo tells several
stories in his autobiography about the brothers throwing
gags into already existing material.

Writing about the

Broadway production of Cocoanuts, Harpo explains, "We never

did stop adlibbing.
same" (190).

No two performances were ever quite the

He goes on to tell about playing practical

jokes on Groucho during the run of Cocoanuts.

What Harpo is

calling ad-libbing in this passage can hardly be labeled

creative improvisation.

It is, instead, members of a comedy

138
team playing tricks on each other and then digging
themselves out of embarrassing situations.

The Harpo

autobiography indicates that most of the improvisation took

place during the early years of the act, when Minnie
insisted that they remain a singing team, and the brothers
wanted to branch into comedy.

Minnie stood backstage

whenever the act got too rowdy and whispered "Greenbaum!"

"Greenbaum" was, of course, the name of their landlord, and
paying rent was the paramount concern for the developing
young team.
Nevertheless, the overall evidence suggests that the
"improvisations" did not occur often, even when the team was
working on stage.

By the time they got to Hollywood and

made films, improvisation was virtually non-existent.

During the filming of the early works, the cameramen laughed
so hard during the first takes that it took several cuts
before the routine could be completed without interruption.
What chance there might be at improvisation disappeared when
the brothers were asked to show the cameramen exactly what
they were going to do so there would be no laughing on the
set when the scenes were actually filmed.

In an interview

with Robert Altman and a series of directors, Groucho

explained that they did not need to try a lot of new lines
during the early films because "we had Kaufman and Ryskind.
I added stuff to it, but every first-class comedian is

139
supposed to be able to do that.

Otherwise you're just a

schlump, you're not a comedian" (13).

In other words, it is the duty of every comedian, and
especially any comedian who began on the vaudeville stage,
to be able to add punch lines or improvise according to a
given situation.

The evidence suggests that the

improvisation was limited to one-liners and occasional gags,

and the brothers did not create their own material, as it is
popularly told. Therefore, the "anarchy" inherent in the
original Marx stage shows and the early films was a result
of the direction and screenwriting rather than the team's
improvisational skills.

Writer Morrie Ryskind confirms the

lack of improvisation despite the appearance of spontaneity.

In an interview for Joe Adamson's documentary. The Marx
Brothers in a Nutshell, Ryskind says that his daughter read
the script Animal Crackers before a performance.

After the

show she told him, "If I hadn't read that script, I would
have sworn Groucho was making up every word himself.

That's

how spontaneous he could be."

Improvisation through Performance

Irving Thalberg encouraged an evolution of scenes
before the filming.

Thalberg booked a series of stage tours

and allowed the brothers to take scenes from A Night at the

Opera and A Day at the Races before live audiences in order
to try new gags.

Although the brothers often used new

140
material during this tour, no evidence exists that they
actually improvised.

To the contrary. Variety magazine's

article, "Marx Brothers Use 11 Different Acts . . .,"

explains that the brothers "tried out practically everything
being considered for their forthcoming Metro picture" and
were being handed new material so quickly that "they were
being coached from the wings" (Variety, August 26, 1936).
Thalberg allowed them to experiment with variations of
scenes as if they were filming a Vaudevillian routine that,
through tiny changes over a long period of time, was
transformed into a guaranteed audience-pleaser.
The significance of the lack of improvisation is twostemmed;

first, Sarris' suggestion that the Marx Brothers

were dependent on the filmmakers (and consequently had

little to do with what actually went into the script or
production) was valid; and second, Thalberg's allowing the
brothers to develop scenes on stage before they were filmed
should have given them a chance to draw closer to their
"surrealistic anarchy" rather than moving away from it.
After all, taking the show on the road and trying acts in
front of audiences most closely resembled the manner in
which the Marx Brothers started their careers.

The evidence

instead suggests that the vaudeville acts were not actually

improvised either.

After all, the brothers began with a

singing routine, and Harpo's autobiographical accounts of

improvisation indicate that they threw in jokes or gags when

141
they were supposed to be singing.

When Uncle Al Shean wrote

the team a new skit, a variation on an already successful

vaudeville act called Fun in Hi Skule, the team was
dependent on his script, and there is very little evidence
that they actually improvised the dialogue.

It seems,

therefore, natural that Thalberg's allowing the brothers to

tour the stage circuit with an already-prepared script in
order to perfect the timing of the dialogue was simply a
continuation of what the brothers had been doing during
their Vaudevillian careers through Animal Crackers.
In addition, an argument may be made against the
premise that Thalberg imposed any more qualities on the Marx
characters than his predecessors.

Chaplin's work was

consistently representative of his own ideas, for he usually

wrote the script and directed himself as well as the
ensemble.

The Marx Brothers were dependent on a parade of

gag writers to help them create new lazzi and a director to

string the gags together.

In the case of Duck Soup, former

Laurel and Hardy director Leo McCarey went so far as

imposing a routine originally performed by Laurel and Hardy
on a Marx Brothers' script.

The routine (in which Groucho,

Harpo, and Chico all dress as Groucho and mirror each other)
is often considered one of the team's greatest scenes.
Critic Charles Silver calls it "surreal visual madness with
no counterpart in any other Marx film" (9). Groucho
describes it as a "classic German act" that McCarey wanted

142
to use for years.

"Did you rehearse it to the point of

perfection?" asked interviewer Michael Goodwin.

"No,"

replied Groucho, "we rehearsed it one Saturday morning . . .

for about an hour and a half" (Altman et al., 16).
In an interview for the Disney Channel film. The Marx
Brothers' Lost Footage, Harpo's son. Bill, explains that
nobody could write for Harpo.

"The script would read,

^Harpo does something funny,'" he explained, telling how the

writers could simply set up a situation for Harpo and then
ask him to respond physically.

The writers did, however,

provide him with suggested gags.

For instance, silent

screen star Buster Keaton was employed by the brothers after

Keaton's own film career went sour.

An oft-repeated

anecdote concerning Keaton and his writing was his design of

a physical gag for Harpo to use in At the Circus involving a
camel and a piece of hay.

When Harpo tossed the hay onto

the camel's back, the camel trainer, who happened to be

standing on the other side of the camel, bent down to strike
a match, and the camel bends with him.

When Harpo picked

the hay back up, the camel got back onto its feet (Adamson
352).

This visual gag was not appropriate for the "mask"

Harpo had constructed and was dismissed by the brothers as

being no good.

The evidence, therefore, suggests that the

Marx Brothers had enough power to dismiss directors or gag

writers who did not conform to their style of humor.
evidence also suggests that Thalberg imposed no more

The

143
preconceived ideas than any other producer, director or
writer who worked with the Marx Brothers.

Artaudian Criticism
Surrealistic Anarchists
It is the conception of Thalberg as a destroyer of
surrealism that drives the second line of Marx Brothers
criticism, the "Artaud" critics.

This group uses Artaud's

terminology as a basis of their criticism, defining the Marx

Brothers as "social satirists" and "surrealistic
anarchists."

They believe that Thalberg imposed too many

rules on the Marx Brothers and tried to change their style

to fit his own.

They furthermore believe the Thalberg films

changed the very makeup of the three Marx masks by imposing

the elements of pathos.

In his book, Groucho. Harpo. Chico

and Sometimes Zeppo. Joe Adamson explains the Artaudian line

of thinking:
In one sense. Night at the Opera is Marxist
anarchy in its most perfect form. In another
sense, how the hell do you get anarchy into
a form? To Marx Brothers purists, the whole
idea of this film has grown to be palpable
anathema. This guy Irving Thalberg had
profaned their nothing-sacredness! (Adamson, 300)
In his reference to anarchy, Adamson is referring to
the standard scholarly approach that links the Marx Brothers
to Artaud by labeling them "surrealistic anarchists."

144
Artaud made a lengthy statement concerning the Marx Brothers
as artists, claiming that they were misinterpreted by the
American public.
If Americans, to whose spirit this genre of
film belongs, wish to take these films in a
merely humorous sense, confining the material
of humor to the easy comic margins of the
meaning of the word, so much the worse for them;
but that will not prevent us fromm considering
the conclusion of Monkey Business as a hymn to
anarchy and wholehearted revolt, this ending
that puts the bawling of the calf on the same
intellectual level and gives it the same quality
of meaningful suffering as the scream of a
frightened woman, this ending that shows, in the
shadows of a dirty barn, two lecherous servants
freely pawing the naked shoulders of their
hysterical master, all amidst the intoxication
which is intellectual as wellof the Marx
Brothers' pirouettes. (144)
In his outstanding work on early film comedy. What Made
Pistachio Nuts?

Early Sound Comedy and the vaudeville

Aesthetic, Henry Jenkins lumps all "Marxian" criticism into

one category anarchic.

Citing Durgnat, Weales, Warshaw,

Mast, and a host of film critics, Jenkins refers to the

"metaphor of anarchy" with which the Brothers are viewed,
allowing the critic to draw parallels between the Marxian
"formal and thematic structures."

In describing the

criticism of Gerald Weales, Jenkins paraphrases the argument

as "the suspension of formal and social convention within
the Marx Brothers' comedies allows us to experience these
films in a more "impulsive" fashion, frees us from the
demand of rational thought, and positions us outside of
culture; the spectators themselves become anarchists. . ."

145
(8).

It is this suspension of belief in order to satirize

society that dominates Marxian criticism, and few critics,

despite their acceptance or rejection of the Irving Thalberg
work, step away from that idea.
Jenkins is important to this study because he calls
attention to the general trend.

Attempting to redefine

early sound comedy as being "Anarchistic rather than

Anarchic," it is Jenkin's thesis that "anarchistic comedy
emerged from the classical Hollywood cinema's attempt to
assimilate the vaudeville aesthetic" (24), claiming that the
traditional interpretations of the comics are so
metaphorical as to become cliche.

Jenkin's vaudeville

aesthetic is, furthermore, representative of the immigrant

worker's attempt to assimilate into the American culture.
For Jenkins, the Marx Brothers and early film comedians are
simply continuations of the vaudeville aesthetic, and the
"anarchy" is a direct result of the Vaudevillian immigrant's
attempt to fit into American society.

This idea may be

related to John Rudlin's explanation for the origin of the

Commedia zanni.

In his work, Commedia dell'Arte: An Actor's

Handbook. Rudlin equates the zanni with the Bergamase

"migrant worker" who came down out of the hills and
attempted to find work in the city (67-68).

146
Anarchists or Vaudevillians?
Perhaps the most important thing that Jenkins
discovered was the link between the Marx Brothers as a stage
team and their work on film.

Jenkins suggests that the team

and others like it were all part of the American transition

of comedy from vaudeville to the big screen.
Donnelly agrees.

Critic William

He cites Artuad's surrealistic label as

being a misinterpretation "through the eyes of one whose

native language is not English."

Donnelly sees the Marx

Brothers' humor as being "the comedy of articulation," (9),

thus rendering Artaud's criticism as inept as Chico's
misinterpretations of Groucho's nonsensical commentary.

For

this dissertation, the idea of transforming the Marx

Brothers' comedy from vaudeville to film may be taken a step
further, suggesting that the Brothers used the stage as a
workshop, much like Charlie Chaplin's silent films were a
workshop for the development of character.

In both cases,

the performers found archetypal characters and placed them

in comic situations.

In the case of Chaplin, it seems that

there was a great deal more improvisation in the traditional

sense of the word.

Although he worked out every movement in

detail before performing it on film, Chaplin used the silent

shorts as a method of exploring the physical lazzi.

The

characters, situations, and ideas were all Chaplin's.

The

Marx Brothers also explored physical lazzi, but they were

147
dependent on a team of writers to help them develop the
lazzi and place them in the proper situation.

Vaudeville and the American Immigrant

It has been the fashion of critics to label the Marx
Brothers as anarchists because of their "revolt" against
society.

As Jenkins and other critics have begun to

theorize, the Marx humor is not necessarily based on

destruction of societal normsit just happens that society
is the most convenient thing to get in their way.

Jenkins

attributes the "anarchy" to the integration of vaudeville

with talking pictures and the subsequent attempt of the
immigrant to become a part of America. If viewed in this
context, the Marx Brothers are no longer unique in their
anarchy but are, instead, representative of the Vaudevillian
comedians who made the transition from the stage to film.
In a sense, therefore, the Marx Brothers' attempt to tear
down social mores is, in actuality, their method of building
and strengthening them.
Donnelly denies any link between the Marx Brothers and
anarchistic surrealism.

He argues that their importance is

not in their ability as performers; rather, it lies in the

structure of their films, which was "molded in the inferno
of American vaudeville into a form of comedy that is unified
and effective, and that is the real achievement" (15). In

148
Other words, the Marx Brothers' films are a transition from
Vaudevillian humor to screen comedy.

The Writings of Artaud

Artaud's Vague Language
With the Thalberg criticism and the traditional
Artaudian approach in mind, it is important to sort through
Artaud's rhetoric and determine whether the Marx Brothers
are unique representatives of the Theater of Cruelty.

An

attempt to relate the Marx Brothers to Artaud is most

difficult because of the imagistic quality of his writing.
The Theater and its Double begins with a passage relating
the theater to the plague in Europe, claiming that, like the
plague, the theater "is a crisis which is resolved by death
or cure" (31). He demonstrates the mise en scene (a
predominant theme within a large body of work, often playing
to the subconscious mind) through the description of the
painting. Lot and His Wives.

The mise is a means by which

the artist challenges the audience through a manipulation of

the senses and use of images on stage.

Artaud never

produced a full acting theory; instead, he left fragments

and notes for his followers to piece together.

Director

Peter Brook, whose experimentation with Artaud led to the

production Marat Sade. told writer Mark Rose, "Artaud has no
relation with practical theatre.
symbol, a poetic figure-head."

His great value is as a

When the theories are

149
applied, claims Brook, "they are betrayed because of the
compromise the practical application brings"

(Rose, 37).

Nevertheless, Marx Brothers criticism is equated with

"Artaudian anarchy," and critics often use Artaud's
terminology when writing about the team.

Gerald Mast titles

his chapter on the team "The Anarchists."

title "Four Against Alienation,"

Durgnat uses the

and Jenkins refers to

traditional Marx Brothers criticism as the "Anarchistic

Comedy Tradition."
It is obvious that the team cannot be related to Artaud
as easily as Chaplin can be related to Meyerhold.
several reasons.

There are

First, Meyerhold's thought was well-

outlined and specifically spelled out.

Artaud's words are

confusing and full of double-entendre.

He is poetic; the

phrase "cruelty" seems a misnomer, for it is not a demand

for sadomasochism or anger on the stage.

Instead, the

Theater of Cruelty is a living, breathing challenge for the

actor to use his entire body in performance and to
incorporate all possible avenues of performing in a struggle
to rip down the mores and values of society.
overly-imagistic.

Artaud is

The "Double" to which he often refers may

be interpreted as anything from the actor's body to the

theater itself.

He is not specific about any particular

acting rules, thus leading to various interpretations.

In

fact, taken at face value. The Theater and its Double offers
little more than a series of images and vague statements

150
about creating a unique (though undefined) new approach to
theater.

Surrealism and Rebellion

Artaud is still subject to interpretation.

Eric Sellin

identifies several major themes in Artaud's works:

a plea

for new language in the theater; a catharsis of cruelty with

the "double"; and a mythical mise en scene (or theme behind
the work) (82). Martin Esslin gives different definitions:
the theater as reality; a demand to impact the audience in
such a way as to make them suffer; and an ability to
communicate to the audience ideas that have not been
verbalized and are a part of the deep subconscious (79).
Bermel lists features of the actual Theater of Cruelty;
it does not physically torture the audience but, instead,
"places the rigor or necessity or implacability of life"
through artistic expression; it draws on the collective
unconsciousness of mankind; it works on the nerves and
senses (23). For Costich, the most important element in the
Theater of Cruelty is the transformation of language,
expanding the audible language of yells, screams, and noise
above the written text (49).
There is also the matter of Artaud having belonged for
a short time to the Surrealist school.

He is often

misinterpreted, being lumped by Marx critic Joe Adamson with

Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter who so loved Harpo's

151
work that he sent him a harp made from barbed wire and
spoons.

Harpo, of course, politely got rid of it.

Quoting

Artaud, Adamson writes, "The poetic quality of a film like

Animal Crackers would fit the definition of humor if this
word had not long since lost its sense of essential
liberation . . . "

Then, turning from criticism to verbal

wit, Adamson quips, "I see.

He has decided that Animal

Crackers is surrealistic, but it isn't humor.

It's a good

thing we consulted one of these guys, isn't it?" (161).

The first question, then, is to ask whether or not the
Marx Brothers should be considered surrealists.

Artaud

belonged to the school of surrealism from 1924-1927, before

breaking with founder Andre Breton over personal and
political differences.

The specific reason for the break

seems to have been politically motivated, for Breton

believed surrealism would lead to a physical world
revolution and grew tired of expressing revolutionary terms
in art.

In contrast, Artaud attempted to establish a

theater of revolution, and his failed "Theater Alfred Jarry"

was designed to challenge conventional theatrical practice.
Surrealism, as it pertains to theater, is a mixture of
dream and reality.

In her work Andre Breton: Magus of

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Surrealism, Anna Balakian attempts to clarify the basic
ideas of the school:
Reality, then, in its dynamic sense proceeding
from an interior state, nurtured by what we
call imagination, and brought to an exterior
existence through the capture of dreams or
subconscious verbalization is what Breton calls
the "surreal," in a sense that has no connection
with the unreal or the intervention of the
fantastic, which is understood to be exterior
to human perception. (89)
In Andre Breton and the Concepts of Surrealism. Michael
Carrouges explains that "surreal is not to be confused with
unreal; it is the living synthesis of the real and the
unreal, of the immediate and the virtual, of the banal and
the fantastic" (12).
It is this synthesis of the real and unreal that Artaud
seems to have found so compelling about the Marx Brothers'
early work.

Harpo, in particular, is the harbinger of

surrealistic art in film, for his visual "gags" are a

synthesis of reality and fantasy.

In writing about

Horsefeathers. Artaud explains that the Brothers satirize

conventional society by producing images and behavior that
contradict what one is accustomed to seeing in the real
world.
In a Marx Brothers' film a man thinks he is
going to take a woman in his arms but instead
gets a cow, which moos. And through a
conjunction of circumstances, which it would
take too long to analyze here, that moo, at just
that moment, assumes an intellectual dignity
equal to any woman's cry. (43)

153
In her article on Harpo's meeting Salvador Dali, Marie
Seton quotes the brothers as calling their comedy "lunatic
comedy" and denying any link to the surrealist movement.
Seton makes the case for the surrealists by describing one
of the hundreds of nonsensical "sight gags" for Harpo, in
this case, Harpo taking the place of a statue in a Civic
Virtue fountain.
Such dissociated thinking is also characteristic
of the classic nonsense writers. A tea-cup
made of squirrel fur, a fanciful conception of
Salvador Dali, is most certainly an association
of dissimilar objects and undoubtedly makes war
on reason, logic and common sense. Whether it
gives the brain a chance to develop is a matter
for psychologists to decide, but it certainly
breaks down conventional thinking in an
unprejudiced observer. (735)
Are the Marx Brothers surrealists because they present
contrasting images and thus trigger dissociated thinking?
Hundreds of contrasting images occur in the Marx Brothers
films:

Harpo breaks the bounds of logic when pulling a cup

of steaming coffee out of his overcoat (Horsefeathers);

Harpo demonstrates the old adage "you can't burn a candle on
both ends" is incorrect when he exhibits a candle burning at
both ends (Horsefeathers); Harpo rides a lighted Pegasus on
a billboard (Love Happy).

A question arises as to whether

or not these contrasting images are elements of surrealism

unique to the Marx Brothers' style of comedy.

154
Vaudeville and the Surreal
A glance at vaudeville reveals hundreds of equally
surrealistic mixtures of fantasy and reality.
autobiography recounts two examples.

Harpo's

During the brothers'

early tours, they encountered a plethora of terrible acts:

Harpo's favorite was Mons Herbert, who set up a dinner table
and played the anvil chorus with knives and forks.

Then he

took a balloon turkey and deflated it in spurts, playing

"Oh, Those Dry Tears" out of its rump (131).

One wonders

how a surrealist critic might find elements of anarchy and

rebellion against proper societal norms in Herbert's playing
with utensils and making obscene noises with food.

The

brothers lost a job when Minnie came to the defense of a

family of singers who milked a cow onstage while singing
familiar songs of the day.

Harpo even tells the story of a

female female impersonator who, in order to keep her job,

pretended to be a man when she was not onstage (134).
Perhaps most surreal of all is the little-known act where a
Vaudevillian wore a linoleum suit and actually allowed the
audience to fire vegetables at him while he did his act.
One must ask whether or not these vaudeville acts would be
considered surrealistic or if they are simply exploiting the
comic techniqe of incongruity.

Such acts were standard on

the Vaudevillian stage, and their bold attempts to present

contrasting images were part of Vaudevillian folklore.

155
With such an array of acts surrounding them, it is
difficult to label the Marx Brothers as being any more or
less surrealistic than any other comedy team that started on
the vaudeville stage.

Perhaps the "surrealistic" quality

seen by Artaud and Dali was triggered from the Brothers'

Vaudevillian and Commedia dell'Arte influence.
Critic Stephen Barber acknowledges that the Marx
Brothers were not influenced by Artaud, but the formulation
of Artaud's theory may have been affected by the Marx
Brothers's films.

For Barber, Artaud's viewing the Marx

films developed "his insistence on the necessary danger of

the chance" and "stressed the quality of revolt in the
outbursts of noise and movement" (47). This interpretation
has nothing to do with an anarchial destruction of society
but instead emphasizes risks and danger in style of speech
and physical control.

Furthermore, Barber defines the Marx

Brothers as linking laughter to Theater of Cruelty as a

"force of wild destruction and liberation" (44). Rose
quotes Artaud by saying there was as much "healing power in
a laugh as in a cry."

In an interview with Artaud's nephew.

Rose was told "his (Artaud's) happiest moments were those he

experienced when watching the antics and animated comedy of
the Marx Brothers" (10, my note).

The first quality of

Artaud inherent in the Marx Brothers is the surrealistic

revolt of "noise and movement" and the "healing power" of
laughter.

156
The revolt of noise and movement is, of course, the
most commonly identified trait connecting the Marx Brothers
and Artaud.

Fadiman refers to "extravagantly unnecessary"

gestures in the brothers' films, and Weales refers to their

"destructive force."
wig."

Time called Harpo "Puck in fright

In the films before Thalberg, the brothers took on

"the establishment" and parodied the real estate business in

The Cocoanuts, poked fun at high society in Animal Crackers,
stowed away on a ship and ran amuck on its decks in Monkey
Business, parodied education and colleges in Horsefeathers,
and, of course, made a statement about the ridiculousness of
war in Duck Soup.

It was the highly exaggerated

characterizations and movements that were uniquely

Artaudian, however, not, as most critics claim, the
destruction of society.
To say that the team poked fun at high society or high
concepts in these films is being too extreme and too vague
at the same time.

The brothers simply kept the same

character masks and put them in different settings.

The

major goal in each setting was for the team to assault

verbally and physically whatever objects or personages stood
in their way.

They were not individuals; each one was a

separate and distinct part of one whole.

Groucho, as a

verbal wit, twisted accepted norms through wordplay.

Harpo,

in his choice to remain silent, physically attacked the same

images and conventions through a combination of visual gags

157
and unrestrained violence.

Playing an exaggerated

immigrant, Chico linked the verbal witticism of Groucho with

the physical world of Harpo.

