Lloyd, Chaplin, Keaton: clown princes of silent film

One is the Little Tramp, a sweet, coy gent making his way in an often inhospitable world. Another: a poker-faced innocent, with awesome grace under pressure. The third is a handsome, ingratiating lad, who winds up in the most thrilling jams.

These are the screen alter-egos of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd: three clown princes of silent film comedy. All were fearless in their physical daring. All were capable of keeping America in stitches for several reels. And each evolved a unique comic persona.

Paramount Theatre's Silent Movie Mondays will showcase these ace funnymen in a trio of superb comedies: Lloyd's "Girl Shy" (playing at 7 p.m. tomorrow), Chaplin's "The Gold Rush" (7 p.m., Sept. 9) and Keaton's "The Cameraman" (7 p.m., Sept. 16). The final film in the comedy series, Frank Capra's "The Strong Man," plays Sept. 23.

The Paramount, initially a silent movie house, will present these features as they were meant to be watched: on the big screen, and with accompaniment on Mighty Wurlitzer organ by series host and musical maestro Dennis James.

Sure, these flickers came out when our grandparents and great-grandparents were young. And they are from cinema's infancy, therefore lacking in special effects. Yet they remain, to many modern fans, hilarious. And they exemplify a physical virtuosity, whirlwind gag-making and intricate comic invention Hollywood has abandoned.

The masterful comedians who devised and starred in these laugh-riots were practically national heroes in the 1920s. Here is an introduction to their screen identities:

Harold Lloyd, 'Girl Shy'

Less exotic than Keaton or Chaplin, Lloyd found his screen image by donning a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. From this simple prop emerged a character who was, wrote film critic James Agee, "nothing grotesque or eccentric, but a fresh, believable young man who could fit into a wide variety of stories."

This fellow is upright, even a bit prissy, but ever adept at coping when he finds himself dangling from the hands of a clock atop a high-rise building (in "Safety Last") or clinging to a runaway bus (in "For Heaven's Sake").

Lloyd became the master of "thrill comedy," which depends on suspenseful, even harrowing stunts for its guffaws and chills. Writes Walter Kerr in his book "The Silent Clowns," Lloyd "wanted screams and got them honestly." He performed his breathtaking gags himself — an endearing, everyday guy in extremis.

His 1924 comedy "Girl Shy," notes Kerr, "is virtually one long chase." Trying to rescue the girl he loves from marrying the wrong man, Lloyd races to her via car, motorcycle, streetcar and horse-cart. During filming, Lloyd and two horses he was commandeering took an unintended tumble. But with silent-film bravado, he quickly righted himself, remounted the horses, and kept the chase going while the camera cranked on. Now that is derring-do.

Charlie Chaplin, 'The Gold Rush'

Chaplin seems to have descended directly from the history of clowning — the Italian commedia dell'arte zanies and French Harlequins, the English pantomimes.

And yet, when he leapt from English vaudeville to film, it was as an utter original — an adroit mixer of heart-tugging poignancy and slapstick savvy, who could move an audience to tears and belly laughs in a single take.

Agee considered Chaplin's Tramp "as centrally representative of humanity, as many-sided and as mysterious, as Hamlet. ... " But Chaplin was a peerless rib-tickler too. Before he came along, notes Agee, "people were content with a couple of gags per comedy. He got some kind of laugh every second."

Relentlessly ambitious and experimental, Chaplin took on a new challenge with "The Gold Rush." Inspired by the Donner Party's entrapment in remote snowfields during pioneer times, Chaplin constructed a fable about a "lone prospector" in the Klondike who endures extreme hunger, threatening cabin mates twice his size, ferocious snowstorms and a crush on a dance-hall girl.

Chaplin filmed parts of this epic on location in the Sierras, carting cast, crew and equipment into the snowy wilderness in an age when filmmaking was cumbersome and technologically primitive. The movie cost $2 million to make (a fortune in 1925), but grossed $7 million. It's often ranked as one of the all-time best film comedies.

While the exterior shots are impressive, the merriest scenes offer intimate samplings of Chaplin's genius. His delicate consumption of a shoe, his larky stunt with two dancing dinner rolls on a pair of forks, and his attempts to elude a starving man who mistakes Charlie for a chicken are classic bits.

Buster Keaton, 'The Cameraman'

Silence equals transcendence in the art of Keaton, a captivating cinematic figure who rarely cracks a smile.

Young Buster awed magician Harry Houdini by effortlessly tumbling down stairs in vaudeville routines. But that wasn't his only gravity-defying skill: on film, he hung sideways from a ship's mast, turned a clothesline into a circus high wire, outsmarted a speeding locomotive.

He was the Nijinsky of silent cinema, an auteur whose elaborate sight gags pivoted on his astonishing dexterity — and whose deadpan mien made him a misfit, and a haunting, inscrutable hero.

"The Cameraman" is Keaton's last great silent comedy, before studio interference and the advent of the "talkies" derailed him. Released in 1928, it portrays Buster as a photographer in love with a gal working for a newsreel company.

To impress her, he gets a newsreel camera and dashes around New York — filming street scenes upside-down by mistake, and stumbling into the pandemonium of a Chinatown riot.

Keaton, with his athleticism and cool, has inspired many contemporary filmmakers and clowns. Director Mel Brooks cops to stealing a classic bit from "The Cameraman": Buster changing into swimming togs in a tiny cabana, and getting tangled up in the clothes of a burly guy squeezed in with him.

"I've never seen any human being able to perform as brilliantly and gracefully with such unusually gifted timing," Brooks says of Keaton. "I owe (Keaton) a lot on two levels: One for being such a great teacher for me as a filmmaker myself, and the other just as a human being watching this gifted person doing these amazing things. He made me believe in make-believe."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com.