A fun time was had at the Harry Langdon Film Festival

Forgive the selfie-like atmosphere of the photos on the blog. It's me preening for the camera, but I made them for social media. This past weekend, Saturday and Sunday, I was at The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum (see photo below) for the Harry Langdon Film Festival. It was great.

I'm kneeling in front of a re-creation of the backdrop of Harry's famous vaudeville routine, Johnny's New Car, which was done by the very talented Nicole Arciola, a leader in the Harry fan societies. Nicole, Tim Greer, Frances Anchenta Becker, and Langdon  biographer Gabriella Oldham, were all at the museum for the film festival. Also, I was able to meet persons I knew only from social media, Trav SD, Bill Cassara, and Paul F. Etcheverry. Many others were there enjoying a weekend of Langdon films, from several early silents including "Smile Please" "All Night Long," and "Saturday Afternoon," two silent features, "Tramp Tramp Tramp," and "The Strong Man," a couple of his Roach sound shorts, including "The Shrimp," several of his Educational Shorts, including "The Hitch Hiker,' and a sample of later Columbia shorts.

Trav SD spoke of Langdon's vaudeville days. Oldham did an excellent recap of his life. Cassara introduced a couple of films. The Vernon Dent biographer also provided interesting details on Langdon's frequent co-star, Dent. Genre experts who introduced films included James Neibaur, Steve Massa, Langdon biographer Michael Hayde and Ben Model.

I spoke at the festival on Langdon's final film, "Pistol Packin' Nitwits." My address was not captured in video or audio. In order to preserve it, I am presenting it below. It was my final working draft. I improvised some but all the details in it were addressed.

Finally, the wonderful staff at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum were wonderful, and hard working, particularly Rena Kiehn and Paul Mular, both of whom seem to have an unlimited source of positive energy!

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Here are my remarks:

“Pistol Packin’ Nitwits” is my favorite Harry Langdon comedy short. I know it’s not his best comedy short, but it has such a delirious, chaotic completeness to it. And I love the co-stars, El Brendel, Christine McIntyre, Dick Curtis as the villain, Rawhide Pete, Brad King as the hero.

And it’s bittersweet to watch. This is the last work on film Harry Langdon performed. Returning from the studio, he complained of a headache, and eventually was diagnosed with the cerebral hemorrhage that killed him. At times I have tears in my eyes watching Harry dance in the film.

“Pistol Packin’ Nitwits” still has a healthy dose of the old vaudeville. Semi-scrupulous salesmen Harry and El Brendel pitch “high-quality” soap to clean tough stains like “axle grease.” Christine McIntryre sings. And there’s the soft-shoe dance routine with Langdon and Brendel.

“Pistol Packin’ Nitwits” blends several film genres to create something unique. In literature, there’s a term called slipstream. It’s defined as non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries to create a new piece of art.

This applies to film as well. Gary Rhodes and Robert Guffey, in their book “Bela Lugosi and the Monogram Nine,” argue that the hastily made, deadline-intensive, low-budget film world created chaotic, unique slipstream film art. The result often created surrealism.

One description of surrealism, as described by the scholar Andre Breton, cited in the book, is to “write quickly, … fast enough that you will not remember what you’re writing …”

Many of the Columbia comedy shorts are examples of slipstream plots with surrealism. “Pistol Packin’ Nitwits” as noted, is part vaudeville. It’s also part western film. It is also an old “’penny-dreadful” film of a young lovely, the saloon keeper, being terrorized by a boorish, threatening villain. It is also part musical, with McIntyre belting out the weepy song, “Father, Dear Father.” Finally, “Pistol Packin’ Nitwits” is part superhero film with the cowboy hero smiling as bullets fired by the villain bounce off his chest.

“Pistol Packin’ Nitwits” was released in 1945. The Captain America serial was released in 1944. No coincidence there, I’m sure.

Let’s talk more about surrealism. Andre Breton also described surrealism as the real meeting the fantastic to create an alternate reality. There’s a lot of alternate reality in “Pistol Packin’ Nitwits.” In one scene a cowboy is moved to tears by the song “Father, Dear Father.” But his tears fall in bizarre fashion, more as a stream than drops. Another alternate reality: villain Dick Curtis shoots constantly into our hero’s chest. Despite the impossibility of bullets bouncing of a chest, Curtis doesn’t seem surprised that his gun doesn’t work like it should.

And I consider surreal a sequence of quick-cut scenes where the hero is on his horse, racing back to the saloon to the tune of the William Tell Overture. Each interlude is brief to the point of surreal absurdity, lasting about a second.

Finally, in closing, let me stress that director Harry Edwards, the writers, and Harry Langdon and cast didn’t huddle together and say, ‘hey, let’s blend genres to create a work of art that’s both unique and surreal!’

Just like a cult film can’t be intentionally planned and crafted as such, neither was “Pistol Packin’ Nitwits.” They made a film. They had to do it quickly. They were on very tight budgets. They had to be super creative and super innovative. The creators used all their talents, genre knowledge and experience. To get the film finished on time, they threw everything into the pot, and created something unique and wonderful.