They were not three sides of a

surrealistic image of the world; they were three archetypes

carrying their Vaudevillian training to the new medium of
film and experimenting with physical gags and lazzi tied
together with loose-fitting and poorly constructed plots.
In reference to anarchy, Groucho argued later that all
of the film comedians during the era, "Harold Lloyd, Keaton
and those fellows," were attacking the contemporary
establishment of the day.

They are not remembered as much

now because "they weren't about anything, they were just

trying to be funny."

The Marx Brothers succeeded because

they did movies "about monarchy" or "about a school" or

"satirized the opera in America" (Altman, 12).
Although Artaud himself was anti-political and antiestablishment, it is difficult actually to place the
brothers in such a category.

Richard Shepard, Cultural News

Editor of the New York Times, called the Marx Brothers

"court jesters" who worked within the establishment
"dedicated to deflation, not disintegration" and
"antidisestablishmentarians" (Anobile, 9-10).

Harpo's

violent, destructive nature, however, can hardly be equated

with anti-establishment sentiments.

Harpo is a child who

eats or destroys anything he does not understand.

Cocoanuts. Harpo eats an ink well, a telephone, and

In

158
everything at a hotel desk.

In Animal Crackers, he destroys

a bridge game and wrestles Margaret Dumont to the ground.

In Monkey Business, he disguises himself as a woman's bustle
and destroys a dancer's costume.

In Horse Feathers, he rips

up a policeman's ticket and assists Chico in sawing through

a floor.

In Duck Soup, he wades barefoot through Edgar

Kennedy's lemonade.

A Night at the Opera finds him swinging

on stage ropes and riding a backdrop from the fly loft to

the stage.

In each of these instances, Harpo keeps the same

mask and simply participates in a series of lazzi, not

necessarily aimed at destroying conventional society, but
always designed to show the innocent but mischievous child.
Groucho described their comedy as an attempt to complete
"the overthrow of sanity, to give the brain a chance to
develop" (Adamson, 160).
The "overthrow of sanity" quotation from Groucho is
typical rhetoric from the team, and he admitted later in
life that they did not, in fact, have any particular goal or
statement in mind.

In the interview with Altman, Groucho

conceded, "We were trying to be funny, but we didn't know

that we were satirizing the current conditions.

It came as

a great surprise to us" (12). When asked if he was

influenced by the classical surrealists, Groucho replied, "I
had never heard of them in those days, I was too busy making
a living in vaudeville."

When pressed, he stated, "I didn't

159
think there was any art involved.

We were trying to be

funny, and we were getting very good money for it" (14).

The Theatre of Cruelty

Having examined the elements of surrealism and
rebellion, one must go back to the Theatre of Cruelty to
find similarities between Artaud and the Marx Brothers.
Artaud's two manifestos for the Theatre of Cruelty are, like
the rest of his work, imagistic and obscure.

Furthermore,

although they point out various aspects of the theater form,

they do not specifically mention any formal qualities.
In the first manifesto, Artaud tells the reader that
the theater must not "rely upon texts considered definitive
and sacred" and seeks a language halfway between gesture and
thought (89). This idea may be applied to the Marx Brothers
through their destruction of traditional plot devices.
Instead of being plot-oriented, the Brothers' films are
character-based.

While providing a simple story or sequence

of events to get Harpo into action, the Marx Brothers' films

are much more concerned with the creation of lazzi than with
the traditional story structure.

This quality may also be

inherent from their development from vaudeville.

In respect

to creating a language halfway between gesture and thought,

the Marx Brothers as a team created three different
languages between thought and gesture;

Groucho's language

of the elite class, full of wordplay, linguistic games, and

160
references to current events; Harpo's language of visual
images, filled with "surrealistic contradictions" and
outrageous actions that attack not just the rules of society
but also the temporal and spatial rules governing life;
Chico's voice of the masses, a variation on vaudeville's
ethnic characters, halfway between Groucho's arrogance and
Harpo's visual puns, and filled with such painful stretches
of the English language that the jokes would not work in any
other context.

It is through these three masks that the

Marx Brothers create their own language, apart from the

previous language of the theater because, at the same time,
it both affirms and denies traditional expression.
The three aspects of Marx language have been addressed
in a variety of ways.

Fisher suggests that the three

languages are indicative of the masks and come straight from

the Commedia dell'Arte:

"The wisecracking Groucho was

Pantalone, the silent Harpo combined elements of Pulcinella

and Pierrot, the crafty Chico mixed aspects of Brighella and
several other zanni" (283).

In The Groucho Phile. Groucho

refers to all four brothers and Margaret Dumont as "the Marx

Brothers Stock Company" that made thirteen films with one
common thread;

"our famous public personalities.

We were

characters, in both senses of the word" (86). Harpo's son.

Bill, told Joe Adamson, "What you saw (on screen) was merely
an extension of who they were in real life" (Marx Brothers
jp Nutshell, my note).

The three masks may certainly be

161
related to the creation of an original voice and an unique
language through which the team expresses itself in a
combination gesture/thought.
Artaud further defines the language of the new theater
as being a "visual language of objects, movements,
attitudes, and gestures" that challenge the audience to
touch on all aspects of a cosmic order and "create a kind of
passionate equation between Man, Society, Nature, and
Objects."

The use of such a language is to create

"temptations" that are related to metaphysical ideas onstage

and uses "humor with its anarchy, poetry with its symbolism
and its images" to create a metaphysical bond between the
audience and the actor.
Obviously, such an explanation is quite ethereal.

The

Marx Brothers might be placed in the category of "humor with

its anarchy," but they had no desire to make artistic or
metaphysical statements.

They simply intended to be funny.

Is it still possible to apply the Marx Brothers to Artaud if

they did not know what they were doing?

Eric Sellin thinks

so, explaining "that the element of surprise sought by

Artaud was not based on design is seen in his admiration for
the Marx Brothers" (99). It is, therefore, Artaud's opinion
that surrealism may be seen in the work of the Marx Brothers
and, according to Bermel, it may be seen in some of the

162
works of Chaplin as well.

It is the quality of anarchy that

Artaud particularly appreciates:

He relishes their explorations of mime as
an art form, and the subversive nature of
their antics. The farcical eruptions of
childhood pranks from Harpo, the cool
insolence of Groucho, the balletic wonders
of Chaplin, on or off his feet or skidding
about on roller skates and banistersthese
depict human movement taken to extremes
that temporarily deplete the performer and
outrage the other, normal characters. (53)
Such a list of physical actions does not make the Marx
Brothers unique in film history; the mention of Chaplin as
having taken a similar physical approach to comedy prevents
a conclusion that the Marx Brothers' antics were unique to
their time.

It is,

therefore, necessary to delve still

deeper into Artaud to find any unique link between the Marx
Brothers and the Theater of Cruelty.

A Categorization of Artaud's Concepts

Perhaps the most detailed attempt to put Artaud's
theories into a measurable, discernable whole was Mark
Rose's tiny volume. The Actor and His Double: Mime and
Movement for the Theater of Cruelty.

Acknowledging the lack

of an Artaudian system of acting, or at least the lack of

Artaud's detailed explanation for that system. Rose attempts
to analyze the writings of Artaud and to pull out the traits
that Artaud stressed should be developed.

His conclusions

are taken from a full analysis of all of Artaud's work.

163
including The Theater and its Double, as well as a series of
letters, lectures and essays.

Included in these traits are

two categories, the technical and the physical.

According

to Rose, Artaudian actors concentrate on the following

techniques:
I.

Technical
1. Special breathing techniques;
2. An eclectic array of movement styles;
3. Puppet-like movements;
4. Animal movements;
5. Movements portraying superhuman monsters;
6. Masks, costumes, padding, stilts, fabric, puppets,
objects and accessories;
7. Movement timed in relation to mechanically
controlled puppets, masks, mirrors, scenery,
furniture, lighting and objects;
8. Stage action combined with filmed movement and slide
projections;
9. Elaborate solo and ensemble gesture and movement,
often in a multi-leveled space surrounding the
audience;

II.

Emotional
10. Realistic gestures and action to depict ordinary
and extraordinary human behavior;
11. Gestures and actions that contradict a character's
intentions and lines;

164
12.

Intensely emotional and exaggerated gestures and

action through which the actor's latent cruelty is
explored, expressed and purged;

13.

Dreams and fantasies as sources for extravagant

movement;

14.

Stylized, formalized, stereotypical, illustrative

and dance movement, to symbolize special inner
states and metaphysical ideas;

15.

Gestures and movements with a ritualistic quality

appropriate for a theater whose main goal is to
purge violence through a depiction of horrifying
events.

Obviously, several of the categories are not applicable

to the Marx Brothers or to film.

Little evidence exists

about the team's warmup or breathing exercises.

Categories

number eight and nine apply to stage instead of film.

Rose

says very little about the surrealistic qualities that

Artaud pointed out in the Marx Brothers' work or the
elements of anarchy already examined.

It is possible,

however, to take a category-by-category examination of each

of these Artaudian elements and to apply them to the films
of the Marx Brothers.

As the next chapter will demonstrate,

these Artaudian elements are not completely applicable to

the team, nor are they unique to the Marx Brothers.

The

next chapter shall examine Rose's points in respect to use

165
of theme and image in both the work of the Marx Brothers and
in Charlie Chaplin.

Summary
It has been the focus of this chapter to examine Harpo
and the Marx Brothers and their relationship to Artaud's
Theater of Cruelty.

The surrealistic and anarchistic

qualities usually identified with "Artaudian" Marx Brothers

critics are not unique to the team.

It has been further

stated that, although Artaud's theories may be loosely

applied to the Marx Brothers, the team's film work may be
more easily viewed as an extension of their vaudeville
routines.

CHAPTER VI
THE ARTAUDIAN ELEMENTS AS DISPLAYED IN
THE MARX BROTHERS AND CHAPLIN
Keeping in mind the work of Rose and his exploration of
Artaud, this chapter provides a detailed examination of
Chaplin and Harpo Marx in the context of the Theater of
Cruelty.

This study will demonstrate that, although the

Marx Brothers play with occasional themes and images found

in Artaud, their work may hardly be seen as Artaudian.
Furthermore, they never abandon the use of Commedia lazzi,
loosely drawn Commedia scenarios, or established Commedia
characters.

Harpo is a Harlequin figure who never outgrows

his trickster quality.

The Marx Brothers have been

mislabeled Artaudian because the "trickster" personalities

have been misidentified as anarchical elements in their
comedy.

In the case of Chaplin, there seems to be a

deliberate exploration of various themes and movements that

may be directly related to Artaud and his theories.
Although Harpo does not progress past being a part of a
Commedia team, Chaplin uses imagery and concepts to develop
the Pierrot-like pathos so easily identified with Charlie
the Tramp.

Although all of the Artaudian categories (as

defined by Rose), apply, at least in some manner, to

Chaplin, only a few of them directly apply to the Marx
Brothers.

166

167
Following are applicable categories of Artaud's Theater
of Cruelty, as listed by Rose.

This chapter will examine

the categories involving animal movement, the wide array of

movement styles, puppet movements, the use of masks,
movements in relation to mechanically controlled items,
dreams and fantasies as sources for extravagant movement,
and stylized and dance movement to symbolize inner states
and metaphysical ideas.

Chaplin makes great use of nearly

all of these categories in his attempt to achieve pathos.

Dreams and Fantasies as a Source

For Extravagant Movement
Upon close examination of the Chaplin canon, it is
surprising to find that dreams and dream themes are a
recurring and somewhat obsessive motif.

It is furthermore

interesting to note that few, if any, actual dreams occur in

the Marx Brothers' films.

There are, however, quite a few

references to sleep; in fact, one of Harpo's favorite lazzi

is to fall asleep just about anywhere at any time.

Harpo
Harpo and Sleep
Perhaps the most famous of the Marx Brothers' "sleep"
sequences is Harpo's sleeping in the trunk during the
stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera.

The sleeping Harpo

is eventually hoisted onto the breakfast trays.

In Animal

168
Crackers, Harpo and Chico deviously steal a painting and
replace it with an exact duplicate painted by a friend.
Immediately after the robbery, Harpo sleeps on a bench
underneath a tree, with the painting spread over his body
like a blanket.

Later, when a policeman tries to arrest

him, Harpo draws a flit-sprayer full of ether and manages to

knock out the entire cast.

Then, spotting one of the

blondes he has chased throughout the show, Harpo flits the

ether in his own face and joins her in unconsciousness.
That scene, leaving the entire cast in an unconscious or
semi-conscious state, is the finale for the film.
Harpo falls asleep in several other films.

In The

Cocoanuts, he disrupts a speech by alternating between

napping and leaving the table in complete disgust.
Soup he is seen in bed with a horse.

In Duck

(This fetish with

horses and animals will be discussed later in the chapter).

All three brothers sleep in beds that come out of the floor
in The Big Store.

Harpo and the Dream State

Despite Harpo's continual napping, there is only one
instance in a Marx Brothers film when Harpo dreams or
fantasizes.

In The Big Store. Harpo finds two mannequins

dressed in 18th century French costuming, and he switches

places with the male mannequin.

Still wearing his wig,

Harpo wears the eighteenth century clothing and leaves his

169
top hat and overcoat on the mannequin.

The sequence does

not reveal any inner thought; it is actually used to set up

a harp solo.

The musical interlude itself, however, is also

rather dreamlike.

Harpo sits between two mirrors, and,

slowly but surely, the two images in the mirrors come alive
and interact with him.

By the end of the musical number,

Harpo accompanies the harp solo with a cello in one mirror

and violin in the other.

Although this sequence reveals

little or nothing about Harpo's inner character, it is a

dream sequence.
It may be argued that the Marx Brothers do not need
dream sequences because their entire films are surrealistic
and dreamlike.

This argument does not take into account the

use of commedia lazzi and the brothers' established

characters.

There are no dream sequences in Marx Brothers

films because they do not need them.

The Marx Brothers give

their audiences no reason to have sympathy for their

characters, and the world around the team should only be
realistic enough that their lazzi will play convincingly
against straight men.

Those elements of Marx Brother films

that might be identified as "dream-like" or "surreal" are

lazzi consistent with the already-established characters.
In one of the Marx Brothers' most dream-like sequences,
Harpo rides a bicycle through a park at sunset.

A carrot is

suspended from a fishing rod in front of him, and he rides

in hot pursuit of a screaming blond woman (Monkey Business).

170
This image, however, is no more dream-like or surreal than
any other image in the team's movies.

It is a lazzo

connected with the character Harpo has worked to establish.

He is an eternal trickster and woman chaser, and all of his
lazzi/scenes are pointed toward the same end:

he destroys

whatever is around him.

Harpo is just as likely to pick a fight with Chico as
he is to destroy something that a person in the upper class
has established.

The lemonade scene with Edgar Kennedy

(DucH Soup) is not an attempt to bring anarchy on the upper

class.

Kennedy's character, just like Harpo and Chico, is

selling food on the street corner.

The scene begins when

Harpo tears up Chico's peanut vending stand.

He and Chico

collectively turn to Edgar Kennedy because he is there, not

because of a desire to destroy the establishment.
Whether or not the Marx Brothers live in the equivalent
of a dream state, none of the characters in their films
dream, and their inner thoughts are rarely revealed.

The

Marx Brothers use Artaud's dreams and fantasies as a source

for extravagant movement.

There is no underlying character;

there is only a mask defined by the lazzi used to exhibit

that mask.

Chaplin
The lack of dream sequences in Marx Brothers films may
be contrasted with Chaplin, who used dreams and dream

171
imagery throughout his career.

The earliest dream sequence

occurred in his final Keystone film, and the last dream

sequence was in Limelight.

By using dreaming and

daydreaming, Chaplin was able to reveal the Little Tramp's

innermost desires and, consequently, allow Charlie to
achieve pathos.
Two different kinds of fantasizing occur in Chaplin's
films: dreaming and daydreaming.

Daydreams are short

fantasies concerning Chaplin's relationship to the

characters around him.

For instance, a daydream occurs when

the Little Tramp, hopeful that someday he and the Gamin will
be married, fantasizes about their married life in Modern
Times.

In contrast, Chaplin actually used full-scale,

detailed dreams in several of his works, and the dream motif

became representative of the Little Tramp's struggle against
a cruel, often realistic, world.

Dreams
The first instance of dreaming in a Chaplin film occurs
in the final work at Keystone, His Prehistoric Past (1914).
In it, Chaplin, as Weakchin, wears a bearskin and a derby
hat.

He competes with the powerful caveman ruler. Mack

Swain, for the love of the ruler's favorite woman.

In an

act of insurrection, Chaplin throws his superior over the

cliff and takes over as ruler of the tribe.

Swain's

character is not killed in the fall, however, and he returns

172
to club Chaplin over the head as he is courting the girl.
Upon being hit, the Little Tramp awakens on a park bench and
realizes that the entire film has been a dream.
This dream is related to Artaud's demand for the use of
dream and fantasies as a source of extravagant movement.
Charlie's tramp character, already established by the series
of silent films before this one, escapes his physical
confines of being a weak and small character and is
physically able to overcome the far-larger Mack Swain.

If

viewed without reference to other Chaplin films. His

Prehistoric Past would, nevertheless, still be an effective
exploration of the underdog versus the bully.

Seen as a

part of a collective whole, the film and Charlie's

dream/desire to conquer a figure much larger and more
powerful than he adds to the definition of the Little Tramp.
One of Chaplin's most important dream sequences occurs
in The Bank (1916).

This film allows a glimpse of the

tragicomic figure Charlie would become in the future.

First, Charlie walks down the street, swinging his cane and
holding his body in a dignified, proud manner.

He enters

the bank with great enthusiasm, conveying to the audience

his feeling of importance.

Once inside, however, Chaplin

enters a vault and emerges as a floor cleaner.

This

contradiction of the audience's expectations sets up the

world for The Bank;

Chaplin fantasizes that he is

important, but in reality, he is not.

The fantasy is

173
extended to his relationships at work, and Charlie leaves
flowers for Edna Purviance.

She, of course, throws them

away.
It is after establishing Charlie in this reality that
Chaplin, the director, uses a dream sequence.

Charlie falls

asleep next to his mop and dreams that the bank is being
robbed.

During the dream, Charlie is graced with superhuman

strength, courage, and wit, and he overcomes the bank

robbers and saves Edna.

He awakens kissing the mop.

McDonald et al., call The Bank a beautiful blend of

comedy and pathos.

The importance of this film, however,

stretches much further.

It is a discovery on the part of

Chaplin, the film-maker, that he can use the dream sequences

to gain the sympathy of the audience.

The Bank is of

particular interest to this study because it does not have a

happy ending.

Donald McCaffrey gives an excellent

chronological analysis of the forced happy endings before

City Lights in his essay, "Evaluation of Chaplin's Silent
Comedy Films: 1916-1936."

McCaffrey believes that Chaplin

wrestled with becoming a tragicomic figure, thus creating a

flaw in films like The Vagabond and The Gold Rush by
allowing Charlie to find happiness.

In his analysis,

however, McCaffrey overlooks the sad ending in The Bank, and

he fails to identify the dream image as a method of
developing pathos.

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Chaplin's next dream film, Shoulder Arms, was the first
of his two statements on war (1918).

This time the film

stands more firmly on its own, and the Little Tramp

character is established as a bumbling klutz in a marching
drill during the opening sequence.

Charlie is shown to be

the worst soldier in a pathetic, though highly patriotic,

unit.

After demonstrating himself as incompetent, Charlie

goes to sleep, and the audience enters his world of fantasy

where Charlie the soldier is a hero.
detailed:

This dream is long and

the drudgery of trench warfare occurs; Charlie

and his bunkmates are forced to sleep in a trench filled

with water; Charlie catches a cat-nap by making a snorkel
out of a gramaphone.

The details of this dream establish

him as a person in a real situation.

Instead of battling

the strong caveman for control of the pack, Charlie finds

himself an ordinary man among other men.
Like the dream character in His Prehistoric Past, in
Shoulder Arms Charlie uses inhuman strength, unquestionable
bravery, and unprecedented luck to defeat the enemy.

This

dreaming Charlie is less powerful than Charlie the caveman,

but this time he manages to defeat an entire army of
Germans.

The dreamer in Shoulder Arms is able to rely on

both wit and brute strength.

Upon defeating an entire

platoon of Germans, Charlie discovers that the German leader

is smaller than he is, and he puts the little German over
his knee and spanks him.

He single-handedly turns a machine

175
gun on three Germans and captures them.

He then heroically

manages to outwit Kaiser Wilhelm, Prince William, and

Hindenberg while saving both a woman and a fellow soldier.
Another interesting image in the dream world of
Shoulder Arms is the sequence in which a wounded Charlie is
comforted by Edna Purviance.

They seek shelter in a bombed

out house that has lost an entire wall.

Despite the fact

that anyone can see through the missing wall, Charlie and
Edna act as if they are in a normal home; Charlie knocks at
the door, locks it behind him, opens the window to look
outside, and then pulls the shade over the window before
going to bed.

This surreal set is perhaps the most dream-

like quality in the film; however, because of the

devastation of the war, it is also one of the film's most
realistic touches.
Both His Prehistoric Past and Shoulder Arms dramatize
the triumph of an undersized man over a larger enemy and,
therefore, allow Chaplin to achieve a bond between the
audience and the character.

This bond is especially

effective in Shoulder Arms, where Charlie becomes an

Everyman, and the oversized antagonist is representative of
an actual threat to both the imaginary Charlie and the real
audience.

It may also be contrasted with the Marx Brothers'

war statement. Duck Soup, in which the brothers reek havoc

in a world of war.

Although both make statements about the

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ridiculousness of fighting, only Chaplin establishes a
character that, in context, achieves a state of pathos.
The third major dream came in Chaplin's first fulllength film. The Kid (1921).

In one of the film's most

moving sequences, Charlie falls asleep and dreams that he

and little Jackie Coogan go to heaven where they can be
together forever.

Unfortunately, Charlie is tempted by a

vamp, and he gets into trouble with heaven's police.

Despite having wings and an angel's robe, he is killed by a
policeman's bullet.
This dream contradicts the themes established in
Charlie's previous dreams.
reality in his dream world.

First, he does not escape

In the real world, Charlie is

faced with losing Jackie Coogan and seeks comfort in

fantasy.

His dream world is quickly invaded by the same

problems, however, and he must struggle against the

universe, even in his dream-heaven.

Charlie has the super-

human power of flight as an angel, but he is not more

powerful than the other figures around him.

This time the

dream world is simply an extension of reality and a

demonstration of what is happening in Charlie's inner mind.
The Little Tramp becomes more defined as a character because
his physical actions probe into the inner workings of his
mind.
Chaplin's most famous dream sequence is in The Goldrush
(1925). Waiting for his new love and her friends to arrive

177
at his cabin, Charlie begins fantasizing.

He entertains the

ladies with a dance to the music, "Oceana Rolls," a lazzo in

which Charlie uses inanimate objects (silverware and dinner
rolls) in combination with his own face to form a character.
This sequence meets a number of aspects outlined in Artaud's
Theater of Cruelty.

The dream becomes a source for

extravagant character movement, and Charlie uses part of his

body with the inanimate objects to create a puppet.

The

dance gives puppet movements to the new character, and

Chaplin tromps across the table and kicks his tiny feet.

By

using this dream sequence, Chaplin not only reveals

Charlie's inner desires, but also establishes a bond with
the audience because they realize that no one is coming to
the party.

The audience experiences a sense of guilt while

laughing at the tramp, because his dreams will not come

true.

Once again, Chaplin uses Artaudian dreaming to

establish a Pierrot pathos.

A final dream sequence occurrs in Limelight (1952).

As

Calvero, a retired Music Hall performer, dreams twice of

performing.

In the first dream Calvero is in bed while

music plays from the streets below.

The music triggers

Calvero to remember the past, and, in a rather drawn-out

sequence, he dreams about performing his old routine in
front of an audience.

Calvero wakes up when he sees that

the theatre is empty.

Later, Calvero fantasizes about

performing on the Music Hall stage again, but this time he

178
is accompanied by a new partner, his neighbor and love
interest, Claire Bloom.

Neither of these two dream/fantasy

sequences use the extravagant movement prescribed in Artaud.

Nevertheless, the dream sequences in Limelight allow the
audience to get into Calvero's inner mind and, consequently,
help achieve a bond between Calvero and the audience.

Daydreams and Contradictary

Actions and Intentions
In addition to using fully developed dreams, Chaplin
also employed brief daydreams in which Charlie fantasizes
about overcoming obstacles.
Artaudian elements;

The daydreams fulfill several

they are a second example of using

extravagant movement for dreams and fantasies; they are a

source of stylized and dance movement; they reveal Charlie's
inner thoughts and, consequently, show gestures and actions
that contradict Charlie's desires or intentions.

The

daydream sequences are more Artaudian than the fully

developed dreams because Charlie is able to act in a more
extravagant manner, and the action of the film is less
interrupted by the inner conflict.
The first major daydream sequence occurs in Sunnyside
(1919), when Charlie dances a dream-dance ballet with wood
nymphs.

The dream occurs when Charlie is knocked out, and

it has little to do with the actual plot of the film.

Nevertheless, Charlie and the wood nymphs dance, moving

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gracefully about the forest.

Despite its being a dream,

Charlie is not invulnerable; at one point in the dream he

sits on a cactus and has to deal with very real pain in an
exaggerated and balletic manner.
A daydream was used to add to the depth of a character
in The Idle Class (1921).

Charlie the Tramp watches a

beautiful woman ride by on a horse, and he immediately

daydreams an incident in which the horse goes out of
control, and he must rush to the rescue.

The dream

foreshadows the action of the film; the Tramp stumbles into

a masquerade party, and the woman mistakes him for her
alcoholic husband.

In the daydream, Charlie the Tramp is a

hero, but in the real world, he is discovered and kicked out

of the home.

It is interesting to note that reality is

foreshadowed in the daydream; although Charlie is a hero in

the fantasy, he is forced to ride a burro to the rescue.
This subtle image reminds the audience that Charlie will
never reach the grand state of the woman he is chasing.
In addition to the prolonged dream sequence in The Gold
Rush, Chaplin also uses a daydream to set the tone of the
film.

For the first (and only) time in a Chaplin film, it

is not Charlie who is having the daydream.

Cold and

starving. Mack Swain eyes Charlie as he bounces about the

cabin and, in a hallucinatory state, suddenly sees Charlie
as a chicken.

This dream allows Chaplin to exaggerate his

movement in such a manner that he imitates an animal,

180
fulfilling yet another Artaudian element.

Chaplin kicks his

legs, bends at the waist, and flaps his arms, inducing Swain
to try to eat him.

Both the daydream and the actions that

precipitate it allow Chaplin to exaggerate his movement

style.
The brief daydream in The Circus (1928) is highly
important to the development of Charlie's character.

The

sequence occurs when Charlie's love interest (Myrna Kennedy)

falls for the show's newest performer, a tight rope walker.
Chaplin the director uses superimposition to achieve the
effect of the daydream, and the Little Tramp steps out of
his own body and physically beats the tightrope walker to
win the girl.

The daydream creates a contrast to the actual

outcome of the film when Charlie, going against what the

audience knows are his real feelings, pairs the couple and
helps them get married.

The daydream sequence displays

Charlie's inner emotion and desires.

It is an effective

method of allowing the audience to understand his

motivations and, therefore, achieves a bond between the
audience and the little tramp.
Charlie dreams of a perfect future with the Gamin
(Paulette Goddard) in Modern Times (1936).

Both homeless,

they watch a couple kiss in a doorway as the man goes off to

work.

As a result, Charlie begins daydreaming, seeing

Goddard and himself as a perfect couple in a perfect home.

The daydream is contrasted later when Goddard finds them a

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dreamhousea crumbling wooden structure that falls apart
with the happy couple inside.

Once again, Chaplin captures

his audience by presenting contrasting images in a pleasant

daydream versus harsh reality.

However, Charlie and the

Gamin are love each other, and therefore, what appears as

imperfection is transformed into dream-like happiness.
The dance with the globe scene in The Great Dictator
(1940) is also, debatably, an instance of daydreaming.

The

daydreams in the previously-mentioned films are well

distinguished from reality.

Chaplin uses either film

technique (the superimposition in The Circus) or a physical

state of waking/sleeping (Sunnyside) to separate those
segments from the rest of the film.

In The Great Dictator.

Chaplin's evil character, Hynkel, is in mid-conversation

when the daydream begins, and he even has the presence of
mind to dismiss his assistant before allowing the full
daydream to take shape.

It comes in the form of a balletic

dance reminiscent of the nymph dance in Sunnyside, and

Chaplin caresses, bounces, and waltzes with balloon-globe of
the world.

Once again, Chaplin demonstrates the Artaudian

idea of using heightened physical form, gesture, and ballet

during a dream state.

He also achieves super-human ability,

leaping onto his desk without effort, holding the entire

world in his hands, bouncing it on his buttocks, then posing
over the globe like a vulture and swooping down to snatch it
into his arms.

Although there is no definitive beginning to

182
the daydream state, there certainly is an ending; Hynkel
squeezes the globe too hard, and it explodes.

This time the

daydream is not used to achieve pathos, but it does reveal

the innermost desires of Chaplin's character and actually
makes a prophetic statement about the dangers facing Chaplin
and the audience in real life.
One possible origin for Chaplin's fascination with
dreams may be identified.

Comedian Stan Laurel (who worked

with Chaplin when he was with the Karno Company, and who
began his career as a Chaplin impersonator) writes that he
and Chaplin both played in a Karno sketch callled Jimmy the
Fearless.

The title character was a dreamer, and the sketch

involved a series of dreams and fantasies in which Jimmy

escaped reality and became a hero.

Laurel originated the

role, but he admitted that it was a perfect role for Chaplin

and did not complain when Chaplin replaced him.

Laurel

believes that Jimmy the Fearless influenced the rest of

Chaplin's career:
You can see Jimmy the Fearless all over some
of his picturesdream sequences for instance.
He was fond of them, especially in his early
pictures. And when it comes down to it, I've
always thought that poor, brave, dreamy Jimmy
one day grew up to be Charlie the Tramp. (McCabe,
36)
The Artaudian idea of exaggerated movement as a part of
the dream state is far more applicable to Chaplin than it is
to the Marx Brothers.

It is, in fact, a major device for

Chaplin's development of pathos.

Chaplin uses the dreaming

183
and fantasizing as a method to establish a bond between the
audience and character, thus taking Charlie close to the
sad-faced Pierrot.

Harpo uses the few dreams in the Marx

Brothers films as gags or lazzi, achieving great comedic

effect but rarely capturing the heart of the audience.

Animal Movements
A second element mentioned by Artaud is the use of
animal movements as a part of the Theater of Cruelty.

While

both Chaplin and Harpo make continual appearances with

animals, and Harpo shows far more interest in permanent
companionship with animals than with humans, only Chaplin
makes use of animal movements as an effective part of his
character.

Harpo and Horses

The horse is Harpo's most coveted companion, and he
often prefers a horse's company to that of women.

In Animal

Crackers, when asked to reveal his true love, Harpo displays

a picture of a horse.

He does the same thing in Duck Soup,

and later Harpo and the horse are in bed together.

In

Horsefeathers he replaces a picture of a woman in a bathing

suit with a picture of a horse.

A Day at the Races exploits

the horse fetish by casting Harpo as a jockey.

He is,

therefore, dependent on the horse for his living.

In one

scene Harpo keeps the horse in his closet and feeds it hay

184
from the mattress on his bed.

In another scene, Harpo takes

the horse's place in a harness.

There is a reason, however,

for this masquerade, because Harpo and Chico are trying to

keep the horse from being led away.

Finally, in Love Happy,

Harpo rides a lighted pegasus sign out of harm's way.

All

of these instances are lazzi with animals; none of them are

physical imitations of animal movement.
The only time Harpo physically imitates a horse is when
he is "horsing around."

One of his favorite gags is to jump

on an unsuspecting victim's back (usually Chico's) and

"ride" him or her.

He also gallops like a horse on the

football field in Horsefeathers; however, this gallop is

used in combination with a skipping movement, and Harpo
tosses banana peels behind him at the opposing players as he
runs.

It seems that this is less an instance of animal

movement than use of the banana peel lazzo (discussed in a

later chapter).
Despite the love relationship with horses, only the
harness scene in A Day at the Races even comes close to
Harpo making animal movements.

Harpo keeps a close

relationship to horses, but he does not imitate one;

therefore, Harpo's relationship with horses cannot be
applied to Artaud.

185
Charlie and Horses
In contrast to Harpo's near obsessive love for horses,
these animals have a near-obsessive hatred for Charlie.

In

His Musical Career, Charlie, who delivers pianos by wagon,

must fight the donkey drawing his cart.

In The Circus, a

burro finds Charlie an easy target and chases him all over
the circus grounds.

In The Gold Rush a burro breaks in on

Charlie's preparations for the evening, and it nearly tears

up the dinner table.

In The Idle Class, he rides a bucking

burro when fantasizing about being a hero.

Finally, in City

Lights, Charlie cleans the streets behind horses, only to

take evasive action when a circus marches past and he must
clean up after the elephants.

Obviously, Chaplin enjoyed

using horses and horse jokes as much as Harpo.

There is, however, an instance where Chaplin's body
does the horse's work.

In Work. Charlie is actually hitched

to a cart and forced to drag his boss' cart up a steep hill.

In contrast to Harpo's being in the harness in A Day at the
Races, Charlie must physically take the place of the horse,
and he moves his body with animal-like grace.

In this case,

not only does Chaplin use animal movements, his body takes
the place of the animal's.

The Marx Brothers and Animal Movement

One instance occurs of a Marx Brother actually moving
like an animal, but "the mover" is Groucho, not Harpo.

In

186
Monkey Business, Groucho courts Thelma Todd by acting like a
cat.

During an evening he climbs on a balcony during an

evening and meows at the top of his lungs, stopping at one

point to put his "paws" in the air and allow her to rub his
ears.

This scene certainly qualifies for the Artaudian

label of animal imagery.

Two Marx Brother films (A Day at the Races and Monkey
Business) climax in a barn.

The team confronts their

antagonists in a place where animals live and in the middle

of exaggerated animal sounds.

Although they often play

lazzi off the animals, they do not imitate animal movement.

In addition, three other interesting images exist in
which the Marx Brothers deal with animal cages.

In his

first harp solo on film (The Cocoanuts), Harpo gets behind

the strings of the harp and grimaces, bringing to mind the
image of a caged animal.

The same image is brought to mind

in Horsefeathers, when Harpo, the dog catcher, manages to

snare a policeman in his dog cage.
An interesting reverse of the animal movement concept
occurs in At the Circus.

Groucho, Harpo, and Chico try to

think and end up pacing in front of a monkey cage.

The

monkeys, in turn, start moving like the Marx Brothers.

In

this case, the animals are moving like human beings.

Finally, according to stage lore, during the filming of
Animal Crackers, director Victor Heerman refused to put up
with the Marx Brothers' irresponsible behavior.

He

187
constructed four small cells/cages and forced the four Marx
Brothers to stay in them.

This ironic animal image is quite

Artaudian, but it occurred in real life and not on film.

Chaplin and Animal Movements

Chaplin fulfills Artaud's demand for animal movement in
a countless number of instances.

In A Dog's Life. Charlie

and Scraps, the dog, are mirrors of each other.

Charlie lives like a dog.
dog as a pillow.

As a bum,

He scavenges for food and uses a

Then, when entering a bar, Charlie stuffs

Scraps down his pants, the dog's tail extends from Charlie's
rump, creating a man-dog.

Charlie then goes "exploring" the

bar, moving like a dog back and forth though the crowd.

His

body actually becomes an animal body, and his new "tail"

beats a nearby snare drum when Charlie stands next to the
band in the bar.

He also uses other actors as animals.

In

Easy Street, Chaplin feeds a room full of starving children

by scattering food on the ground in front of them.

He

tosses it like a farmer pitching feed to chickens.

In The Gold Rush. Mack Sennett's daydream that Charlie
is a chicken is further accentuated by Chaplin's arm, leg,
and hip movements.
arms.

He bends at the waist and flaps his

In The Circus, Chaplin performs a high wire act, and,

aware that he has been securely fastened to a piano wire, he

jumps about, literally walking the tightrope like a monkey.
Then, when the piano wire comes unfastened, a group of real

188
monkeys attacks him, climbing over his shoulders and into
his hair.

Once again, Chaplin becomes half man/half animal,

first moving like a monkey and then becoming physically

attached to some.

In Behind the Screen. Charlie goes so far

as to create a visual animal out of immobile objects,

carrying an arm-load of chairs and transforming himself into
what Dan Kamin calls "a human porcupine" (46) when the chair
legs stick out in all directions.
Although evidence of animal imagery in the Marx
Brothers does exist, they rarely used animal movements in
depicting characters.

In contrast, Chaplin often used

animal movements in order to accentuate the situation.

Stylized Dance Movement to Symbolize

Special Inner States and Metaphysical Ideas
Stylized Dance in the Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers dance frequently, but their dances
are always accompanied by vast musical numbers, a throwback
to their stage work.

The principal dancer is Groucho, who

leads the chorus in such songs as "Hooray for Captain

Spaulding" (Animal Crackers) and "Lydia the Tattooed Lady"
(At the Circus).

Harpo is often depicted as the drum major

of a band, waving a stick, a pitchfork, or whatever else

might be handy.

However, the Marx Brothers' dances are no

more than an extension of their vaudeville routines.

They

are not an attempt to externalize their innermost desires.

189
their metaphysical philosophies, or any other internal
thought.

Stylized Dance in Chaplin

Chaplin's use of dance movement within dreams has
already been discussed.

Of particular interest to this

category would be the dance with the forest nymphs in

Sunnyside, Hynkels' dance in The Great Dictator, and the
dance of the dinner rolls in The Gold Rush.

Several other

uses of dance express either inner states or metaphysical

ideas.
First, Chaplin masterfully uses dance scenes to
symbolize Charlie's separation from the rest of the world.
In Modern Times, while working as a waiter, Charlie must
cross a room full of dancers to bring an angry patron his
food.

He is caught in the crowd, and despite his goal, they

take him back and forth across the dance floor.

At times

Charlie is distinguished from the crowd only by his own

frantic dancing against the stream of dancers.

In The Gold

Rush, the patrons at the bar dance while Charlie stays at

home and dreams about his potential dinner party, i.e., the
rest of the world, dances while Charlie fantasizes.

Once

again, the scene singles out Charlie from the rest of the
world, and it helps to foster audience sympathy.
Second, Chaplin uses skating as a balletic expression.
In The Rink. Chaplin takes part in a prolonged skating scene

190
in which he embarrasses members of the upper class who come
to the rink.

He alternates moments of moving with sheer

grace with swinging his body wildly to get a balance.

The

entire skating scene becomes a dance, and in one miraculous

moment, Chaplin actually does the splits on skates, allowing
himself to fall and then pushing his body back up with his
legs.

The Rink is a graceful ballet.

Twenty years later,

in Modern Times, Chaplin skates gracefully across a

department store.

Chaplin blindfolds himself to show off

and, in skating precariously close to a large hole in the

floor, he nearly falls to his death.

In both of these

cases, Charlie the Tramp tears down the established norms of

society, first by falling all over the upper crust and then
by violating store rules.

The skating scenes are not only

an example of the use of Artaudian dance movement, they are

also an example of the anarchy often attributed to the Marx
Brothers.
Finally, Chaplin uses dance as a part of the movement
of everyday life.

In Modern Times Chaplin takes part in a

balletic boxing scene in which he cleverly manipulates the

referee's body between his and that of his boxing opponents.
A similar series of dances occurs in The Champion, in which
Chaplin uses a horseshoe in his boxing glove to fight much
larger opponents.

In The Floorwalker. Chaplin dances a

ballet of mistaken joy around Eric Campbell before Campbell

takes a swing and knocks him down.

In The Count. Charlie

191
flirts with a woman by incorporating pratfalls (at one time
he falls flat on his nose) while they are dancing.

He

pretends to displace his hip and makes a lazzo by shifting

weight from one side of his body to another (a similar lazzo
was used for part of his final routine in Limelight).
Although elements of dance exist in both Chaplin and
the Marx Brothers, the effects of the dance are quite
different.

Chaplin uses balletic dance and exaggerated

movement for effect; the Marx Brothers use it as part of a

vaudevillian song and dance routine.

Masks. Costumes, Padding. Stilts. Fabric

Puppets, Objects and Accessories/PuppetLike Movements
These two categories are combined because it is
difficult to distinguish between their uses on film.
Artaud's suggestion for the use of puppets and masks may
certainly be applied to thestage.

Harpo and Chaplin bothn

use an abundance of masks, costumes, etc.

Harpo
Obviously, Harpo's character would not be complete
without the elements of the mask:

he wears a nonrealistic

wig; his oversized trench coat is filled with stolen goods;

his top hat distinguishes him from any other character on
film; he carries a bicycle horn mounted on a cane; no matter

192
where he is or what he is doing, a harp finds itself
conveniently placed nearby.
In addition to his character's mask, Harpo often wears
more conventional masks.

In A Day at the Races and Duck

Soup, Harpo appears in a Sherlock Holmes costume; for the

former he wears a fake moustache and smokes a pipe, and in
the latter, he wears a mask on the back of his head.

In

Monkey Business Harpo actually poses as a camera, hiding

within the camera's hood and then standing up when a
photographer tries to take a picture.

He poses as a coat

rack in Horsefeathers and At the Circus.

In contrast to the Marx Brothers' lack of animal
movements, Harpo actually becomes a puppet in Horse
Feathers.

During a chase scene, Harpo joins a Punch and

Judy show and sticks his face on top of a puppet's body.

This scene does several things;

first, it allows Harpo to

use his facial gesture (the gookie) in connection with a

puppet; second, it incorporates live actors and puppets into
the action of the scene; third, it allows Harpo to have a
scene with one of his comedic ancestors (Pulcinella).
It should be noted that the Marx Brothers never
abandoned their masks.

The only evidence of Harpo's ever

speaking on stage after creating his non-speaking character

was at a dinner party when he got drunk.

The brothers kept

their stock characters long after the team had broken up,
and Groucho made a second career by playing his film

193
personification on a television game show.

Unlike Chaplin,

the Marx Brothers never experimented with new masks.

Chaplin
Chaplin also uses puppets and masks to great effect.
The Chaplin mask has been discussed previously, but a note
should be made that Chaplin was not afraid to abandon that
mask.

He retired Charlie the Tramp after Modern Times,

using similar makeup to portray the barber and Hynkel in The

Great Dictator.

He created new makeup and masks in Monsieur

Verdoux and Limelight, even allowing Calvero to have a stage

identity from the past that looked vaguely like the tramp
character.
The dance of the dinner rolls is the most obvious use
of the puppet-like movements in a Chaplin film, but he
frequently used such movements in the establishment of his
character.

After being thrown through the machinery in

Modern Times. Charlie uses two wrenches as ears and dances

like a maniacal puppet toward the helpless workers.

Chaplin

uses animal and puppet-like gestures to mime what he desires

in A King in New York.

As the chicken in The Gold Rush,

Chaplin uses both costume and puppet movement to tempt the

starving Mack Swain.
In the category of "objects and accessories," Chaplin
actually dresses as a tree to complete a dangerous mission
in .Shoulder Arms.

The costume is so convincing that, in one

194
scene, the audience is as stunned as the pursuing German
soldier when Chaplin jumps off a tree stump and darts into
the forest.

Chaplin also uses the tree costume to help him

complete a lazzo (clubbing his foes on the head when they

walk by) already established in The Vagabond.
Both Harpo and Chaplin use masks and puppet-like
movements in the establishment of their characters.

Once

again, Chaplin uses his masks to achieve a relationship of

expectation between his chosen character and the audience.
Harpo uses the masks as a part of his established lazzi.

Movements in Timed Relation to Mechanically

Controlled Puppets, Masks, Mirrors. Scenery.
Furniture. Lighting and Objects
The Marx Brothers
The most famous demonstration of this concept would be
the Groucho/Harpo mirror scene in Duck Soup.

It must be

remembered that the scene was the brainchild of director Leo

McCrarey, and it was not an idea unique to the Marx
Brothers.

Joe Adamson even suggests that McCrarey stole the

idea from Chaplin's The Floorwalker.

Nevertheless, the

actors actually time their movement to each other, as

Groucho forces Harpo to imitate action in order to discover
if he is actually standing in front of a mirror.

As Adamson

points out, the mirror is immaterial; it is the masquerade

and the game that are important to the scene.

In fact,

Groucho walks completely through the mirror and around

195
Harpo, less interested in whether or not Harpo is a mirror
image than he is in getting the best of Harpo in the game.
With the exception of the Duck Soup mirror scene, the
Marx Brothers rarely, if ever, incorporate movements timed
in relation to mechanical objects.

The previously mentioned

pegasus scene in Love Happy allows Harpo to ride the lights

on the sign, but he is not actually moving his body in sync
with them.

Harpo plays music on a cash register in

Horsefeathers and Cocoanuts, but he does not manipulate his

body to imitate the machine.

The brothers often use other

characters and each other as furniture pieces, but they do

not attempt to move in sync with them.

Chaplin
Chaplin moves in timed relation with nearly everything
mentioned by Artaud.

First, during a scene in The Circus,

Charlie races into a circus funhouse to get away from a

pursuing policeman.

He is surrounded by mirrors and must

find his way through the funhouse by carefully paying

attention to movement.

Later, the policeman chases Charlie

into the funhouse again, and this time a struggle occurs

between an infinite number of Charlies and policemen.

In

the same sequence, Charlie poses with a mechanical fisherman

and devices his own mechanical movements.

He creates a

jnachine-scene, moving back and forth like the figures in a

cuckoo clock.

Later, when an enemy joins the scene, Charlie

196
continues the machine scene by rhythmically hitting his
enemy in the head.
In Modern Times, Charlie the worker actually becomes
part of the machine.

After being caught on a conveyer belt,

Charlie twists through the gears and cogs within the

machine; and, continuing his machine-like duties as a
worker, he actually tightens the screws inside.

Then, upon

being rescued, Charlie tries to tighten any round object he

finds in the real world, including a man's nose and a
woman's breasts.
Later in the same film, Charlie's boss is caught in a
machine and screams desperately for help.

Charlie cannot

figure out how to work the machine, and, in the middle of

his experimentation, the whistle blows for lunch.
Exhibiting machine-like traits himself, Charlie stops what
he is doing and performs his daily ritual:

he eats.

In

fact, he eats an entire lunch, even going so far as to

maneuver a few bites through the cogs and gears and into his
boss' mouth.

When lunchtime ends, Charlie returns to his

duties and begins working the machinery.

The Marx Brothers may not have based their mirror scene
on The Floorwalker, but Chaplin did create a very similar
situation.