Pistol Packin' Nitwits -- Harry Langdon's last film

Review by Doug Gibson

I've probably seen "Pistol Packin' Nitwits" about 40 times; even though its circulation days are long over. With a YouTube dupe and my own duped DVD, courtesy of a kind fellow Harry Langdon fan, I have easy access to this Columbia comedy short via a DVD-R print.

There's pathos involved in my interest and fascination. It's sad but compelling. Harry died after completing the film. Although not the last released, this was the final film Harry made. According to his wife, Mabel Langdon, he came home feeling very ill after a day of shooting, citing in particular a soft shoe dance routine he did with co-star El Brendel. (The dance, by the way, is one of the highlights of the short). Watching the dance, you realize it's more or less the last work this comedy genius ever did.

Harry was 60 and there seemed to be a history in his family of dying relatively young. His doctor diagnosed a cerebral hemorrhage, and Harry unfortunately quickly declined, dying on Dec. 22, 1944. Besides Mabel, he was survived by his son, Harry Jr., who still lives and has enjoyed an excellent career as a photographer.

There's another reason I enjoy "Pistol Packin' Nitwits," even though it's far from Harry's best sound short, or even his best Columbia short. It's a wildly free-ranging film, a blunt spoof that's 90 percent western and 10 percent "old-time serial superhero with amazing powers."

The plot: In Hangman's Gulch, Nevada, the beautiful Queenie Lynch (Christine McIntyre) owns Queenie's Place," a saloon. Her future is threatened by thuggish and buffoonish Rawhide Pete (Dick Curtis) who owns the mortgage on the saloon and will foreclose if Queenie won't marry him by midnight. Queenie appeals to the handsome cowboy Jack (Brad King) to help her and he promises to have $2,500 by midnight.

Harry and "Professor" Brendel are grifter salesmen peddling fake cleaning fluid. With Pete as a volunteer, they mistakenly put real axle grease on his clothes and make a huge mess. This so amuses Queenie that she hires the hapless duo to "help run the place." Inside the saloon, Pete, when he isn't falling over and threatening Harry and El Brendel, tries to kill Jack with a gun. In the "superhero" spoof portion of the film, the bullets bounce of the chest of a smiling Jack. Harry and El Brendel think Pete was firing blanks but almost lose their lives learning that he is using real bullets.

The middle portion of the film has two shining moments; the aforementioned soft shoe dance of the comedy duo (see screen shot above) and a solo song, "Father, Dear Father," by McIntyre. She has a beautiful singing voice, as anyone who has seen the Three Stooges short, "Micro-phonies," already knows.

In between are the gag scenes, with El Brendel hitting the jackpot on a machine, Harry avoiding an unfunny stereotypical old cowboy, the duo trying to use a test-your-punching-strength machine to steal the mortgage from Pete, and Pete being generally buffoonish, at one time having a bumblebee fly into his collar.

IMDB incorrectly lists Edward Bernds as the director. It's actually Harry Edwards, a one-time major talent who had sunk to mediocrity by this time. While this is better than a host of Langdon 1940s Columbia efforts, it still suffers from poorly presented gags and editing is poor. An example is inclusion shots of Jack racing on his horse to get back to the saloon. They play to The William Tell Overture but the inserts last about one second and are place clumsily in the film. (Bernds has co-credit with Langdon for the story).

There's a showdown at the end with Jack, Pete, Harry, El Brendel and Queenie. I'll let readers watch the film and be surprised.

As mentioned, I have a fondness for the film. It's quirky and has some good song and dance routines. Harry is funny; El Brendel is less funny but some of the gags work, including the cleaning fluid demonstration and the efforts to rid Pete of the mortgage.

Langdon enjoyed the security of working at Columbia (he called them "O-Ouch-O" comedies). He was looking his age, though, and starting to get overshadowed in shorts by lesser talents, such as El Brendel and even Elsie Ames. On the other hand, he was working in B movies, as well as sometimes on the stage and writing. This was the happiest time of his life, with a comfortable home, a loving wife and a son growing up.

Both Edwards and El Brendel only lasted about a year with Columbia after "Pistol Packin' Nitwits." Although Curtis died at 49 in 1952 of pneumonia, he made about 250 films, and was active in Columbia shorts as well as early television. McIntyre (see below) had a long association with Columbia shorts, particularly with the Three Stooges. In fact, today she is iconic for her association with the trio as their co-star.

"Pistol Packin' Nitwits" was remade as "Out West," in 1947, with the Three Stooges as the stars. McIntyre reprises the role of the damsel in distress. "Out West" is directed by Bernds. The probable reason Bernds is listed as director in IMDB is because Columbia goofed in their release posters for "... Nitwits," listing Bernds as director. I must confess, of the pair, I prefer "Pistol Packin' Nitwits." Give it 17 minutes of your time, and watch Harry Langdon gamely finish the scenes and wrap his final film.