Trying to escape a detective, Charlie runs into

a larcenous floorwalker trying to escape the store.

They

are dressed in an almost identical manner, and they

investigate each other by moving hands, arms, and objects.

197
They laugh about their physical similarity after discovering
that the floorwalker carries a bag and Charlie carries a
cane; however, the floorwalker sees the similarity as a
chance for escape, so he switches clothing with Charlie.
The Floorwalker also contains one of Chaplin's most
famous uses of mechanical objects.

An escalator going up to

the second floor is placed conveniently in the center of the

store, and it becomes the location for numerous chase
scenes.

Chaplin first establishes the presence of the

escalator by going against its flow and descending it.

feat takes a great deal of effort.

This

Later in the film he

descends the escalator again, while the giant figure of Eric

Campbell chases at his heels.

In one scene Chaplin does a

backflip in front of the escalator and then actually falls

up its stairs.

At another point, after running down the

escalator to escape an enemy, Chaplin is faced with another

enemy at the bottom, and he sits on the stairs and lets them
convey him back to the second floor.

At the end of the

film, an elevator that has been traveling up and down in

pursuit of Charlie crashes into the unyielding body of Eric
Campbell.

This crash contrasts to the near ballet Chaplin

has executed on a machine-like stairway.

Chaplin regularly times his movement with mechanically
controlled mechanisms, puppets, and actors.

The mirror

scene in Duck Soup is one instance of such movement in the

198
Marx Brothers, but they do not use this technique with any
consistency.

An Eclectic Array of Movement Styles

This category, very obviously, is fulfilled by both
Chaplin and the Marx Brothers as a team.

Like the masks,

however, the Marx Brothers never varied from their

characters' established movements.

Chaplin played with

several movement styles.

The Marx Brothers

Groucho, Harpo, and Chico are as famous for their walks
as they are for their individual masks.
uses three different physical qualities;

Combined, the team

Groucho walks with

a distinct stoop and uses energy from his legs to glide

across the room; Harpo bounces like a child from place to
place, often breaking out in a dead run and, at least in the
early films, hardly ever standing still; Chico's body
position seems to be half way between Groucho and Harpo, and
he often thrusts his head forward and slumps his shoulders.
When Zeppo was a part of the team, he adopted a "normal"
style, moving like the ordinary people in the film.
these styles were established they were not changed.

Once
Even

in Love Happy, when the team (minus Zeppo) appears finally

to have succumbed to old age, they attempt to achieve the
same movement style.

199

Chaplin
Chaplin's array of movement styles is the subject of
Dan Kamin's study.

In it, Kamin demonstrates how Chaplin

progressed from being a child-like, violent figure in the

early silent films into being a more refined character in
the later films.

He manipulated his body movement through

the positioning of his center of energy, and he allowed the

head, shoulders, back, arms and legs to help him convey
Charlie's emotion in a given scene.

In contrast to the Marx

Brothers, who stayed with the same slapstick movement and

styles throughout their careers, Chaplin incorporated the
various parts of his body in conveying emotion and,
consequently, to establish pathos.
simple;

The difference is

for Chaplin, the body is a tool for conveying

emotion and thought.

For the Marx Brothers, the bodies are

tools in achieving characters and create character-related

lazzi.

Gestures and Actions that Contradict

a Character's Intentions
The Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers do not reveal their inner desires
enough to discuss whether their actions are contradicting
them.

The closest they come to fitting into this category

is the long list of swindles Chico pulls on Groucho.

200
Although he acts like a friend, Chico cheats Groucho out of
money for a horserace in A Day at the Races. $70 for a train
ticket in Go West, and any possibility for profit during an
auction in The Cocoanuts.

It is, however, impossible to say

that the Marx Brothers make gestures and actions that

contradict their intentions because it is hard to know what
those intentions are.

Their outward actions speak, and most

of those actions are designed to set up lazzi or punch

lines.

Chaplin
Chaplin continually acts in ways that contradict his
inner desires.

In The Vagabond, despite being in love with

a girl, he allows her to go away with another man.

In City

Lights he goes to jail in order to obtain enough money to

help restore a blind girl's sight.

In The Pilgrim, he

returns money he did not steal and is exposed as a criminal.

In The Circus. his inner desires occur in a daydream, and
the audience knows Charlie's inner pain when he helps his
love marry someone else.

Chaplin enriched the character and

gained audience empathy by allowing glimpses of his inner

desires.

The Goals of Cruelty

An expansion of Rose's categories assists in further
understanding Chaplin and Harpo's relationships to Artaud.

201
As explored in the last chapter, the Marx Brothers are often
labeled as being "cruel" because of their anarchy against
the establishment.

A close examination of Chaplin, however,

reveals a greater challenge to the establishment than that

shown by the Marx Brothers.
While the Marx Brothers tore down society, but their
attack on the social mores and conventions seemed more a
result of their Vaudevillian foundations than a political
statement.

Harpo tries to break the arms of societal blue-

bloods because he destroys everything around him, whether or

not it is a part of society.

The team often sides with a

boy and girl who are in love, but their support of the
couple appears more out of convenience than out of rebellion
against authority.

One should not forget that the love

story thread running through most of the Marx Brothers films

was a formula regularly used by the major motion picture
companies.

The Marx Brothers did not choose these stories

to support rebelliousness; they became involved with the

stories in order to justify stringing a series of
Vaudevillian gags into a film.
Chaplin, however, deliberately chose to play a
character in conflict with the upper class, and he is
usually pitted against social norms.

Throughout their

careers, the Marx Brothers' characters are employed in a

host of jobs:

Harpo is a dogcatcher in Horsefeathers;

Groucho is a veterinarian in A Day at the Races; Harpo is

202
called "the Professor" in Animal Crackers while Groucho is a
real professor in Horsefeathers; Groucho is actually the
president of his own country in Duck Soup.

In contrast,

although Chaplin often changes jobs, he rarely escapes a

subservient role.

He plays a fireman, a policeman, a host

of waiters and store workers, drunks, and even a criminalon-the-run posing as a preacher in The Pilgrim.

He is

rarely in a position of authority and often is an unemployed

bum.

Chaplin plays a member of the upper class only a few

films:

in The Rounders he appears to belong to a

respectable family, but he comes home drunk; in the

Burlesque of Carmen he is an incompetent junior officer in a
parody of high-brow opera; in The Great Dictator and The
Idle Class he is double cast as both a member of the upper
crust and as a person who does not quite fit into society.
In short, Chaplin is usually cast as a tramp or a dredge of
society, and he rebels against the restraints society has
put on him.

After all, what prevents a tramp from falling

in love with a blind flower girl (City Lights), a star in

the circus (The Circus), or a dance hall girl (The Gold
Rush)?

Chaplin's tramp, Charlie, is the true rebel against

society, often proving to his audience that the common man

can overcome insurmountable odds and achieve happiness.

203
Artaudian Violence
A final element of Artaud that must be considered
involves the goals of the Theater of Cruelty.

Artaud sought

to purge his audience and create a ritualistic cleansing in

order to save his audience from violence.

He often created

a mixture of violent and religious images, deliberately

attempting to shock his audience into some kind of action.
During their early films, both Chaplin and Harpo are
offensively violent.

Chaplin quickly abandoned the

slapstick violence, however, and developed a more

sympathetic character by using many of the Artaudian
conventions discussed in this chapter.

Harpo, on the other

hand, lessened the degree of violence but failed to move

toward developing a three-dimensional character and,
somehow, lost many of the traits that made his character
unique.

The Marx Brothers

In the pre-Thalberg films, Harpo is senselessly
violent, especially toward women.

In Animal Crackers, the

girl-chasing role is reversed, and Harpo himself is seduced.

He responds first by kissing the woman's hand and then
trying to break her arm.

The arm-breaking lazzo is a

repeated gag, first occurring in The Cocoanuts when Harpo

was approached by Margaret Dumont.

Along with the

occasional arm breaking, the pre-Thalberg Harpo often

204
threatens to hit women.

In Cocoanuts, he threatens Dumont

with the back of his hand when she offers to kiss him as a
reward.

During a card game in Animal Crackers, he hurts his

hand and then threatens to slap a woman across the face when
she tries to kiss it.

All four Marx Brothers hurl fruit at

Margaret Dumont when she sings at the end of Duck Soup.

violence goes further;

The

Harpo punches her in the belly,

wrestling her and attempting to throw her to the ground.

He

pulls a blackjack and takes a swing at a female as Chico

lists the games they like to play"Blackjack, soccer . . ."
In his attempt to give the Marx Brothers a heart,
Thalberg stopped all such senseless violence.

After

Thalberg died, Harpo was left in limbo and, in effect, lost

his character after the limitations were imposed upon him.
Furthermore, he did not adapt or explore new character
traits after Thalberg's death.

The post-Thalberg Harpo is a

Harlequin without the tricks; he no longer has a child-like,

trickster quality, and his behavior seems misguided and
often without focus.
Chaplin
Chaplin became purged by the violence in an Artaudian
sense.

He both justified and lessened his violence by

allowing the audience to see into his inner desires.

Harpo

revealed no inner desires, and when the violence was purged

from his character, he lost any sense of that character.

In

other words, Chaplin underwent an Artaudian transformation:

205
he moved from being an extremely violent character in his
early films into a less violent, though still socially
abnormal creature.

Harpo's mask was so defined by the

violent acts that he lost his identity.

Violent acts in Chaplin's early films are routine.

The

Keystone, Essanay, and Mutual films are filled with kicks to

the buttocks, smacks to the face, pratfalls, tumbles, and
senseless violent acts.
vengeful and sadistic.

The tramp character is often mean,

It is interesting to note that

Chaplin "purges" himself of this violence after his

"workshopping" through the short films.

The later Charlie

sometimes has a bit of a mean streak, but most of his

actions are justified.

In this case, the comedian purged

himself of the violence inherent in slapstick lazzi and

developed a more fully developed personality.

Summary
This chapter has taken a close look at Chaplin and
Harpo in the context of Artaud's Theater of Cruelty and has
identified how each element played a role in the development
of their characters.

Chaplin uses many of Artaud's

principles in establishing a bond between himself and his

audience and, therefore, creating a Pierrot-like character
that allows the audience to experience his feelings of pain.
Harpo and the Marx Brothers do not fully conform to Artaud,
and although they sometimes use Artaudian elements, there is

206
no reason to single them out as examples of the Theater of
Cruelty.

Furthermore, the Marx Brothers were not able to

use effectively the Artaudian elements as explored by

Chaplin, and they failed to establish pathos and sympathy.
The Artaudian elements reveal how Harpo Marx stayed at one
level and remained a Harlequin figure, while Charlie Chaplin
developed a pathos for his fully developed Tramp.

CHAPTER VII
THE SEARCH FOR STYLE:
CHAPLIN AND MEYERHOLD
Stanislavski's famous tour of the United States
introduced his "Method" to scrutiny and exploration in the
West, but his contemporary rival, Vesvolod Meyerhold, has
been neglected by the West through most of the twentieth
century.

Edward Braun's translations of Meyerhold's

writings into English have triggered new focus on the

theorist, and Meyerholdian theory is quickly gaining favor
in American acting and directing programs.

Although there

is little evidence that he studied Meyerhold's theories,

many of Charlie Chaplin's acting and directing techniques
parallel Meyerhold's writings.

Chaplin's methodology and

evolution created in early American film the type of

"workshopping" of ideas and experimentation with story and
structure that Meyerhold sought in Russian theatre.

By

observing the similarities in their methods, the theatre or

film student may better understand both the importance and
influence of Meyerhold's theory of Biomechanics, and
Chaplin's work as an actor and director.

Meyerhold's

teaching will be compared with Chaplin's practical

application of a similar thought process and evolution of
style.

Of special interest is Chaplin's use of

Biomechanical methodology in both the creation and direction

of action.
207

208
The methods of both Chaplin and Meyerhold are rooted in
classical tradition.

Although both men experimented with

style and their approach to theatre evolved throughout their

careers, they retained their links with classical elements
such as the Commedia dell'Arte mask and the training of the
body to accomplish feats of physical agility in order to
achieve a complete theatrical event.
every aspect of their productions.

Both men controlled

For Meyerhold, the text

belonged to the director rather than the actor or the

playwright, and it could be manipulated and distorted in
order to achieve an emotional goal.

Meyerhold worked within

a "studio," in which workshopping, or experimentation with

action and manipulation of the text yielded a product that
would not necessarily be performed in front of an audience.
Chaplin created stories on film, shooting and re-shooting
scenes in an effort to discover how a series of gags might
fit into a given story.

Meyerhold produced a theatre of

action, utilizing gesture and extravagant movement to

symbolize emotion.

Chaplin relied on action without words,

depending in his silent films on visual imagery and musical

scores to evoke emotion within the audience.
however, remained steeped in tradition;

Both men,

Chaplin learned his

trade in the London music hall, gaining a command of

pantomime and traditional gags; Meyerhold taught his actors
to use the mask and the lazzi of the Commedia dell'Arte.

209
Meyerhold
Biomechanics
According to Edward Braun, Meyerhold's system of
"Biomechanics" was a Taylorisation of the theatre.
Frederick Winslow Taylor, whose system of saving time and
energy in the industrial worker inspired Meyerhold to apply
conservativism of movement to acting, suggested that
efficient workers use minimal movement to achieve maximum
productivity.

In an excerpt taken from Meyerhold's lecture

on the future of acting, the theorist claims that a skilled

worker will demonstrate an absence of superfluous,
unproductive movement, a sense of rhythm, a stabilized body
position, and a sense of the body's center of gravity
(Braun, 1969, 198). Applying the conservation of movement
in the body to acting theory, Meyerhold claimed that an
actor of the future must possess a capacity for "reflex
excitability" and "physical confidence," granting him
complete control over his body.

Furthermore, he defined

"reflex excitability" as an ability "to realize in feelings,

movements and words a task which is prescribed externally"
and that excitability may be manifested by the actor's using
a complete acting cycle consisting of intention, "the
intellectual assimilation of a task," realization, "the
cycle. . . of reflexes" and reaction, "the transition to a
new acting cycle" (Braun, 201). In Meyerhold at Work,
Schmidt explains that "Meyerhold's theatre concentrated on

210
the act of acting, not on acting as representing some kind
of reality" (xiii).

Masks
Meyerhold's actor of the future would be influenced by
training in Meyerhold's Biomechanical system.

Defining his

curriculum for the dramatist, Meyerhold detailed a lengthy

list of subjects for discussion, including circus and the
theatre, Carlo Gozzi (who attempted to resurrect the
Commedia dell'Arte), and mimesis and the mask.

Also

included in the course was a study of the Commedia dell'Arte

itself, defined by Meyerhold as the basic principles of
Italian comedy (152-153).

Denying the use of psychological

foundations and motivations for the actor, Meyerhold instead

stressed physical manipulation of the body, theorizing that
"a theatre which relies on physical elements is at very
least assured of clarity" (199).

The actor of the

Meyerholdian future, therefore, will work "without make-up

and wear an overall, that is, a costume designed to serve as
everyday clothing yet equally suited to the movements . . .
on the stage" (199).
The actor, however, will not be without his props.
Meyerhold stresses the importance of an actor's finding
himself on the stage within a physical mask, inspired by the
Arlecchino of the Commedia, an actor with a range of
emotions and human traits hidden behind a character.

The

211
actor will discover both emotions and character traits
through the mask itself.
The actor who has mastered the art of gesture
and movement (herein lies his power!) manipulates
his mask in such a way that the spectator is never
in any doubt about the character he is watching. .
The mask enables the spectator to see not only
the actual Arlecchino before him but all the
Arlecchinos who live in his memory. Through the
mask the spectator sees every person who bears
the merest resemblance to the character. . . The
actor is a dancer who can dance a graceful
monferrina as well as a hearty English jig. The
actor can turn tears to laughter in a few seconds.
(131)
This mask does not, of course, require an actual mask,
but is, instead, a mask of physicality designed, in part,
"to identify the character completely at his first
appearance" (191). The audience does not even need to see
actions; the character is complete with the mask.
commented in his 1979 work.

As Braun

The Theater of Meyerhold, the

term "mask" does not refer to the physical manifestation of

the Commedia dell' Arte half mask:
. . .but rather the style of acting which the
mask signifies: the emotional detachment and
physical dexterity that enable the actor to
assume the various aspects of his part. . .and
at the same time to commentboth implicitly
and explicitlyon the actions of himself and
his fellow characters, thereby affording the
spectator a montage of images, a multi-faceted
portrait of every role. (114)

Meyerhold and Chaplin

Many of the concepts articulated by Meyerhold may be
identified in Chaplin's methods of acting and directing.

212
First, Chaplin's use of the body and constant exploration of
physical control is directly related to Meyerholdian theory.
Second, Chaplin's moustache, derby hat, coat and cane may be
related to Meyerhold's formula for the use of mask.
Finally, Chaplin's ability to work beyond comic lazzi and
develop drama within the character of the Little Tramp
relates directly to Meyerhold's formula for the stage.

His

development of a tragi-comic figure was eventually

recognized by Meyerhold as being "Chaplinism in film."

Chaplin's Mask
Chaplin's mask is not the half-mask of the Commedia;
instead, Chaplin uses the tiny moustache and white pancake
makeup in order to let the spectator identify immediately
with Charlie as a screen personification.

As explained by

Walter Kerr in The Silent Clowns. Chaplin did not

immediately develop his screen personality into "the Little
Tramp" but instead explored the character in a number of
situations, "a waiter, a dentist, a wife, a cook, a caveman,
a film actor."

Then, after filming The Tramp, in which he

integrated a hobo character defined by elements of pathos,

Chaplin "went right on adopting new disguises, appearing as
a paperhanger, a floorwalker, a fireman. . ." (81). Most of
these characters and their various identities had one thing
in common;

the mask.

It was made up not only of the derby.

213
moustache and cane but also involved Chaplin's stylized
physical movement.
A variety of stories surround the selection and piecing
together of the Tramp costume.

However, it is certain that

the "mask" was constructed for Chaplin's second film; the

first. Making a Living, was a one-reeler in which Chaplin
wore the

traditional top hat and cloak of a melodramatic

villain.

McDonald, Conway and Ricci argue that the costume

was Chaplin's choice because "he had worn a similar costume

on the stage in one of the acts of the Karno Pantomime
Company" (26). Displeased with the results, Chaplin
continued exploring and "discovered" the Little Tramp only
five days later in Kid Auto Races at Venice (released
February 7, 1914).
could

A set situation around which Chaplin

improvise, this film saw "Charlie" observing a

director filming an auto race.

The action of the film

consists of Charlie's attempt to be photographed.

In My

Autobiography, Chaplin wrote that the character of Charlie

grew directly out of the tramp costume and "mask."
I wanted everything to be a contradiction; the
ants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the
shoes large. . . I had no idea of the character.
But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and
make-up made me feel the person he was. I began
to know him, and by the time I walked to the stage
he was fully born. . . As the clothes had imbued
me with the character, I decided then and there to
keep this costume whatever happened. (145, 148)

214
Although it would take him years to become familiar
with the confines of his chosen mask, Chaplin was inspired
by the potential of the mask itself.

When he wore it,

Chaplin felt "Charlie" was "a reality, a living person.

In

fact he ignited all sorts of crazy ideas that I would never

have dreamt until I was dressed and made up as the Tramp"
(147).

It is this discovery of character through a mask

that Meyerhold described when he wrote that the Commedia

mask enabled the spectator to see "all the Arlecchinos who
live in his memory."

Chaplin's chosen mask was, both in

appearance and in personality, a variation on the Commedia

dell'Arte Pierrot.

It was inevitable that Chaplin would

experiment within the confines of the mask in order to

develop his art fully.

Chaplin's Use of the Body

Dan Kamin's unique work, Charlie Chaplin's One Man
Show, observes Chaplin from a dancer and mime's point of
view, greatly detailing how Chaplin used his body on film.
A biomechanical actor concentrates on the physical aspects
of conveying emotion rather than attempting to feel a
realistic emotion itself.

In the early silent shorts,

Chaplin had nothing but his body to convey feeling.

Beginning with the rawest of human emotions, anger,
Chaplin's first films with Keystone were a series of lazzi
performed in conjunction with a group of actors and

215
situations to which Chaplin reacted.

Included in these

films are continual swift kicks in the buttocks (an action

Kerr identified as being a turning point when Chaplin
abandoned slapstick and justified a kick in The Pilgrim (The
Silent Clowns, 78-79)), punches, pratfalls, and physical
duels between the small-of-stature Charlie and large-of body
antagonists.

In the later films, Chaplin synchronized his

complete control over the body with sound, still relying on

the physical to manifest emotion, but using music to
accentuate it.

Furthermore, Kamin identifies Chaplin's

"unique playing style" as being defined by his

physicalities, commenting that the Tramp makeup reinforces
the style instead of implementing it.

In other words, the

mask reinforces what already appears in the body.

Kamin categorizes Chaplin's movement in terms of body
parts.

He identifies a variance in the manner of holding

the head:

in the early shorts it is "directly and squarely

above his trunk" (8) as the key to the mask, identifying

"his frequent attitude of puzzlement" toward the world.
Then, as the character progresses and Chaplin becomes more
interested in tragicomedy, the head moves backward "to
indicate prideful elegance" (8). Furthermore, Kamin
identifies a series of manners in which Chaplin presents his
body to the camera, usually full-trunked and full-faced, to
engage "immediate trust, sympathy, and empathy" (10). Use of
the back and tilt forward of the pelvis indicate a feminine

216
quality or a dancer's stance, often twisting the body into
dramatic curves, " . . .

thus he can suggest a man, a

child, or a woman, and he can flirt with both sexes" (12).

He identifies the arms and legs as extensions of the trunk,
contorting the body to match the character, twisting and
curving with the emotion of the moment.

Most important,

perhaps, Kamin describes Chaplin's walk:

But the "basic" walkif one can be isolated
involves a sense, reinforced by his clothing,
of weight in the legs and feet. . . a solidity
and stillness at the center of gravity in the
pelvis. . . The result of this posture and walk
is the impression of a highly idiosyncratic,
emotional, independent individual. (14)

Meyerhold's Emphasis on the Body

This emphasis on the body is a basic requirement of the
Meyerholdian studio.

A candidate for examination is

expected to have physical agility, as demonstrated by

gymnastic or acrobatic exercises and improvised pantomime.
In addition, candidates must show proficiency in music,
physical agility, mimesis, diction, theory, history and art
forms (155).

Although he stressed movement, Meyerhold never

emphasized the actual use of ballet.

Once reaching the

level of "comedian" in the Meyerhold studio by mastering

control of the body, the student may be invited to take part
in what Meyerhold defined as a new stylistic theatre with
its roots based on physicalization and Commedia dell'Arte.
Chaplin becomes a demonstration of Meyerholdian

217
Biomechanical experimentation, using the camera and the film
medium as his training ground.

Dance
Chaplin's control of the body is so advanced that his
movements border on dancing.

Nijinsky told Chaplin, "Your

comedy is balletique, you are a dancer" (My Autobiography.

203).

W. C. Fields went a step further, quipping, "He's the

world's greatest ballet dancer, and if I ever meet the son

of a bitch I'll murder him" (Gehring, 17). Chaplin often
accompanied his physical action with musical scores (and
later soundtracks).

The result is a ballet of movement in

which Chaplin's emotions are expressed through the actions

of his body.

In Meyerholdian terms, when describing musical

theatre, "Man, performing in harmony with the mise en scene

and the musical score, becomes a work of art in his own
right . . . The dance is to the body what music is to
thought:

form artificially yet instinctively created" (85).

Chaplin's use of "dance" movement to express the mise en

scene relates directly to his use of the "Little Tramp"
mask.
In The Theatre and Its Double. Artaud defines the mise
en scene as the backbone image of the play, and "the
possibilities for realization in the theater relate entirely
to the mise en scene considered as a language in space and

218
in movement" (45). Chaplin's body becomes the manifestation
of the mise as he explores the physicalization of emotion.

Chaplin's Method as an Actor

One A.M.
Chaplin's balletique movement and physical control are,
perhaps, best demonstrated in One A.M., a twenty-minute film
in which Kamin counts twenty-six falls.

Working alone in

everything but an introductory segment, Chaplin arrives home

drunk and finds it impossible to enter his house and get
into his bed.

The film involves a series of pratfalls in

which a drunken character staggers through a surrealistic

home.

A round table catches the edge of his coat and spins

when he reaches for a drink.

The over-sized pendulum on his

clock hits him in the face and knocks him down a flight of
stairs when he tries to go to the bedroom.

After a series

of incidents with the bed opening and closing into the wall,
Chaplin finally collapses in the bathtub.
The influence of circus and Commedia lazzi appear in
the exaggerated number of falls in this short sequence.
Although Soebel and Francis contend that Chaplin was unaware
of the Commedia dell'Arte until late in his career (204205), he was most certainly aware of its traditions as
presented in vaudeville and the British music hall.

Chaplin

toured with Karno's Pantomime troupe, and he played

pantomime and used lazzi on the music hall stage.

The

219
Russian theorist Uraneff wrote in 1923 that Chaplin "is
always true to the great school of acting of the Italian
improvisational theater" (328).

One A.M.. it seems, is an

exploration of commedia lazzi as well as an experimentation

with style and technique.

Chaplin de-emphasized plot and

simply improvised in character around a situation.

One A.M. is evidence of Chaplin's ability as an
improvisational artist.

Although the work was certainly

planned and is not improvised on the spur of the moment, it

is, nevertheless, the result of a series of improvisational
exercises.

Chaplin later revealed that the Mutuals were

conceived and "written" on the set.

In My Autobiography,

Chaplin discusses his method of composition;

Sometimes a story would present a problem and
I would have difficulty in solving it. At
this juncture I would lay off and try to
think, striding up and down my dressing-room
in torment or sitting for hours at the back of
a set, struggling with a problem . . . Sometimes
the solution came at the end of the day when I
was in a state of despair, having thought of
everything and discarded it; then the solution
would suddenly reveal itself, as if a layer of
dust had been swept off a marble floor. . .
(188)
Recently discovered out-takes from the Chaplin shorts
reveal his method of workinga brutal, continual struggle
with the story, an experimentation with gag after gag,
perfected, polished, and often discarded.

"If a gag

interfered with the logical sequence of events," he explains

in My Autobiography, "no matter how funny it was, I would

220
not use it" (208).

Chaplin filmed his rehearsals,

admitting, "I have turned as much as 60,000 feet of film to

get the 2,000 seen in performance" (Delluc, 62-63).

This

method directly opposed that of the Marx Brothers.

Chaplin's Method as a Director

Mv Autobiography occasionally digresses from storytelling to discuss acting and directing theory.

In a

chapter relating the filming of The Kid. Chaplin reveals

that he used a Meyerholdian technique of manipulating his
actors.

Speaking of child star Jackie Coogan, Chaplin

explains that "he could apply emotion to the action and

action to the emotion, and could repeat it time and time
again without losing the effect of the spontaneity" (232).
He was able to do this, of course, through a Meyerholdian
manipulation of the mind and body, playing the action
instead of attempting to feel the emotion in question.
Chaplin explains that, after he displayed the exact action
he desired to Coogan, the boy rehearsed the scene until the
physical action became second nature to him;

"Eventually he

was so sure of the mechanics that his emotion came with

them.
(232).

In other words, the mechanics induced the emotion"

Chaplin's approach to directing Jackie Coogan may be

compared with Meyerhold, who explained that "psychological

states are determined by specific physiological processes."
It is through the physical action of the body that the

221
Meyerholdian actor reaches a state of emotionin other
words, the emotion is achieved through the action of the
emotion.

"By correctly resolving the nature of his state

physically, the actor reaches the point where he experiences

the excitation which communicates itself to the
spectator. . . " (Braun, 199).
In their 1983 documentary. The Unknown Chaplin,
Brownlow and Gill examine some of what remains of Chaplin's
film rushes in order to reveal his directorial technique.
The rushes demonstrate two things;

first, Chaplin as film-

maker created his stories as he filmed, improvising and

experimenting throughout the process; and second, Chaplin as
director showed his actors exactly what he wanted, often
playing out roles and demanding that they imitate his exact
movements.

Like Meyerhold, Chaplin asked the actor to

concentrate on physical gesture rather than emphasizing

emotional justification.

Virginia Cherrill, the blind girl

in City Lights, was forced over and over to hand "Charlie" a

flower, imitating Chaplin's exact motions.

When Cherrill

admitted her lack of training, Chaplin told her, "If you had
any training, you'd have to unlearn it."

Robert Parish, a

newsboy in City Lights. explained that "he directed us by

being us," and "he acted every little bit" to the actors
before and during the filming.

Georgia Hale, the leading

lady in The Gold Rush, explained, "He didn't just direct it.
He played it with me."

Chaplin's secretary explained that

222
his most frequent direction was very simple;

"Don't act"

(Delluc, 46).
Allowing himself a few pages for commentary on acting
and directing, Chaplin admits, "I have never studied acting,
but as a boy I was fortunate in living in an era of great
actors and I acquired an extension of their knowledge and
experience" (255).

Chaplin's informal training consisted of

learning tricks of the trade both from other actors and from
trial and error.

John McCabe writes in Mr. Laurel and Mr.

Hardy that Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin share a

"magnificent heritage" because they played in the English
music hall.
pantomime.

"They had early on learned the hard lesson of

A music hall artist frequently was forced to

play the halls of Europe for economic reasons, and in this

way, it became necessary for him not to depend on language"
(37).

Chaplin the mime also learned relaxation techniques

and bodily control.

Once again echoing Meyerhold, Chaplin

explains that the effective actor gains complete control

over his body and is, essentially, relaxed.
. . .but an actor especially must have
restraint and inner containment. No matter
how frenzied the scene, the technician
within the actor should be calm and relaxed,
editing and guiding the rise and fall of his
emotionsthe outer man excited and the inner
controlled. Only through relaxation can an
actor achieve this. (254)
The idea of inner relaxation and outer excitement may be
directly compared to Meyerhold's reference to psychological

223
states and physiological processes.

In My Autobiography,

Chaplin writes that the actor's physical control is far more

important than his mental understanding.

"The theory that

one must know a character's life story is unnecessary"

(255).
Chaplin does not mention Meyerhold in his discussion of
theory, but he does mention Stanislavksi's ideal of "inner
truth."

Stressing that the individual personality of the

actor will be exhibited in any dramatic portrayal, Chaplin

interprets the inner truth as "being it" instead of "acting
it," and combines this idea with empathy.

"This part of

acting cannot be taught," he warns, admitting that otherwise

he knows very little about what he calls the "Method school
of acting."

He passes judgement, however, on the American

interpretation of Stanislavski's emotion memory.

I abhor dramatic schools that indulge in
reflections and introspections to evoke the
right emotion. The mere fact that a student
must be mentally operated upon is sufficient
proof that he should give up acting. (255)
His method of dealing with an actor is far more
Meyerholdian than Stanislavskian because he concentrates on
the physical action rather than the emotion.

Chaplin's

actors granted him the performances he sought by imitating

the action of the emotion and then letting the biological
results follow the action.

In addition, Chaplin describes

224
psychologically manipulating actors to achieve desired
results.
Although knowing what I wanted, I would take
the new member aside and confide in him that
I was tired, worried and at a loss to know
what to do with a scene. Very soon he would
forget his own nervousness and try to help
me and I would get a good performance out of
him. (251)
As for his own acting theory, Chaplin developed a
Meyerholdian approach in tackling a role.

Describing an

appearance on the "legit" stage, Chaplin explained, "Every

line I spoke got a laugh.

Only mechanics bothered me. . .

Paradoxically enough, it was easier for me to talk lines

than to carry out stage business" (80-81).

By the time he

arrived at Keystone, however, Chaplin was thinking in

Meyerholdian terms.

In speaking of camera placement,

Chaplin explained "economy of movement is important. . ."

(152).

In a 1918 essay, "What People Laugh At," Chaplin

explains that it is the subtle movements of the body that

are funny, and he prescribes "an economy of means" in
allowing one incident to achieve several laughs at once.
The physicalization of emotion was so important to him, even
at this early stage in his career, that he often used "as
much as sixty thousand feet (of film) in order to get the
two thousand feet seen by the public" (my note; MacCann,
100-101).

Chaplin's ostensibly wasteful method of

reshooting scene after scene helped him to achieve an

economy of means in the final cut of the film.

Similarly,

225
Meyerhold's tedious rehearsal process reached for a final
product that stressed economy of movement.

The Development of Pathos

In 1936 (the year Chaplin filmed Modern Times),
Meyerhold delivered a lecture, "Chaplin and Chaplinism," in
which he identified Chaplin as a representative of the drama
of the future: tragicomedy.

Having earlier defined the

actor as a dancer who can turn laughter to tears within

seconds, Meyerhold identifies the still-evolving Chaplin as
an actor/director whose work corresponds with his own.
Dismissing most of the early silent films, Meyerhold argues
that Chaplin grew as an artist by eliminating "all excessive
hyperbole and sheer knockabout from his clowning" and
concentrating on the relationship between actor and
audience.

"Through the comedy one glimpses elements of

tragedy" (Braun, 1969, 312), and by glimpsing the tragic,

the audience develops a sense of empathy or understanding
with the character.

Chaplin achieves pathos, or an

evocation of emotional response from the audience,

completing Meyerhold's desired relationship between actor,
director, and audience.

Meyerhold explains, "I have seen

people wiping the tears from their eyes at these films.

Yet

one's first reaction to Chaplin is to smile" (316).

Chaplin's development of pathos is directly related to
Charlie's ability to sacrifice himself for the good of

226
Others.

Not until Charlie's selfless acts in Citv Lights

does the character completely define himself and achieve a

full tragicomic existence.

An element of pathos, however,

developed early and evolved through the progression of

Chaplin's films.

Writing about the September, 1914, film.

The N^w Janitor, Chaplin tells of miming a "mock sentiment"

scene in which the janitor begs for his job.

After the

scene he noticed an actress who wept openly despite knowing

"it's supposed to be funny."
something I already felt;
as well as laughter" (155).

Chaplin claims "she confirmed

I had the ability to evoke tears

He began looking for

opportunities to mix the dramatic with the comic.

In The Tramp (February, 1914), Chaplin allows Charlie
to evoke pity from the audience.

He saves a girl from

thieves and expects her love in return.

When the tramp is

jilted, he walks down a lonely road, shoulders slumped,

completely defeated.

Just before the camera irises out,

however, the tramp recovers the energy in his walk, and the
audience is assured that the tramp will recover from his
sorrow.

This film evokes an emotional response for the main

character, but it does not reach the point of maturity that

Meyerhold would refer to as "Chaplinism," or tragicomedy.
Meyerhold identified The Vagabond (1916) as Chaplin's
first true achievement of sympathetic pity from the
audience.

This time Charlie is a vagabond violinist who

rescues and falls in love with a girl captured and enslaved

227
by gypsies.

When she is infatuated with another man,

Charlie is once again left to face the world on his own.

The audience is inspired to pity Charlie because he must
resign himself to loneliness and despair.

The film was

given a somewhat forced happy ending, however, because the

girl returns to take Charlie with them.

David Robinson

describes a legendary alternative ending in which Charlie

attempts suicide by diving into a river.

He is rescued by

an ugly farm girl; however, after seeing her face, he dives

back into the water.

Such an ending creates a tragicomic

irony that might have allowed Chaplin to further develop the

character of Charlie at this early point in his career.
A similar situation occurs in The Circus. when Charlie
resigns himself to the knowledge that the girl he loves is
in love with someone else.

This time Charlie helps the

couple marry and then chooses not to accept their invitation

to travel with the circus.

Once again, Charlie resigns

himself to fate.
It is in City Lights that Charlie finally makes a
sacrifice for someone and matures completely into the mask
of the Pierrot.

The audience is first able to empathize

with Charlie's love for a blind girl, and then it observes

Charlie make a series of sacrifices to save the girl and her
home.

In City Lights Chaplin completes his evolutionary

growth into tragicomedy.

228
In "Charlie the Kid," Meyerhold's pupil, Sergei
Eisenstein, writes that Charlie sees the world through a
baby's amoral eyes.
the fact

The peculiarity of Chaplin consists in

that, despite his gray hairs, he has preserved a

"child's outlook" and a spontaneous perception of events.

Hence his freedom from the "manacles of morals" and his
ability to see in a comic spectacle that which causes
others' flesh to creep.

Such a trait in an adult is called

"infantilism" (110).
It is this mask of infantilism that separates Chaplin
from Harpo and equates him with the experimentation and
classical tradition of Meyerhold.
Harpo is a baby.

If Chaplin is a child,

If Chaplin has a spontaneous perception of

events, Harpo is oblivious to them.

If Chaplin has an

amoral freedom, Harpo is free because he thinks the rest of

the world is free.
oriented world.

Chaplin is a child in a real, adult-

He sees the constraints of others but

refuses to be bound by them.

He wears a classical

Meyerholdian mask and views the world through a child's

perspective.

Harpo refuses to view the world at all,

because he is so self-involved that he scarcely notices

others.

Eisenstein pairs Chaplin and "actuality itself,

partners together, a pair in a harness" who perform for us

as if they were in a circus.

Eisenstein concludes:

"Actuality is like a serious white clown" (126).

229
Summary
Meyerhold and Chaplin used similar techniques for
different ends.

Once Chaplin established Charlie's "mask,"

he refused to allow Charlie to emerge from silent film and

kept him within the medium in which he was created.

This

tenacity on the part of Chaplin was, in part, a result of

his classical trainingeven though Chaplin did not study in
a school or under a formal theorist, his pantomime and
improvisational abilities were well defined by his origins
in the music hall.

Chaplin realized that the mask and magic

of the Tramp would be destroyed by putting Charlie in a

sound film.
Walter Kerr's discussion of City Lights argues that the
film was the climactic moment in Chaplin's career, and
during the final scene, Charlie the Tramp reaches his
ultimate dramatic moment.

It may be argued that Chaplin

accomplished something Meyerhold was unable to finish; that

is, Chaplin explored the complete progression of his mask
from slapstick comedy into pathos and tragicomedy.

His

sacrifice in city Lights is the ultimate Christ-like act of

the Pierrot.

The finale, when the blind girl discovers

Charlie's sacrifice, is the consummation of Charlie's mask.

"The truth is out and the truth is a stone wall.

Nothing

can be said, no further gesture can be made. . . Chaplin has

remade the world in his own despairing, but unyielding,
image" (Kerr, 352). The character grew even more Christ-

230
liJ^e in Modern Times, when he dedicated himself to keeping
care of his young companion.

Chaplin used a variation on

the Tramp in The Great Dictator, and then abandoned the

character completely in his sound films.
In contrast, Meyerhold never finished his great
experiment with classical style.

Recently released

documents show that Meyerhold was arrested by Stalin and

died in the Soviet concentration camps.

The idea is

intriguing, because Meyerhold never spoke out against the

state and openly participated in Stalinistic propaganda.
The fates of these two dramatists are linked to their
geological locations.

Chaplin explored and experimented

throughout his career, eventually abandoning the classical

mask but never denying his classical roots.

Meyerhold never

gained full acceptance in the Soviet Union, and after his

death he was disavowed by the state.

Only recently has

Meyerhold begun to return to prominence.

CHAPTER VIII
MEYERHOLD AND THE COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE:
A DISCUSSION OF LAZZI AND HOW THEY APPLY
TO CHAPLIN AND HARPO
The association of Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx with
specific lazzi mentioned in historical records of the
Commedia dell'Arte may be applied to the two artists'
relationships with the ideas of Russian theorist, Vsevovlod
Meyerhold.

The similarities between Meyerhold's system of

Biomechanics and Chaplin's acting and direction have already

been discussed.

This chapter will concentrate specifically

on the Commedia dell'Arte and Meyerhold's reintroduction of

the Commedia into a theater dominated by Naturalism and
Realism.

A brief discussion of the importance of Meyerhold

and his Symbolist approach to theatre will be given, and

then there will be an attempt to explain how Meyerhold's
theories may be applied to vaudeville and early film comedy.
A detailed examination of Commedia lazzi will follow, and
Mel Gordon's scholarly listing of the various acts in his
book, Lazzi. will be employed as a guide through the
Commedia.

An effort will be made to examine Harpo and

Chaplin in each of Gordon's major categories, and specific

lazzi will be described.

Examples from the films of Chaplin

and the Marx Brothers will be given.

231

232
In order to complete an effective discussion, a link
must first be made between Meyerhold and the Commedia
dell'Arte.

Meyerhold was, at first, connected with

Stanislavsky, Chekov, Nemirovich-Danchenko and the Moscow

Art Theater.

In The Theater of Meyerhold. Braun describes

Russia's theater prior to this institution as "dominated by

illustrious actors who made their own laws and admitted no
change."

The director was a "functionary who supervised

rehearsals," costumes came from the actors, and stage design

was "nonexistent" (20). The Russian theatre was,
furthermore, dominated by Romanticism and Melodrama, often
filled with declamations and expositions.

Brockett writes

that although Russian plays in the late nineteenth century

fell into the Realistic school, the public theaters
performed "melodrama, farce, musical drama and romantic
spectacles" (534).

A visit to Russia from the German

director, the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, impacted the Russian

theatre, just as the visit of the Moscow Art Theatre would
later affect America.
Originally formed in 1898, the Moscow Art Theater gave
a voice to the rising movements of Realism and its more
extreme form. Naturalism, which served as a transition
between nineteenth century acting and the Modernist period.
According to historian Oscar Brockett, the Naturalist
playwright was to search for truth and "observe, record, and
experiment with the same detachment as the scientist" (551).

233
The movement attempted to achieve a "slice of life" on the
stage and "obliterated virtually all distinction between art
and life."

Naturalism did not have a long life on stage,

but a less extreme form of Naturalism, Realism, became the

dominant force in twentieth century acting and directing
theory.

As defined by John Harrop and Sabin Epstein,

Realism was a reaction to the scientific inquiry developed

at the end of the nineteenth century that focused on the
individual and human motivations for actions.

Naturalism

was Realism taken to an extreme; Realism was an attempt to

understand "motivation for action and relationship to the
social and economic limitations and opportunities of that
society" (167).

The theater began an extreme focus on the

inner workings of the mind, and it concentrated on

subtextual motivation for character.

The best explanation

of these ideas came from the works of Stanislavsky, who

transformed the Russian director into what Danchenko called
"the regisseur," who instructs, mirrors, and organizes the
drama.

Stanislavsky is best known in the United States

for his acting texts and the formation of what has become
known as "The Method."

Despite a series of variations by

Lee Strasberg and other Americans, "The Method" involved a

realistic approach to the text by training the actor to
consider his or her own background in connection with the
character.

Stanislavsky expressed his life teachings in a

series of four books:

An Actor Prepares. Building a

234
Character, Creating a Rnl^^ and Mv Life in Art.

As

identified by Sonia Moore, Stanislavsky's method consists of

nine elements of an action;

the "Magic If," where the actor

asks, "what would I do if I were in this situation?"; "Given

Circumstances," where the actor places himself or herself in
the situation described by the playwright (i.e., the time
and place, etc,); the actor uses elements of the
"Imagination," including subtextual character motives and
backgrounds to fill in the various shades of the character's
life; the actor uses physical exercises to achieve a
"Concentration of Attention" on the play; an actor learns to
adapt to the role by making "truthful" actions
("Truth/Belief"); the actors communicate their message to
the audience by establishing a "Communion" with each other;
the actor overcomes physical obstacles by "Adaptation" as a
means of executing action; the actor seeks to find the
"Tempo-Rhythm" of the language within a given text; the
actor is able to portray certain feelings and emotions by
equating the character's dilemma with something that
actually happened in the actor's life (Emotional Memory).
The idea of Emotion Memory is most often associated with
Stanislavsky's "Method" because American actor/director Lee
Strasberg's "Group Theater" in America stressed Emotion
Memory and Inner Truth over the other concepts.

In his

work. My Life in the Russian Theatre, director NemirovichDanchenko explains that the actor in Realistic theatre

235
"should not act anything; decidedly not a thing; neither
feelings, nor moods, nor situations, nor words, nor styles,
nor images.

All this should come of itself from the

individuality of the actor, an individual liberated from

stereotyped forms. . ."

He refers to the actor as the

controller of the piece because the author and regissuer

have "died in him" and have been "resurrected in the
innumerable observations and impressions experienced by him
in the course of his whole life . . . " (154-155).
Meyerhold began his career as a proponent of this
theory, but he soon found himself restricted by efforts to
keep performance in a purely natural vein.

His experience

with the Commedia dell'Arte may be related to one of his

roles as an actor in the Moscow Art Theatre, Landowski, a
manifestation of the Commedia Pierrot.

This role is one of

his first contacts with the tradition of the Commedia

dell'Arte, and the Commedia became highly important in
Meyerhold's later experimentation.

Braun writes that over

the years Pierrot "became the new Everyman" and his

"genealogy would be far from complete without the name of
Meyerhold" (Theatre of Meverhold. 1986, 30).
Meyerhold left the Moscow Art Studio in 1902, but
Stanislavsky quickly gave him control over an experimental
studio intended to perform Symbolist works by Maeterlink and
others.

As opposed to Naturalism, Symbolism sought a deeper

meaning than what is seen in nature, and it employed

236
symbols, legends, and myths to represent deep, hidden
meaning.

Although Meyerhold was quickly relieved of his

duties at the theatre, his delving into Symbolism and

movement away from Naturalism began a life long series of
theatrical experiments that paved the way for a re-entry of
the Commedia dell'Arte into modern theatre.

As a director,

Meyerhold dominated the creative process, going so far as to

depersonify the actors in an attempt to achieve the illusion
on stage.

One method of depersonification included the use

of Commedia dell'Arte masks and stereotypical characters.

In addition, the script was altered to meet the needs of the
actor and the director.
Meyerhold rebelled against a Naturalistic tradition in
Russian theatre and created a stylized Symbolism, using
masks and techniques from the Commedia dell'Arte.

It was

this revitalization of the Commedia dell'Arte that reestablished Commedia in the forefront of theatre and allowed
Vaudevillians and silent film artists to re-establish
Commedia styles and characters as a part of their
performances.

Meyerhold's theories of the director

established an even stronger reguisseur than Stanislavsky;

Meyerhold as a director controlled every aspect of the
production, and he openly experimented with theatrical
forms.
Vadim Uraneff, a disciple of Meyerhold, claimed that
Commedia technique and characters were being reborn on the

237
American vaudeville during the 1920s in his article,
"Commedia dell'Arte and American vaudeville."

Among the

reasons for the revival, Uraneff listed the stress on

character over plot or literary form, the use of mask and
symbolic representation over realistic situations,
stylization in gesture, and use of comic gags, or lazzi, to
get laughs.

The Commedia approach "set the Actor free of

bondage to the Author" (321) and allowed free improvisation

around loose plots.

Uraneff cites Chaplin as the performer

who is most true to the traditions of Italian comedy.

It is, therefore, important to look at Chaplin and
Harpo in the context of the Commedia dell'Arte in order to
understand exactly what kind of connection may be made
between the two.

The most obvious link between the two

comedians and the Commedia is the lazzi.

Mel Gordon defines

the lazzi as "discrete, or independent, comic and repeatable

activity that guaranteed laughs for its participants" (5).
Riccobini called the use of lazzi "interruptions," and
Niklaus calls them pauses in the comedy due to the
improvised nature of the play that are filled with tumbling,
acrobatics and music.

Sobel and Francis call it a "paen of

praise to chaos" or like a "mouse giving birth to a

mountain" (112).

The traditional derivation of the word

comes from the word "ribbon," and Riccobini theorized that

lazzi held the performance together.

Gordon argues that

they did no such thing and often diverted attention from the

238
scenario itself.

The lazzo is, nevertheless, the element

most often associated with the Commedia.

Gordon interprets

French theorist Constant Mic as dividing the lazzi into

three categories:

lazzi that arose from the occasion; lazzi

that were expected; lazzi that were a part of the actual

texts as contrived business.

Applying Mic's categories to

Chaplin and Harpo, it may be argued that both comedians used

the lazzi as a contrived piece of business within the text.
In addition, the Marx Brothers used musical lazzi (i.e.,
Harpo and Chico playing musical instruments) that were
anticipated by the audience.
The use of Commedia techniques also justifies and
explains how Chaplin and Harpo created their characters, and
how Chaplin developed from being a zanni into a fully
developed, three-dimensional Pierrot.

As seen in the last

chapter, the pathos of the Pierrot was not fully developed

until the nineteenth century, and Commedia went through a
great transformation in which the characters outlived the
style of improvisation.

Harrop and Epstein, attempting to

explain to young actors how to approach a Commedia

character, explain that motivation is unimportant in
Commedia because "the mask is all . . . As long as they are
consistent among members of the troupe, gestures and
movements may be exaggerated as the relationship with the
audience demands and allows."

(147).

Meyerhold's use of

masks and Commedia-symbolic acting contrasted the Naturalism

239
on the Russian stage.

Chaplin and the Marx Brothers also

used masks and symbolic gestures, and they recreated a

Commedia dell'Arte on the screen.
Gordon's excellent work, Lazzi. identifies twelve
separate categories of lazzi in the Commedia dell'Arte;
Acrobatic and mimic lazzi; acts of comic violence and
sadistic behavior; food lazzi; illogical lazzi; the use of
stage properties as lazzi; sexual/scatological lazzi; social
class/rebellion lazzi; stage life/duality lazzi; stupidity
and inappropriate behavior lazzi; transformation lazzi;
trickery lazzi; and lazzi of word play.

Lists of lazzi are

given in numerous texts, but Gordon's is the most complete

listing to date.

In addition, Gordon describes the lazzi

themselves in short, three to five sentence definitions.

Gordon serves as an excellent starting point for a study of
Chaplin and Harpo's lazzi.
Although Chaplin is often called a Pierrot, there are
only a few instances in which writers link his work with the
Commedia lazzi.

Sobel and Francis explore a limited number

of lazzi in Chaplin: Genesis of a Clown.

They specifically

concentrate on what Gordon would call acrobatic and mimetic

lazzi, sexual lazzi, and the use of stage props as lazzi.
For instance, Sobel and Francis are particularly interested
in the large number of kicks to the buttocks in the early
Chaplin shorts, comparing them to the lazzi of the enema.
Such a comparison is certainly valid, because the kick was a

240
recurring event in all the early Chaplin shorts.

In

addition, they discuss the use of props, including Charlie's

dismantling of an alarm clock in The Pawnshop, and his
exaggeration of dentist's tools in Laughing Gas.

In

addition, they mention "body gags" in which actors' bodies

are bitten, kicked, hit, grabbed, and thrown.
Sobel and Francis make some good points, but their
study is incomplete and often inaccurate.

For instance,

they stretch several Chaplin gags in order to relate them to

the Commedia.

They are obsessed with the buttocks

themselves, and they fail to make note of how the buttocks

became less and less important as a comic device as the
Pierrot in Chaplin became more developed.

Sobel and Francis

stretch the point on several lazzi; for instance, they draw

a comparison between Chaplin's grabbing a woman's foot in
The Floorwalker with the Harlequin's sexual positioning of
his leg over the female body.

This comparison would, in

fact, be more accurately drawn with Harpo.

There has not been a study of lazzi in connection with
the Marx Brothers, but many of the actions mentioned by
Sobel and Francis may be applied to the Marxes.

For

instance, the comic kick was a part of the longstanding

fight routine between Harpo and Chico.

They did not,

however, use as many kicks as Chaplin and other silent movie

stars.

The use of comic props by the Marx Brothers has

already been established, and the famous Marx screen

241
personalities were just as recognizable as masks as
Chaplin's moustache and white makeup.
A large number of lazzi mentioned by Gordon are
relevant to both the Marx Brothers and Chaplin.

The Gordon

categories may serve as a starting point for an expanded

study of the lazzi.

Acrobatic and Mimetic Lazzi

Gordon identifies the Artaudian concept of imitating
animals as being a part of this category.

He also describes

tumbling, stilt walking, handsprings, diving, and tightrope

walking as a "means of locomotion" for the Commedia.
Chaplin walked a tightrope in The Circus. and he did
combinations of tumbles and handsprings in various chase
scenes.

He pantomimes diving and swimming without actually

getting into a pool in The Cure.

Lazzo of the Ladder

Gordon describes a number of lazzi that involve falling
from a ladder and/or being hit with a ladder.

The

traditional gag of hitting people with a board or a long

object is related to this lazzo.
gag, three things must happen:

In order to complete the

first, the audience must be

teased with the apparent danger of the situation; second,

someone must be hit or knocked off something; and finally.

242
the actor who has been hit must effectively react to the
blow.
Chaplin's films are

filled with "ladder" lazzi.

In

Tjie Champion he lifts a dumbbell and smacks various people

in the face with it.

In His New Job. Chaplin replaces the

weight with a board.

He completes the traditional lazzo of

accidentally knocking one actor down and then managing to

hit him again when he turns to see what happened.

He uses a

ladder instead of a board in The Pawnshop, knocking two

actors to the ground on numerous occasions as he carries the
ladder back and forth around the shop.

At one point, he

captures fellow worker, John Rand, between the rungs of the

ladder, and then he has a child hold the other end while
Charlie boxes with his helpless rival.

When a policeman

approaches, Charlie's boxing moves turn into ballet, and he

dances back into the shop.

In addition, he must deal with a

ladder when rescuing a woman from a burning house in The

Fireman, and he uses a ladder lazzo with Eric Campbell in
Behind the Scenes.
Chaplin uses a more traditional "ladder lazzo" in The
Tramp, when he and a workhand (Paddy McGuire, dressed as a
traditional Patsy Brannigan type) are asked to unload sacks
from the top of a barn.

Nobody falls off the ladder during

this scene, but the two men manage to throw sacks on top of
each other.

Chaplin uses a pitchfork to force McGuire up

the ladder to work.

When their boss comes to check their

243
progress, Chaplin and McGuire drop a sack on his head and
knock him out.
The Marx Brothers do not use this lazzo as much as
Chaplin, but they do incorporate it into their work.

Harpo

and Chico have trouble manipulating ladders in the dark in

Animal Crackers, and they bring a ladder with them when they
wallpaper Groucho and the evil vamp, Esther Muir, into the
couch in A Day at the Races.

Lazzo of the Statue

There are several Commedia variations on the statue,
but they usually involve a character taking a frozen
position and then beating other characters as they come by.
Chaplin created an inspired version of this lazzo in The
Circus f when he took the physical form of a machine in order
to evade pursuers.

When an enemy joined the scene, Chaplin

added a hammer blow to the action.

In The Adventurer. Charlie sticks a lamp shade on his
head and then kicks Eric Campbell when he turns his back.
In Shoulder Arms, Chaplin poses as a tree and beats German
soldiers as they come by.

In addition, Chaplin uses various

versions of the statue in City Lights.

The Tramp is first

seen asleep on a statue, and as he climbs down, his body

pauses in various vulgar positions.

Later, he stands in

front of a naked statue and cranes his neck for a better

view.

Naked female statues are seen frequently in Chaplin's

244
films.

In Behind the Screen Charlie moves a male statue so

it cannot gaze upon a naked female statue.

The Marx Brothers also used this lazzo.

In Animal

Crackers, Harpo disrupts a party when the butler takes his

coat and realizes he is not wearing clothes.

Harpo

acknowledges the frightened crowd by pulling a gun from his

underwear and firing at everything in sight, including a
statue of two lovers twisted in each others' arms.

The

figures in the statue respond by pulling out guns and

shooting back at Harpo.

In Monkey Business. Harpo poses as

a camera and appears from underneath the camera equipment

when a photographer attempts to take a picture.

In both At

the Circus and Horsefeathers. Harpo poses as a coat rack.

Chaplin accidentally becomes a coat rack in Pay Day, when
his arms get mixed in another man's coat.

Lazzo of the Dwarf

Arlequino shrinks his body and walks on his knees.
This lazzo is exploited to its fullest by Chaplin in The
Idle Class, when he wanders drunk and without any pants into
a hotel lobby.

Chaplin hides himself inside a telephone

booth until the lobby is nearly empty, and then he "shrinks"

himself and waddles like a duck back to his room.

The

effect is spoiled when a hotel worker accidentally burns him

in the buttocks with a blowtorch.

Chaplin repeated the walk

a few years later in The Circus, when auditioning to be a

245
clown.

Told to "be funny," Chaplin lowered his torso and

walked from his knees.

Harpo does not use this lazzo, but makes a variation on
it whenever he walks in his stooped, half float, half run
across the room.

In addition, there is a laborious scene in

At the Circus when Groucho and Chico go into a midget's

house to interrogate him.

By the time this film was made,

both men were too old to bend and walk on their knees, but
they did stoop, and they consequently kept hitting their
heads on the ceiling.

Lazzo of Falling into Unconsciousness

This lazzo may be related to Rudlin's description of
the Pierrot, who often fell asleep when on duty.

As

discussed in an earlier chapter, Chaplin is often shown

asleep, and he dreams numerous times.

A good example of

Chaplin's losing conciousness to the things around him

occurs in The Bank, when Charlie dreams of being a hero.

In

most cases, however, the audience is allowed into Charlie's

mind and does not see the Tramp while he is unconscious.
There are several instances when Charlie is shown asleep,
but they usually occur at night when he is supposed to be
sleeping.
In contrast, Harpo often loses conciousness in the
middle of a scene.

The stateroom scene in A Night at the

Opera is a prime example; Harpo is oblivious to those things

246
occurring around him, but he is, nevertheless, able to
assist Groucho and Chico in ordering breakfast.

In

addition, when a woman enters the stateroom and tries to

change the sheets on the bed, Harpo wraps his arms around
her body.

Harpo falls asleep during the dinner speech in

The Cocoanuts.

Lazzo of the Hands Behind the Back

Gordon describes this lazzo as occurring when one
character attempts to hide behind another.

He "places his

arms around him, making all the hand gestures for him" (12).
Chaplin experimented with this lazzo in A Dog's Life.
Attempting to regain money from robbers, Chaplin knocks one
unconscious and acts as the robber's hands until he has a
chance to knock the second man out.

The two robbers were

sitting at a table in a bar, and Charlie even finds time to

sneak a sip of beer during the scene.
The Marx Brothers do not use this particular lazzo, but
they do use a variation of it in Horsefeathers.

Harpo and

Chico drive a professor out of the classroom and return to

the room on piggyback, the professor's robes draped around
them.

Groucho, naturally, takes the professor's place and

teaches class.

247
Lazzo of Catching the Flea
There are two variations of this lazzo in Chaplin's
films.

In The Vagabond, Charlie catches a fly and flicks it

at Edna Purviance's lover while they are dining.

A more

obvious use of this lazzo is in Calvero's Music Hall routine

in Limelight, in which he coaxes the flea to do backflips,
etc., as a part of the evening's entertainment.

Biographer

David Robinson writes that Chaplin had tried to use this

scene three times before (301).

He attempted to insert it

into The Circus and The Great Dictator, and Brownlow and
Gill, whose documentary. The Unknown Chaplin, examines outtakes from numerous films, write that a flea scene was part
of an incomplete work called The Professor (1923).

In it,

Chaplin set aside his tramp costume and became Professor

Bosco, the ringmaster of a flea circus.

Imitation of Animals Lazzi

Gordon lists several variations of animal lazzi,
including imitations of cats, dogs, asses, cranes, and
others.

Both Chaplin and Harpo participated in numerous

versions of this lazzo.

A full discussion of these lazzi is

given in the section on Artaudian theory and animal

imitation.

248
Comic Violence and Sadistic Behavior
Gordon identifies a series of lazzi in which the actors
participate in sadistic or violent behavior.

It may be

argued that these lazzi are more demonstrative of the

Harlequin than the Pierrot.

There are excellent

demonstrations, however, of both Harpo and Chaplin

participating in the lazzi of sadism.

The Lazzo of the Tooth Extractor

Gordon describes a lazzo in which a dentist inflicts a
great deal of pain on the patient.
performance in Rome in 1560.

He dates the first

The Chaplin film Laughing Gas

most obviously fulfills this comic category.

In it, Charlie

works as a dental assistant and uses giant dental tools to

intimidate the patients.

In Gordon's lazzo the dentist is

the trickster, and the patient is the fool; in Chaplin's

work, Charlie, the servant, is a trickster, and the dentist
is a fool.
A variation of this lazzo occurs in the Marx Brothers'
film Monkey Business when Chico and Harpo hide from pursuers
in a barber shop.

Their victim falls right into their

hands, demanding that they give him a shave and then falling
asleep in the barber's chair.

Unlike Chaplin, Harpo and

Chico do not threaten him with physical harm, but they do

inflict a harm of sorts upon him by chopping away his
enormous moustache.

With each clip of the scissors Chico

249
insists that one side or the other is too long, and by the
time they finish, the poor fellow's handlebars are gone. A
similar twist on the lazzo occurs in a Chaplin film when the
Jewish barber shaves a customer in pantomime in The Great
Dictator.

In this final case, there is no physical act of

violence, although it is obvious that the customer is

occasionally discomforted.

The Lazzo of the Bastonate

Gordon identifies this lazzo as the tendancy of
Commedia actors to rely on physical action when the show
began to bog down.

The lazzo would begin when a performer

pulled out his bastonate and beat another performer, thus

ending the show in a free-for-all.

This action must be

applied to the chase scenes that dominated the Keystone

comedies and Mack Sennett's direction.

Sennett, the

director of the Keystone comedies, explained that his

technique involved getting an idea and then "follow(ing) the
natural sequence of events until it leads up to a chase,
which is the essence of our comedy" (Robinson, 108).
Chaplin disliked the chase, but he participated in this form
of comedy until he gained creative control.
chases in some of Chaplin's mature films:

There are also

the Barber is

chased by soldiers in The Great Dictator, and Charlie the

Tramp and the Gamin run away from authorities in Modern
Times.

These chases, however, are a part of a complex

250
Story, they are not designed for the sole purpose of
creating laughs.

By this point in his career, Chaplin's

character was so well-defined that he did not have to rely

on lazzi to help him create Charlie.
The Marx Brothers films never progressed beyond the
chase as a comedic device.

Ironically, there is no real

chase scene in their first two films, but by Monkey

Business, a good portion of the film involved a chase.

Love

Happy ends with a rooftop chase involving all three

brothers.

There is a chase on roller skates at the end of

The Big Store, and a gorilla chases Harpo onto the high wire
at the end of At the Circus.

In addition, the Marx

Brothers' traditional "horseplay" may be related to this

lazzo because the team depended upon physical punches,
slaps, and kicks.

Animal Crackers and The Cocoanuts are

filled with such horseplay, and often the plot stops and the
team concentrates on action-related gags.

Lazzo of the Chair

One of the most often-repeated lazzi, the lazzo of the
chair, involves various methods of pulling a chair out from
under a person trying to sit down.

Chaplin used the chair

lazzo often, the most effective uses coming in The Circus

(when an oblivious Charlie continually takes his bosses'
chair when they sit down) and The Rounders (when a drunk
Charlie and Fatty Arbuckle stagger into a restaurant and get

251
into a fight with patrons over who is the proper owner of
the chair).
Rink.

The lazzo is repeated in Modern Times and The

Chaplin has a great deal of difficulty opening a

folding chair in A Day's Pleasure.

The Marx Brothers also participate in horseplay
involving chairs.

In Animal Crackers, Harpo responds to the

demand of "Three cheers for Captain Spaulding!" by bringing

three chairs for Captain Spaulding.

In addition, there are

countless instances of the Marx Brothers sitting on top of

or beneath other actors who are trying to take seats.

In

Monkey Business Harpo and Chico share the same chair, and,
when they get up, they reveal a third character stuck in the
bottom of the chair.
in Duck Soup.

Harpo tries to glue a man to a chair

Finally, while preparing for a bridge game in

Animal Crackers, Harpo shuts the legs on a table as quickly

as the butler can open them.
punching away the tabletop.

He finishes the contest by

This gag is similar to the

chair routine in Chaplin's A Day's Pleasure.

Food Lazzi
Various Uses of Food in Chaplin
and the Marx Brothers
As stated in a previous chapter, the basic difference
between Chaplin's use of food lazzi and Harpo's continual
eating is the sincerity of the hunger; Chaplin, the Pierrot,

252
is genuinely hungry, and Harpo, the child, eats anything he
does not understand.
Frankfurters serve as the principal object in a host of
Chaplin's lazzi:

In The Circus, Chaplin eats a baby's

hotdog as the child waves it in front of him; in Mabel's

Busy Day he and Mabel fight over a tub of frankfurters; in A
Dog's Life his dog. Scraps, eats a vender's frankfurters
while Charlie eats an entire display of pastries; as a
construction worker in Pay Day he drills a hole into a loaf
of bread and hammers a frankfurter into it.
is also a theme;

Inedible food

in Shoulder Arms he sports a gas mask and

gas-bombs the Germans with limburger cheese; in The Count a

woman serves limburger to him; he nearly breaks his teeth on
Edna's horrible doughnuts in The Pawnshop; in Behind the
Screen he wears a knight's helmet in order to escape the
odor of another worker's onion.
Harpo rarely eats real food.

He is amazed when

caterers give him a plate filled high with spaghetti in A

Night at the Opera.
inedible objects;

More often, Harpo intentionally eats

an inkwell, a telephone, buttons and

flowers in The Cocoanuts; a thermometer in A Day at the

Races; a cigar, a tie, and (while offscreen) a vest in A
Night at the Opera; he eats a player's finger as a hotdog in
Horsefeathers.

In the later films, screenwriters tried to

give Harpo something to do in eating scenes, but they failed

to give him unique snacks.

He cooks eggs in The Big Store,

253
and the three brothers eat like animals in Room Service.
Their eating in the later films, however, has lost much of
the spontaneity and inspiration of the earlier films.
Food also serves as a weapon for both Chaplin and
Harpo.

The world's most notorious dictators, Hynkel and

Napaloni, throw spaghetti at each other in The Great

Dictator and demonstrate their power by tearing various
dishes apart.

Charlie tosses dough at John Rand in The

Pawnshop, and stabs a turkey and smacks a caterer with it in

The Count.

Chaplin parodies the Keystone films with a

piefight in Behind the Screen.

The Marx Brothers win a war

at the end of Duck Soup when they pelt first the enemy and
then a singing Margaret Dumont with food.

Harpo displays a

zippered banana in Horsefeathers. and he uses banana peels

to score a touchdown.
Gerald Mast identifies food and eating as a theme in
all of Chaplin's films.

Characters eat constantly;

watermelon, soup, spaghetti, doughnuts, cheese, barbecued

ribs, corn on the cob, eggs, sandwiches, turkey, pastries,
frankfurters, and a shoe are among the items on the Chaplin
menu.

Lazzo of Hunger
Gordon identifies this as a trick by Harlequin, who
demonstrates his hunger to the other characters by eating
his shoe.

Chaplin obviously used this lazzo in The Gold

254
Eush, when a starving Charlie and Mack Swain boil a shoe and
attempt to eat it, shoestrings and all.

Harpo does not

demonstrate hunger by eating inanimate objects.

He eats

them for the pure joy of eating them.

Lazzo of the Barber's Water

Harlequin, disguised as a barber, mixes his soapy water
with a glass of water brought by the customer.

The exact

lazzo occurs in The Bank, when Chaplin (as a janitor) lets

the soapy water from his mop drip into his fellow
custodian's soup.

Both men gag when try to eat it. A

variation occurs in Chaplin's City Lights, when Chaplin

washes his face and hands next to a worker who is eating his
lunch.

The soap is mixed with the worker's sandwich, and he

takes a healthy bite.

Harpo and Chico use a variation of

the lazzo in Monkey Business when they pose as barbers and

cut off a man's moustache.

Stage Properties as Lazzi

The specific listing of stage properties used by the
Commedia is difficult to apply to Chaplin and Harpo;
however, it has already been stated in a previous chapter
that both men depended on stage properties in order to
create lazzi.

Chaplin's cane became the instrument of

countless gags; it was particularly useful for tripping

enemies.

Harpo's collection of bicycle horns provided a

255
method of communication for him, and his coat was always
loaded down with props that could be used at a moment's
notice.

There are, however, a few more props mentioned

specifically by Gordon that deserve attention.

Lazzo of the B1 addf^TGordon describes a pig's bladder being used to achieve

a pratfall; when the Arlechino falls he is able to bounce
back up.

In The Rink, Chaplin stands over Henri Bergman

(who is in drag) and gets into a shoving match with Eric

Campbell.

When Chaplin is shoved backward, he hits

Bergman's false breasts and bounces back to his feet.

Harpo

uses a variation on this gag in Horsefeathers during the

football scene when he ties a string to the football and
uses it like a yo-yo.

Lazzo of the False Arm

When Harpo sits down to play the harp in Monkey
Business, the audience is shocked to notice he is wearing a
fake hand.

Lazzo of the False Bottoms

In this lazzo, a zanni hides various objects in his
clothing in order to help a friend escape from jail.

This

lazzo was, of course, taken to an extreme by Harpo, who

smuggled everything from a cup of coffee to a live dog in

256
his overcoat.

Chaplin also keeps various stolen items

tucked into his coat.

Related to this lazzo is Harpo's famous knife routine,
which involved knives falling from the pockets of his
overcoat as a policeman shakes his hand and pats him on the
back.

"You don't want to be a crook, do you?" the policeman

asks.

Harpo nods his head, as if to say, "yes."

In his

autobiography he recalls creating the act during On the

Mezzanine:

"When I first did the bit I had twenty pieces up

my sleeves.

I eventually worked up to three hundred knives,

with a silver coffeepot tumbling out of my coat for a

finish" (142).
Crackers.

The routine is captured on film in Animal

Harpo played variations on it throughout his

life, and he included it as part of the act during his

Russian tour.
Chaplin used the same routine in The Count.

After

discovering that his boss, Eric Campbell, plans to pose as a

Count to win Miss Moneybags' hand, Charlie assumes the
disguise first and declares Campbell is his servant.

They

eat an elegant dinner, and, when someone pats Charlie on the

back, silverware falls out of his coat and onto the ground.
Not missing a beat, Charlie looks back at Eric Campbell and
scolds him for stealing the silverware.

257
Lazzo of the Zig-Zag
Gordon describes the Zig-Zag as an expanding apparatus
used to deliver messages.

Chaplin uses a Zig-Zag to dump

Paddy McGuire's smelly sox out of the window in The Tramp.

Harpo uses a Zig-Zag to steal cans of food in Love Happy.

Lazzo of the Puppet

Both men used a variation of this lazzo.

Harpo becomes

a puppet in Monkey Business when he joins a Punch and Judy

show in order to evade a pursuer.

When his enemy stands in

front of the puppet show, Harpo forces him to join the scene
by hitting him.

Chaplin becomes a puppet when he joins the

mechanical puppet scene in The Circus.

Like Harpo, he ends

up hitting an enemy as a part of the scene.

Lazzo of the New World

This lazzo involves a zanni pretending to see something
in an object and handing it to an enemy.

Chaplin used it in

Easy Street, when frantically trying to call the police for

backup help.

He hands Eric Campbell the phone receiver,

and, as Campbell attempts to look inside, he tries to club

Campbell on the head.

The clubbing has no effect.

Harpo

mentions a game called "Peasy-Weasy" in his autobiography

that involved a similar trick.

258
Sexual/Scatological Lazzi
Lazzo of the Enema
Gordon describes the lazzo of the enema as a series of
lazzi in which the commedia characters administer shots,
kicks, and enemas to the posterior.

Sobel and Francis write

that, in Chaplin films, "the backside came in for the most

attention" of any part of the body, and it was constantly
"knocked, kicked, pricked by a sword, scorched by a hot
surface or patted approvingly" (113, 117). This attention
to the posterior dimenished a bit in Chaplin's later films,
but it is still evident at the end of his career.

The most

blatant example came in 1916 with the Mutual comedy. The

Fireman.

In it Chaplin, Eric Campbell, and Albert Austin

exchange dozens of kicks and smacks in a two-reel film.

Other films in the Mutual era contained fewer kicks, and as
Chaplin more fully developed Charlie as a character, the
films as a whole became less violent.

The influence of the

Harlequin was, nevertheless, still quite evident during the

Mutual films, and although Charlie became less violent as he
grew, he certainly did not renounce his former ways.

The

actual lazzo of the enema was performed in Easy Street, when

Chaplin accidentally sat on a morphine addict's needle.
There are also several occasions in which the buttocks
became part of a human machine to be opened and closed.

For

instance, in The Rink, Charlie moves a man's posterior aside

in order to walk by, and then he returns the posterior to

259
its original position as one would open and close a door.
He repeated this gag in Modern Times and The Floorwalker.
The Marx Brothers do not have a preoccupation with the
buttocks, and they seldom use such gags in the same manner
as Chaplin.

There are, however, a couple of exceptions.

First, Harpo and Chico stage the same fight throughout their
careers:

Chico swings wildly, and Harpo kicks him in the

buttocks.

This kick, however, is a part of a longer

routine, and it does not stand alone for comic effect.

Harpo also uses his buttocks and the rest of his body when
he makes music.

For instance, in Animal Crackers he plays a

piano tune and then claps out a beat on his buttocks.

Once

again, this use of the buttocks is not as explicit as

Chaplin's, but it is a similar lazzo.

Lazzo of the Chamber Pot

This lazzo involves throwing a pot out of the window in
order to hit someone in the street below.

Charlie throws a

cast-iron stove out the window to hit Eric Campbell in Easy

Street.

Paulette Goddard throws flower pots out the window

to hit soldiers in The Great Dictator.

Charlie sees people

hurling garbage from their windows in The Kid, and, when

discovering a baby on the street, he looks upward to see
from which window it might have been thrown.

The Marx

Brothers hurl various pots, pans, etc., during the battle

260
scene in Duck Soup,

when a pot is stuck on Groucho's head,

Harpo draws the features of Groucho's face on the outside.

Lazzo of Hiding
In this lazzo a jealous husband enters the scene, and a
zanni must hide.

Harlequin becomes a chair, and the

befuddled husband sits on him.

There are many instances of

this lazzo in Chaplin's films.

In The Count. Charlie hides

inside a wicker basket avoid the butler.

He hides in a

trunk in The Pawnshop as well, this time avoiding his boss.

In Mabel's Strange Predicament (a Keystone film, directed by
Lehrman and Sennett) it is Mabel Normand who hides,
scurrying under a bed when she goes into the wrong room.
The Marx Brothers, however, were the masters of this
lazzo, and directors often chose to split the screen into
rooms as the brothers ducked in and out of doors.

This

technique was used in A Night at the Opera. Horsefeathers.

and The Cocoanuts.

In the former, a befuddled detective

loses his mind as the brothers move furniture from room to

room.

In Horsefeathers. Groucho hides in Thelma Todd's

closet to avoid her husband, and later all four brothers try
to court her and attempt to hide from each other.

The use

of the split screen to see the four Marxes run in and out of
rooms was established in The Cocoanuts.
actual hiding lazzo twice.

The Marxes use the

In Animal Crackers, when Harpo

is told to hide, he runs to the middle of the room and

261
Stands on his head.

In A Night at the Opera, after shifting

all the furniture from one room to another, they pose as

other people for the detective's benefit.

Harpo is an old

woman knitting yarn.

Various Lazzi as a Waiter

Chaplin appears as a waiter numerous times:
a Cabaret, The Rink, Modern Times.

Caught in

Being a waiter creates

opportunities to use food as a comedic prop.

In The Rink.

Chaplin serves someone a scrub brush and washcloth.

kitchen assistant on a ship in Shanghaied.

Eric Campbell

waits on Charlie and Edna Purviance in The Immigrant.

Marx Brothers do not often use this lazzo.

He is a

The

Harpo and Chico

become waiters for Groucho in A Day at the Races. but it is

all part of an elaborate charade against Groucho.

Various Lazzi of the Bow

Charlie bows to women and tips his hat to everyone,
thus keeping his dignity, even in the face of embarrassment.
In contrast, Groucho embarrasses other people by bowing to
them, and he often gets into a contest to see who can bow
the most times or dip the lowest.

Related to the bow is

Groucho's relationship with Esther Muir in A Day at the

Races.

When Esther says "Thank you," Groucho imitates her

delivery and repeats "Thank you!"

262
Social Class Rebellion T.a77i
Gordon describes the humor in these lazzi as being the
result of a change in social class, where the master becomes
a servant and the servant becomes a master.

There are no

specific lazzi to illustrate this category, but the general

idea certainly may be discussed.
Chaplin's appearance contrasts with his behavior.

He

carries a cane and tips a derby like a gentleman, but he

lives on the street and scrounges for food.
switches roles with the elite.

He often

In The Immigrant, Eric

Campbell is forced to wait on him and Edna, even though

Charlie does not have the money to pay the bill.

In Modern

Times, Charlie intentionally eats a meal he cannot afford so

that he will be arrested and taken back to the "luxury" of
prison.

In Caught in a Cabaret, he is first established as

a waiter/bouncer and then escapes his world for a few

moments at a party.

A similar theme occurs in The Rink.

Charlie alternates from tramp to rich man in Citv Lights,

and he strikes it rich and must adjust to wealth in The Gold
Rush.
The general line of criticism concerning the Marx
Brothers emphasizes their anarchic rebellion against the
upper class.

Most of their films are based on the premise

that the three brothers can destroy a societal institution.

There is little switching of class, but Groucho is often
among the socially elite, even though he openly participates

263
in tearing things down.

Groucho is the President of his own

country in Duck Soup; Harpo and Chico are first spies, and
then later members of the Presidential cabinet.

Harpo works

in a host of jobs in Horsefeathers, ranging from dog catcher

to student to football player.

Groucho is a professor, but

his behavior contradicts the customary behavior of a man in

his position.

He is a Captain in Animal Crackers, although

his military orientation is never explained.

All four Marx

Brothers are stowaways in Monkey Business, and an elitist

Groucho houses stowaways in A Night at the Opera.

Harpo

works as Groucho's chauffeur in The Big Store, and he has

the mysterious title of "the Professor" in Animal Crackers.

Stage Life/Duality Lazzi

Gordon describes these lazzi as times when the
conventions of theater are broken.

Included in these lazzi

are the various times that Chaplin chose to take off his
tramp costume and show the audience his face without the
moustache.

The Marx Brothers often dropped character and

spoke directly to the camera.

Uraneff argues that Commedia

actors always kept their stage personalities.

Lazzo of the Script

This lazzo involves letting the audience know that the
story is not real and occasionally letting audiences in on
the joke.

Dan Kamin writes that Chaplin often accomplished

264
this lazzo by looking straight at the camera instead of at
other characters.

Kamin also mentions Chaplin's use of a

hand to cover his smile during the Keystone, Mutual and

Essanay films.

This gesture should be contrasted with

Harpo, who used a full-faced scowl, gape, sneer, or laugh.

The Marx Brothers constantly broke through the
traditional barrier of the camera in order to address
directly the audience.

In Animal Crackers, Groucho and the

head servant. Chandler (Louis Sorin), mess up the script and

begin making fun of their mistake.

Adamson claims that this

bit of business was not actually a mistake but was, indeed,

planned.

After his famous "elephant in my pajamas"

monologue, Groucho intentionally mispronounces the word,

"tusks," and makes scripted comment to the audience.

In the

same film, Groucho steps in and out of a love scene and

makes "strange interludes" to the audience.

Later, he looks

at the camera and tells the audience that all the jokes
cannot be good.
Horsefeathers.

He makes a similar comment in

Groucho speaks directly to the audience in

the narration of Love Happy.

In all instances, it is

Groucho, and not one of the other brothers who stands back
from the action and makes comments about it.

In reference

to Uraneff's claim that the mask is never taken off, it must

be noted that the sarcastic quips are consistent with
Groucho's stage personality.

265
Lazzo of the Good Son/Bad Son
This lazzo is related to the traditional comic theme of
mistaken identity.
times.

Chaplin repeats this theme over ten

In The Floorwalker, he runs into an embezzler who

physically resembles him, and they exchange costumes in

order to get away from their pursuers.

In The Pilgrim,

Chaplin has escaped prison and poses as a clergyman in order

to evade police.

A similar masquerade was used in The

Adventurer, when Chaplin, once again an escaped convict,

attempted to take refuge with a family.

Chaplin goes so far

as to change sexes in order to complete a masquerade in The

Masquerader and A Woman.

He takes the place of the dentist

in Laughing Gas, and, in Police, even though he is actually

trying to rob her, Edna saves Charlie from the police by
claiming that he is her husband.

In His Trysting Place.

Charlie mixes his jacket with Mack Swain's, and his wife
reads Swain's love letter, thus instigating a conflict based
on mistaken intentions.

In Modern Times. Charlie is

mistaken for a labor union leader, and he must serve time in

prison.

This is one of many examples in Chaplin's work of

the Christ-like attribute of paying for crimes he did not

commit.
In addition to masquerading as a woman in earlier
films, there are three instances when Charlie pretends to be
another person in order to impress a woman.
Rink, he is a simple but inept waiter.

First, in The

During his lunch

266
break, however, he becomes a champion at the skating rink,
and he poses as Sir Cecil Seltzer in order to win Edna
Purviance.

The masquerade gets Charlie into trouble with

the high brow crowd at the rink, and he escapes the wrath of
antagonist Eric Campbell by hooking his cane to an
automobile and skating out of sight.
Charlie attempts an even more elaborate charade in The
Count.

This time, Charlie is a tailor-shop worker who wins

Edna's favor by pretending to be a count.

Comedy arises

from Charlie's attempts to display his dignity.

He must

make a quick escape when the real count returns, but before
the escape he loses control of the charade and does a poor
job of acting like an aristocrat.
Charlie places himself in danger and eventually goes to
jail when he masquerades as a rich man in City Lights.

This

time, however, he is not discovered by the person he is

trying to fool; he completes the masquerade and wins sight
for the flower girl.

She only learns his true identity when

Charlie returns to her after a prison term.

The audience

does not know if Charlie is forced to run away again because

the film ends before an action occurs.
In addition, Chaplin played double characters in three
films: The Idle Class, A Night at the Show, and The Great
Dictator.

In The Idle Class. Chaplin is both Charlie the

Tramp and a rich man, whose alcoholism threatens his

marriage with Edna Purviance.

Charlie sees Edna and dreams

267
about being married to her, and he is given an opportunity
to live that dream when he wanders into a masguerade ball.
Mistaking Charlie for her husband, Edna comforts him and
takes his side when her husband, trapped in a suit of armor,
attacks Charlie.
Chaplin plays a snobbish theatre patron and a drunk in
A Night at the Show.

This short film is a film adapatation

of the Music Hall comedy. The Mumming Birds (discussed in

McCabe's Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy).
In The Great Dictator. Hynkel and the Barber are
completely opposite personalities, but they are mistaken for
each other anyway.

Hynkel is arrested after a duck hunt,

and the Barber, attempting to get out of the country, is

hailed as Hynkel and asked to address the nation.

Chaplin

uses the Barber's speech to partially step outside of the

character, and he delivers an impassioned plea for world
peace.
The mistaken identity theme is dominant in the Marx
Brothers as well.

Groucho, a veterinarian, masquerades as a

medical doctor in A Day at the Races, and he provides

hypochondriac Margaret Dumont with fake diagnoses. Harpo,
Chico, and Alan Jones pose as bearded Russian pilots in
order to get into America in A Night at the Opera.

Like

Chaplin's barber, they are asked to make a speech but are

discovered when Harpo drinks so much water that his beard
falls off.

The team evades customs authorities in Monkey

268
3usiness by claiming to be Maurice Chevalier.

Harpo and

Chico both dress as Groucho in Duck Soup, and they pose as

football players at a speakeasy in Horsefeathers.

In

addition, the Marx Brothers actually use blackface to join a

"negro" spiritual and evade authorities in A Dav at the
Eaces.

A similar scene was repeated in At the Circus.

Stupidity/Inappropriate Behavior
Lazzo of Cowardice
This lazzo involves bravery in practice but cowardice
in the face of danger.

Gordon describes zannis preparing

for a sword fight and then backing out at the last minute.
Neither Chaplin or Harpo backed out of fights.

During the

Keystone and Essanay years, Charlie literally "jumped" into

fights, especially when he lost his temper.

The early tramp

character could be quite cruel and tempermental.

In

addition, the Mutual Charlie sometimes used his head to get

out of jams.

Despite being far smaller than his nemesis,

Charlie uses the gas from a streetlight to knock out Eric

Campbell in Easy Street.

The closest Charlie comes to

showing cowardice is in The Kid, when Jackie Coogan and a

neighborhood bully are having a streetfight.

The bully's

father turns to Charlie and threatens to beat him if his

child loses.

Charlie steps in and tries to "fix" the fight.

Charlie uses a variation of this lazzo in which he

enters a situation boldly and then turns sweet when he

269
realizes there is a possibility of danger.

The boxing scene

in City Lights reveals a confident Charlie whose opponent

will take a fall and split the money with him.

When Charlie

is suddenly thrust against a new, tougher opponent, he turns

sweet and tries to "woo" him.
Harpo is also aggressively violent, but he is far less
successful than Charlie as a fighter.

He shows ferocity at

Chico's request during a fight scene in Horsefeathers, but

after ranting and raving, Harpo is knocked to the ground
numerous times.
later films.

He is vulnerable enough to be beaten in the

It is Chico, however, who shows cowardice.

He

is willing to send Harpo into the fight, but he does not

participate.
Harpo and Chaplin both take part in a sword fight.

In

A Night at the Opera, Harpo, who has appeared in the

orchestra, uses a violin bow against the orchestra
conductor's baton.

When the orchestra suddenly plays "Take

Me Out to the Ballgame" in the middle of a Verdi opera,

Chico tosses Harpo a baseball, and Harpo hits it with the
violin.

Chaplin plays a dual role as socialite and

reprobate in A Night at the Show.

This fight includes the

use of a fire hose intended to extinguish the fire used

during a stage act.

The hose goes out of control and sprays

everyone in the audience.

270
Lazzo of Friendship
Gordon describes this lazzo as a relationship between a
zanni and the Scapino (or Brighella).

Green and Swan

identify Harpo and Chico as variations of these two Commedia

characters.

Throughout their films, Chico and Harpo are

always acquaintances, and even when they are supposed to be

working against each other, they throw down their weapons
and embrace.

In A Night at the Opera they meet, embrace,

and exchange giant sausages, a food often used in the

Commedia dell'Arte.

In The Big Store, Harpo, Groucho's

chauffeur, is arrested and rescued when Chico recognizes

him.

In Monkey Business, the three brothers are hired by

various thugs as bodyguards but end up working together.

Chico and Harpo are sometimes related, but whether friends
or siblings, they always work together but steal from each
other when it is convenient.

The relationship is summed up

in Go West, when Groucho asks Chico, "Don't you love your

brother?"

Chico gives him a logical answer:

"No, but I'm

used to him."
Chaplin did not have a comic partner with whom to do
such work.

He occasionally befriends male characters, but

in his world of poverty, the friendships rarely last.

Lazzo of the Insult

Groucho is, of course, the king of the insult lazzo.
He starts a war because of his insults in Duck Soup; in

271
fact, while preparing for a meeting designed to bring about
a truce, Groucho gets so carried away with the potential
insults of his foe that he slaps his foe and declares war as
soon as the meeting starts.
Groucho's sarcastic quips contrast to Harpo's childlike
approach to life.

While Groucho cannot open his mouth in

most cases without relying on the lazzo of the insult, Harpo

is able to insult his foes with silence.

He does not,

however, make insulting gestures or movements.

Harpo's

insults are a result of his antisocial behavior, and his

childish face contradicts his actions.
Chaplin must rely on gestures to complete the lazzo of
the insult.

He salutes his officer by thumbing his nose in

Shanghaied.

He makes an array of gestures toward an angry

cameraman in Kid Auto Races.

He sticks his tongue out when

he gets angry, and, in the Keystone and Essanay films, turns

violent when he loses his temper.

In City Lights. Chaplin

combines his body with a statue to form an obscene gesture

as he climbs down from his napping place.

By putting the

statue's widespread hand to his face, Charlie thumbs his

nose at respectable society.

The thumb to the nose is

repeated often in Chaplin's films.

Lazzo of Touching and Fright

Gordon's description of the lazzo involves two
characters, each of whom thinks the other is a ghost.

They

272
go through a ritual of touching and tugging each other to
make sure of reality,

it may be argued that this lazzo

served as the inspiration for the mirror scenes in The

Floorwalker and Duck Soup.

Lazzo of Sewing and Sticking

This lazzo may be related to Harpo's continual
misunderstanding of the things Chico asks him to do.

Gordon

describes a character taking the messages of "sew yourself

to me!" and of "attach yourself to me" too literally (45).
The Marx Brothers films are filled with similar gags:

Harpo

produces a live seal to complete a contract in Duck Soup,

and, when asked for a flash, he pulls a flit, a flush, and a
fish from his coat in Animal Crackers.

A similar routine

occurs when they break into the antagonist's room in At the

Circus.

This gag was much more difficult for Chaplin to

complete; he did not have the luxury of a speaking partner

to misinterpret.
instructions.

He does, however, often misunderstand

In The Circus. Charlie blows his audition by

misunderstanding the audition material.

Charlie sometimes

thinks he is being addressed when he is not.

For instance,

in The Kid. Charlie says "Ah" when the doctor tells Jackie
Coogan to do so.

273
Lazzo of Putting On and Taking Off Their Hats
Chico and Harpo steal Edgar Kennedy's hat and replace
it with their own hats in Duck Soup.

Chaplin uses his hat

as a tool for character: he tips it in a dignified manner

when strangers approach; he flips it and rolls it down his
arm to impress ladies; in The Rink Charlie choreographs an
entire "show" for a woman by making it move up and down on
his head as he presses it against the wall.

Lazzo of Delight
Gordon describes the lazzo of delight as reacting to
good news in a silly manner by kissing everyone in sight.
This lazzo was one of Harpo's favorite.

He jumps back and

forth across the deck of a ship, kissing everyone in Monkey

Business.

In Animal Crackers, Harpo rubs his hands together

in wicked anticipation of accepting a bribe.

The Transformation Lazzi

Lazzo of Nightfall
Gordon describes this scene in detail, telling how the
commedia characters grope about the stage and fall in total
darkness.

This lazzo was used twice by the Marx Brothers.

First, when Chico and Harpo steal a painting in Animal

Crackers. the power fails, and they are left in the dark
standing on a ladder.

Groucho brings Margaret Dumont into

the dark room and, when they sit on the couch, Groucho finds

274
a fish that Harpo pulled from his overcoat earlier in the
scene.

In Duck Soup, Chico and Harpo sneak around in the

dark when they attempt to break into Groucho's home.

Lazzo of the Nymph

This lazzo has been identified as the "Transvestite
Lazzo" in another chapter.

An excellent example of Harpo's

using this lazzo without actually dressing up comes in A

Night at the Opera.

Having finished devouring everything in

sight, Harpo applies condiments as makeup;

he uses flour as

base and ketchup as lipstick and then poses for everyone at

the table.

Lazzo of Fear (Terror)

Chaplin shows fear by becoming especially sweet to the
person or persons who may do him harm.

He searches for an

opportunity to turn the situation around.

Charlie is

obviously fearful of Eric Campbell in Easy Street, but he

searches for an opportunity to overcome the giant.

As

Campbell shows off his strength by bending a lightpost,

Chaplin leaps into action.

Chaplin shows extreme fear when

he is locked in a lion cage in At the Circus and when he is

chased by a bear in The Gold Rush.

The audience sees fear

sweep over Charlie's face as he watches a masseur in The

Cure.

In each of these situations, Charlie takes action

when he can do so.

In contrast, the Marx Brothers rarely

275
show fear at all.

The childlike Harpo fears nothinghe

eats anything he does not understand.

Chaplin must cope

with things that could hurt him, but Harpo eats or destroys
them and therefore gains control.

Lazzo of Despair or Suicide

The Marx Brothers do not threaten suicide, but Chaplin
does.

There is a contemplation of suicide in a Keystone

film called Recreation.

The alternative ending of The

Vagabond is said to involve suicide, and the actual ending

involves a moment of great despair as Charlie walks off into
the countryside.

The suicide scene in Sunnyside is unique

because it comes in the form of a dream; Chaplin jumps in

front of a car and awakens with a kick in the backside just
before it hits him. *

In Shanghaied. Charlie threatens

suicide and plunges into the ocean.

In City Lights, Charlie

rescues a man from drowning himself and is almost drowned in

the process.

The man turns out to be a millionaire, but he

only recognizes Charlie when he is drunk.

This trait may be

identified with the transformation lazzo as a theme; Gordon

defines the lazzo as a "sudden and complete change in
personality" (47). Charlie is affected by the millionare's
sudden changes as the man alternates between treating
Charlie like a friend and a stranger.
* Constance Kuriyama suggests that the suicide theme in
.qunnvside was symbolic of what was happening in Chaplin's
personal life at the time.

276
Trickery Lazzi
Lazzo of Bamboozling
This lazzo is representative of the general
relationship between Groucho and Chico.

Especially telling

of this relationship are the tootsie-frootsie ice cream

scene in A Dav at the Races, the swindling scene at the
beginning of Go West, and the password scene in
Horsefeathers.

Chaplin is bamboozled occasionally, with the

most significant example occurring in The Pawnshop.

An

elderly gentleman enters the shop and begs Charlie to buy

his wedding ring so he will have money to survive. When
Chaplin relents, the man adds Charlie's money to the
enormous wad of money he was already carrying.
his own bamboozling as well.

Charlie does

He poses as a Count in The

Count, and he cons his hostess into thinking he is a

yachtsman named "Captain Slick" in The Adventurer.

Lazzo of the Lunatic

In this lazzo, a character pretends to be mad in order
to beat the other characters around him.

There is a

variation of this lazzo in Chaplin's films; Charlie becomes

a madman when he accidentally takes drugs.

In Easy Street,

Chaplin falls on a morphine addict's needle, and, with the

aid of the drug, becomes superhuman.

It is the drug, and

not Charlie's own strength, that allows him finally to

overcome Eric Campbell and force Campbell to become good.

277
similar action occurs in Modern Times, when Chaplin, a
prisoner, accidentally salts his food with cocaine.

Once

again, Chaplin gains superhuman strength, and he aids the

prison guards in putting down a full-scale prison rebellion.
In both instances, the drug made Charlie into a madman, and,
as in the dream sequences, Charlie was able to accomplish
feats of near-superhuman strength to win the day.

He

actually goes mad during the factory scene in Modern Times,

becoming a puppet-like machine and tightening bolts,
buttons, and noses on everything around him.

Lazzo of the Cardgame

Gordon describes this lazzo as when a thief teaches
zanni a new card game and continually changes the rules.
This lazzo may be applied to several moments in the Marx
Brothers' films.

During the "tootsie frootsie" bamboozling

scene, Chico continually adds conditions to Groucho's

getting tips on a horserace; first the name is in code, then
the decoder is in code, etc.

Chico and Harpo change the

rules of bridge in a card game with Margaret Dumont in

Animal Crackers.
spades.

Harpo leads off each hand with an ace of

In Monkey Business, Harpo cuts a deck of cards with

a meat cleaver.

Chaplin also uses this lazzo.

In The

jTTimigrant, Charlie manages a complex, two-handed shuffle in

which not a single card is changed.

278
Lazzo of the Flour
This lazzo involves blowing flour in the face of a
pursuer to get away.

Chaplin uses it often.

He throws a

bowl of flower on a cop and an orphanage official in The

Kid.

He sneezes talcum powder into Merna Kennedy's face in

The Circus.

Charlie and Fatty Arbuckle toss makeup at each

other in The Masguerader.

The Marx Brothers also use this lazzo.
Races, Harpo is told to "Scram!

Blow!"

blowing into a container of face powder.

In A Day at the

He obliges by
It is also

repeated in At the Circus.

Word Play Lazzi

Gordon lists wordplay lazzi as being indigenous to
Southern Italy, and he lists puns, malapropisms, storytelling, and foreign accents as examples of the word play
lazzi.

The lazzi Gordon lists under this category are not

appropriate for application to this study; however, the

various subsections certainly are.

The Marx Brothers

specialized in word play lazzi, but there is a limited

number of examples from Chaplin because of his use of silent
film.

This category, therefore, is dominated by the Marx

Brothers.

Unlike Chaplin, Harpo participates in word play

lazzi because he is able to react to verbal cues from Chico.

279
Puns
Both Chico and Groucho make constant use of puns, and
their numerous exchanges of puns are often so forced that
they could only work in the context of a Marx Brothers'
movie.

For instance, in Duck Soup, Groucho mentions taxes,

and Chico replies, "Hey, I gotta Uncle who lives in Taxes."

When told that his reference is to dollars and taxes, Chico
states the obvious;

his "Uncle lives in Dollars, Taxes."

Other infamous puns include the Sanity Clause in the

contract scene in

A Night at the Opera (Chico cannot be

fooled; he knows there is no such thing as Sanity Claus!),

and the viaduct on the property in The Cocoanuts (Chico
demands, "Why a duck?").
with puns:

Groucho's monologues are filled

"One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.

How he got in my pajamas I don't know. . . Then we bagged

three tigers.

We bagged them to leave, but they wouldn't do

it" (Animal Crackers).

Essayist Thomas Jordan claims that the Marx Brothers
have such unlimited appeal because their humor is "egually
strong, both visually and verbally" (90). The use of puns,
therefore, did not limit itself to the confines of spoken
language, and Harpo was able to pun along with Chico by
producing those things Chico demanded.

In addition, the

humor did not rely strictly on the use of puns, but the
presence of Harpo allowed them to concentrate on a visual

280

humor that did not exist in many other comedy teams of the
time.
Chaplin's limited use of puns may be placed into two
categories:

puns on the title cards during his silent

shorts, and puns in the talking films.

The title cards are

not always genuine, because Essanay studios and Charlie's

brother, Sydney, often added titles after the film's
completion.

An outstanding example of puns in the title

cards comes in the Essanay comedy, A Woman, in which the

cards convey vaudeville-esque conversation between
characters.
Chaplin.

The cards were added to the prints by Sydney

They are not a part of Chaplin's original

technique and cannot be counted as demonstrations of the

Commedia dell'Arte in his films.
Chaplin did not use puns as frequently as the Marx
Brothers when he turned to talking film.

There are numerous

puns in the names of characters and places in The Great

Dictator, but these puns are part of the satire; Chaplin
plays Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator of Tomania, instead of
Adolph Hitler; Jack Oakie is Napaloni, dictator of Bacteria,
instead of Mussolini.

These puns, however, are not meant as

a comic device in themselves; they are part of an overall

satire.

281

Malapropisms
The word "malapropism" took its name from the character
of Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals
(1775), and it refers to the humorous misapplication of a
word.

The malaprop was a natural tool for Chico, whose

humor was based on his misunderstanding of basic English.

Chico supplied verbal puns, and Harpo paralleled him with
visual backup.

For instance, the theft scene in Animal

Crackers allows Harpo an opportunity to misunderstand the

word "flash" (meaning "flashlight").

His best sparring

partner is Groucho, who provides him with puns that Chico,

of course, can misinterpret.

A variation on this routine

was replayed through most of the team's films. Harpo

communicated back to Chico using a combination mime/whistle
Chico readily misinterpreted.

The culmination of these

scenes comes in Love Happy, when Harpo mimes and whistles

over the phone, and Chico "reads his mind."

Story Telling
Both Groucho and Chico tell stories throughout the Marx
Brothers films.

When asked to report on their spying duties

in Duck Soup. Chico tells a grand story about following

Groucho to a baseball game.

In A Night at the Opera, he

disguises himself as an aviator and tells a mystified New

York City how he and his brothers flew across the ocean to

282

America, only to run out of gas just before they reached

shore.

They had to turn around and go home.

Groucho's

stories are not quite as elaborate because he cannot stay on

one line of thought.

His monologues are filled with the

same nonsensical comments as Chico's, but Groucho bounces

from subject to subject, often commenting on the person who
is hearing the story rather than the story that is being
told.

Harpo tells stories in pantomime form, usually to

accompany Chico's puns and malapropisms.

Chaplin also accomplishes story telling through
pantomime.

In The Pilgrim, Charlie, an escaped convict,

poses as a preacher and is asked to give a sermon.

Using

pantomime and title cards, Charlie tells the story of David

and Goliath, demonstrating the size, strength, and ferocity
of the giant.

When he is fired from his job in The

Pawnshop, Charlie tells the story of his starving family at

home.

Although title cards are used in the David and

Goliath scene, there is no need for them.

Chaplin

communicates the story using only his body, but he

occasionally makes ambiguous gestures that may be considered
visual puns.

For instance, in The Gold Rush. Charlie holds

up five fingers in a provocative position to tell the owner

of a restaurant what he will charge to shovel his walk.

283

Foreign Accents
Chico provides the best example of the use of a fake
accent.

It was commented upon in Animal Crackers;

when

Chico and Harpo discover the butler of the estate is really

Abbie the Fishman from their past, they exchange a series of
insults, and Abbie demands, "When did you become Italian?"
In the original Marx Brothers' act, Groucho used a German
accent, and Harpo was Irish.

Chaplin, of course, was unable

to use an accent until he made talkies.

Hynkel has a

definite accent, and he rants in gibberish during his

impassioned speeches.

Monsieur Verdoux has a French accent.

Illogical Lazzi
Gordon defines this category as a misuse of logic in
such a manner that the laws of nature are denied.

Harpo

Marx is the living example of this series of lazzi, and his

most famous gags deal with the suspension of logic.

In ^

Night in Casablanca, when a policeman sees Harpo leaning

against a wall, he demands, "What do you think you're doing,
holding up that building?"

He is, and Harpo demonstrates it

by walking away from the wall and letting it collapse.

frnimal Crackers he steals a birthmark.
burns a candle at both ends.

In

In Horsefeathers he

His eating inedible objects

defies logic; as does his ability to milk a glove (A Night

284
at the Opera), to play slot machine with a telephone
(Horsefeathers), and to steal any object that is not nailed
to the floor.

Other Commedia Techniques

In addition to the lazzi identified by Gordon, there
are a few other categories of the Commedia that must be
considered.

Meyerhold, who used the Commedia as a

justification, believed in the right "of the director and

the actor to interpret the written text as they saw fit"
(Braun, 1986, 123). As a part of that interpretation, the
use of musical score became important in Meyerholdian
productions "the actor's freedom is only relative because he
is subject to the discipline of the musical score" and thus
must possess "an acute sense of rhythm, plus great agility
and self-control" (Braun, 1969, 144). Meyerhold used the
music to underscore the tone of the production.

Music
Music was an integral part of both Chaplin's and Marx
Brothers' films, but it was used in opposite ways.

The Marx

Brothers started in vaudeville and moved to Broadway, and

most of their films include grand musical numbers that
appear choreographed for the stage.

Groucho makes his

appearance as Captain Spaulding in Animal Crackers during a

grand number celebrating his conquests in Africa.

He

285
creates a dance by flinging his limbs and changing
directions like an acrobat.

The dance appears to have been

lifted straight from the stage. A similar dance occurs in

Horsefeathers, even though there was never a play version of
the film.

He leads the cast of At the Circus in multiple

choruses of "Lydia the Tattooed Lady," and Groucho and Harpo

swing like acrobats from the light fixtures.

Like other

musicals of the time, the later Marx Brothers' films

contained love stories around which the brothers could
clown.

By the time they reached MGM, inamorata like Alan

Jones and Kitty Carlisle sang love songs to each other while
the Marxes looked on, admiring the music.
While Groucho led dance numbers, Harpo and Chico
displayed specialty numbers and played harp and piano solos.
The least constrained of these scenes is in Animal Crackers,
when Chico gets lost in the music and repeats the same
musical stanza for what seems like a hundred times.

Groucho

insults the number, asking Chico to play "Somewhere My Love

Lies Sleeping" with a Male Chorus.

After a mock fight,

Harpo somehow manages to find a harp, and then he goes about

displaying his own musical specialty.

Groucho hated these

musical interludes, and his complaints are well documented.

In addition to Groucho's singing and the specialty
numbers, the Marx Brothers also participated in full song
and dance routines.

The Marx Brothers perform a mock

minstrel show in both At the Circus and A Day at the Races.

286
In the latter, Harpo plays the flute in the street, and a
chorus of black singers claims that he is Gabriel.

A grand

musical number occurs in Duck Soup when Groucho's country,

Freedonia, declares war.

Once again, the Marx Brothers

perform a minstrel show, grabbing banjos and singing "They

got guns!

We got guns!

All God's chil'un got guns!" In

the same number the entire cast kneels and wails a chorus
from a Baptist tent revival.
If the music in the Marx Brothers' films is used for
comic effect, the music in Chaplin's films actually
heightens the intensity of the drama.

Unlike the Marx

Brothers, Chaplin composed his own music in his later films,

and he heightened the sense of pathos with music that
complemented the action on the screen.

His first musical

score was in City Lights (1931), although he prepared scores

for the reissues of The Gold Rush (1942) and The Circus
(1970), which included the song, "Swing Little Girl,"
composed and performed by Chaplin.

In Modern Times, Chaplin

provided his most famous song, "Smile."

In contrast to the Marx Brothers's use of music, the
score in Chaplin's works played underneath the action or
accompanied the pantomime.

City Lights becomes balletic at

moments, especially in the boxing sequence where Charlie,

the referee, and Charlie's boxing opponent dance back and
forth in order to evade each other.

Especially effective is

287

the music in the final sequence of City Lights, in which

Chaplin and the flower girl have a moment of discovery.

Summary
This chapter has made a detailed examination of the
Commedia dell'Arte lazzi.

Meyerhold's influence in going

against mainstream Naturalism and his re-introduction of

archetypal Commedia characters and use of masks and lazzi
has been discussed.

Mel Gordon's book, Lazzi. served as a

guide in organizing the various lazzi, and examples of those

lazzi in the films of Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx have
been demonstrated.

In addition, Meyerhold's use of music

has been discussed in the context of Chaplin and Harpo.

Through this examination, it is obvious that both Chaplin
and Harpo used elements of the Commedia dell'Arte in
building their characters, and they incorporated a large
number of lazzi into their work.

288
CHAPTER IX
CONCLUSION
This study demonstrates that Harpo Marx and Charlie
Chaplin are manifestations of the Pierrot.

By doing so, it

links the Commedia dell'Arte, a major historical style that

may be identified as a theatre of the people, with early
film comedy.

This link leads to the conclusion that the

Commedia dell'Arte has been, in the words of Uraneff,

resurrected on film; therefore, film comedians like Harpo
and Charlie Chaplin are the link between the live theatre
and the "common man."
The implications of Harpo as Harlequin and Chaplin as
Pierrot are far-reaching.

First, since both men are still

highly popular decades after the completion of their body of

work, it must be concluded that their styles have a
universality that communicates beyond time.

Like the masks

of the original Commedia characters, the masks of Harpo and

Charlie the Tramp are easily recognizable, and audiences are
able to identify the characters simply by viewing the mask.
This ability is related to the original masks of the
Commedia dell'Arte.

Second, having chosen their respective

masks, Chaplin and Harpo used opposite approaches in

appealing to the masses.

While Harpo and his brothers were

interested in making people laugh, Chaplin used the comedy

as a tool in an artistic whole, creating both comedy and
pathos at the same time.

Chaplin's films with the Keystone

289
studio used a Harlequinesque character akin to Harpo, but
once Chaplin gained full control over his films, Charlie the
Tramp evolved into a more mature character.

Similarly, the

Commedia dell'Arte Pierrot began life as a supporting

character, but over time, he became more and more
representative of the common man.
Chaplin did not control the Keystone studio, and he was
subject to the whims of director Mack Sennett.

The comedic

style of the time was, of course, slapstick; although

Chaplin conceived of a mixture of comedy and tragedy,
Sennett and his employees at Keystone concentrated on broad
physical humor designed for cheap laughs.

One must conclude

that the Keystone years were good for Chaplin; by

workshopping his talents in such an environment, Chaplin
learned the standard of Hollywood.

The Keystone years

afforded him an opportunity to work with others in creating

broad humor for humor's sake.

This humor, which may be

related to the Commedia lazzi, was incorporated into

Chaplin's later work as a tragicomic artist.
The Marx Brothers were never interested in anything
more than laughs, and although they had the luxury of using
sound in their early works, the pre-Thalberg productions
have a similar composition to Chaplin's work at Keystone.
The Marx Brothers' humor, however, was not based entirely on
visual gags, and it may be argued that the three brothers
and their "stock company" of actors created a Commedia

290
dell'Arte team in which Groucho appealed to the
intellectuals, Chico supplied the immigrant humor, and Harpo
appealed to the child in everyone, thus becoming the
representative of the common man.

The Marx Brothers brought

an element of vaudeville to their act, and much of their

work involves vaudeville routines on film.

Like the

Harlequin, Harpo worked as part of a team, and he was

dependent on the other team members for his effectiveness as
a comedian.

In the later part of his career, Harpo made

guest appearances on television shows, but for the most

part, he worked in a team situation on television as well.
By the end of his career, Harpo's chosen mask was so easily
identified that he did not need to do anything more than
make an appearance to trigger laughter.

He kept the

Commedia mask his entire life, refusing to utter a word on

film and never breaking the illusion created by the mask and
the costume.

He achieved a Harlequin's personality, and

like the traditional actor in a Commedia team, he kept that

personality for a lifetime.
In contrast, Chaplin followed the historical
progression of the Pierrot.

He experimented, first finding

a mask, occasionally discarding it, and forever adding to

the legend behind it.

Chaplin developed the physical traits

of the Pierrot and then incorporated the character's

dramatic traits into his films.

Although he kept with him a

team of actors such as Henry Bergman and Albert Austin,

291
these actors did not establish individual masks.

Bergman

may be seen as an old woman or as a circus clown.

Austin

may have a tiny moustache or a heavy beard.

The actors who

worked with Chaplin served as a supporting cast, stepping in

and out of roles and masks according to Chaplin's commands.
Harpo's supporting cast kept masks as identifiable as
Harpo's; whether Groucho played a crazy doctor or the
President of Freedonia, his moustache and eyebrows served as
immediate identification.
The traditional Harlequin and Pierrot followed the same
historical patterns as Harpo and Chaplin.

The Harlequin

remained a part of a team; without a Pantalone or a Dottorie

to foil, the Harlequin has nothing to do.

The Pierrot,

however, broke away from the Commedia dell'Arte,

establishing his personality on his own and prospering long
after the rest of Commedia went into hibernation.

This

historical pattern leads to several conclusions:

First,

since the Pierrot was a mixture of comedy and tragedy and

the Harlequin was simply a comedic character, the Pierrot is
a natural product of the evolution of drama from comedy to
tragedy to twentieth century tragicomedy.

Charlie Chaplin

is the link between comedy for the masses and tragicomedy

for the common man.

His chosen medium, film, granted him an

ability to reach all men at all times; as long as the films

still exist, Chaplin performs for audiences as though he
were alive.

The emergence of the Commedia masks and lazzi

292
on film create an eternal link between actors and audience,
such as the one Meyerhold sought to describe.

This link

occurs because the film captured a moment of time; it cannot

be erased, but it can be replayed to a new audience at a new
moment.

Chaplin, therefore, is a link between theory and

practice; he realizes Meyerholdian Biomechanical theory; he

embodies Artaudian Theatre of Cruelty taken off the page and
set in a new space; he is Commedia dell'Arte resurrected and
performed for the masses.

Chaplin is a mixture of all the

theatrical forms before him because he is, both

intentionally and unintentionally, the new incarnation of
the Pierrot.

He triggered imitators of both his character

and his style; although the mask of Charlie the Tramp has
been laid aside, it could be reborn once again in a new mask
and for a new purpose.
Second, Harpo and his brothers are a filmed link to
vaudeville, which may, in turn, be traced to the original
Commedia dell'Arte.

The Marx Brothers are not related to

the Pierrot of the nineteenth century; theirs is a comedy of

teams, made up of various situations and lazzi. They
incorporate various types of comedy, but their relationship
with modern theatrical theory is different than Chaplin's.
They use the Meyerholdian mask and lazzi, but apart from
their use of Commedia, there is no other link to
Biomechanics.

Although Artaud talked about the Surreal

aspects of their work, there is no other link between the

293
Marx Brothers and the Theatre of Cruelty.

Instead, they may

be traced directly to the original Commedia dell'Arte, and

their style of humor and use of both verbal and visual jokes
is related to the Vaudevillian stage.

The Marx Brothers are

an instrumental part of the transition of stage comedy to

film.

There is no tragicomic substance in their work, but

there is no need for such a thing.

The Marx Brothers are,

instead, a link to the lazzi and masks of the Commedia.

This study is a first step in examining the link
between historical stage drama and twentieth century film.
Future studies should focus on the shift of attention of the
masses from stage comedy to film tragicomedy.

A shift of

Marx Brothers' criticism away from Surrealism and Artaud and

toward Commedia and vaudeville is necessary.

A detailed

examination of Harpo from a dancer's perspective would be

quite helpful in better understanding how he created the
character.

This study has focused on lazzi and historical

influence from the Commedia, and it has laid the groundwork

for a more intense study of Harpo's physical traits from the
point of view of a dancer.

Chaplin scholars should focus on

Chaplin's influence on modern film.

If Chaplin is actually

a creator of cinematic tragicomedy, then more focus must be

made on his work as a tragicomedian.

This study has

identified the link between Chaplin's direction and

Meyerholdian Biomechanics; an intense study of the two
directors is essential to future scholarship.

In addition.

294
Chaplin scholars should focus on his actual product rather
than continuing ethereal vein that dominated such
scholarship before the 1980s.

It is important that Chaplin

as a theorist be studied in the context of twentieth century

theory.

This dissertation serves as a starting point for

further research.

Film scholars in the next half century

must focus their attention on the application of theatrical

theory to film.

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APPENDIX

303

304
A Chronology of Events
Chaplin at Keystone
Making a Living
Kid Auto Races at Venice
Mabel's Strange Predicament
Between Showers
Tango Tangles
His Favorite Passtime
Cruel, Cruel Love
The Star Boarder
Mabel at the Wheel
Twenty Minutes of Love
Caught in a Cabaret
Caught in the Rain
A Busy Day
The Fatal Mallet
Her Friend the Bandit
The Knockout
Mabel's Busy Day
Mabel's Married Life
Laughing Gas
The Property Man
The Face on the Barroom Floor
Recreation
The Masquerader
His New Profession
The Rounders
The New Janitor
Those Love Pangs
Dough and Dynamite
Gentlemen of Nerve
His Musical Career
His Trysting Place
Tillie's Punctured Romance
Getting Acquainted
His Prehistoric Past

1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914
1914

305

Chaplin at Essanay
His New Job
A Night Out
The Champion
In the Park
A Jitney Elopement
The Tramp (pathos)
By the Sea
Work
A Woman
The Bank (pathos)
Shanghaied (suicide)
A Night at the Show (Mumming Birds)

1915
1915
1915
1915
1915
1915
1915
1915
1915
1915
1915
1915

Charlie Chaplin's Burlesque on Carmen

Police

1916
1916

Triple Trouble

1918
Chaplin at Mutual

The Floorwalker
The Fireman
The Vagabond (pathos)
One A.M.
The Count
The Pawnshop
Behind the Screen
The Rink

1916
1916
1916
1916
1916
1916
1916
1916

Easy Street
The Cure
The Immigrant
The Adventurer

1917
1917
1917
1917
Chaplin at First National

A Dog's Life
The Bond
Shoulder Arms
Sunnyside (suicide)
A Day's Pleasure

1918
1918
1918
1918
1918

The Kid (pathos)

The Idle Class

1921
1921

Pay Day
The Pilgrim

1922
1922

306
Chaplin and the Marx Brothers at Major Studios
A Woman of Paris (United Artists)
The Gold Rush (UA)
The Circus (UA)
* The Coacoanuts (Paramount)
* Animal Crackers (P)

1923
1925
1928
1929
1930

City Lights (UA)

* Monkey Business (P)
* Horsefeathers (P)
* Duck Soup (P)
* A Night at the Opera (MGM)
Modern Times (UA)
*
*
*
*

A Day at the Races (MGM)

Room Service (RKO)
At the Circus (MGM)
Go West (UA)

* The Big Store (UA)

1931
1931
1932
1933
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941

The Great Dictator (UA)

* A Night in Casablanca (UA)

1941
1946

Monsieur Verdoux (UA)

* Love Happy (UA)
Limelight (UA)
A King in New York (Archway)
A Countess from Hong Kong (Universal)

1947
1950
1952
1957
1967