Irving Bacon - The Early Years

In my post about Blondie, I mentioned a bit player named Irving Bacon (1893 - 1965).  With 515 titles listed on IMDb, I thought he was worth a closer look.

Bacon started working in silent films, and made almost 70 films at the Mack Sennett Studios.  While many silent movie stars had difficulty moving into sound films due to heavy accents or poor voices, Irving Bacon flourished.  By that time, though, he had found his niche playing "regular Joe" parts as milkmen, mailmen, carnival workers, etc., which he continued for most of his career.

In 1933 Bacon worked with Bing Crosby (1903 - 1977) and Franklin Pangborn (1889 - 1958) in one of the last Mack Sennett (1880 - 1960) films, a 19 minute short called Sing, Bing, Sing.  He made ten more films with Bing, including Holiday Inn (1942)

Irving worked with many of the early greats.  He made 9 movies with W.C. Fields (1880 - 1946).  He is in 12 Frank Capra (1897 - 1991) films, including some early silent shorts.  Look for Bacon in It Happened One Night (1934) with Clark Gable (1901 - 1960) and Claudette Colbert (1903 - 1996), and also in the 1930s he was in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and You Can't Take it With You (1938). 

I can't seem to get out of the 1930s!!  Just two more...A Star is Born and Topper, both in 1937...oh, and Blondie (1938) of course.  (Actually, several Blondies in the 1930s.)  Whew!  And I can't forget Gone With the Wind (1939).

1940 starts with His Girl Friday and The Grapes of Wrath, plus 25 other movies that year.  This is going to be a long post!  Let's cover the war years and come back tomorrow.

Just to quickly touch on some highlights:
The Return of Frank James (1940) with Henry Fonda (1905 - 1982)
Barnacle Bill (1941) with Wallace Beery (1885 - 1949)
Great Guns (1941) with Laurel and Hardy
King of the Cowboys (1943) with Roy Rogers (1911 - 1998)
Action in the North Atlantic (1943) with Humphrey Bogart (1899 - 1957)
This is the Army (1943) with Lt. Ronald Regan (1911 - 2004) which was really a George Murphy (1902 - 1992) film, but Regan is on the cover.
Spellbound (1945) by Alfred Hitchcock.

Pick ANYTHING above that is in bold, and watch it!  You will not be disappointed.

Charles Sellon (1870 - 1937)

He was not a big star.  He was on Broadway and played a cranky old man, a character he brought to the screen as well.  Charles Sellon is a Bit Actor.

I first noticed him in It's a Gift (1934) starring W. C. Fields.  He played a cranky old blind man, who almost destroyed Fields' shop.  But that came at the end of his career.

He started on the screen in 1923 in a movie called The Bad Man with Harry Myers.  I talked about Myers when I covered Chaplin's City Lights (1933) a few days ago.  When you look at the interaction of the early stars, you begin to see how small Hollywood was back in the silent era.  I bet everyone knew everyone.

He made three movies with Hoot Gibson (1892 - 1962).  I counted about 35 silent films on his list of 109 roles.  Sellon's first talkie was Bulldog Drummond in 1929 starring Ronald Colman (1891 - 1958). 

Most of the films he made are of little consequence. 
Vagabond Lover (1929) with Rudy Vallee
Tom Sawyer (1930) with Jackie Coogan
Six films with Jack Oakie
Bright Eyes (1935) with Shirley Temple

But he did get to work with the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Paul Muni, Lionel Barrymore, Barbara Stanwick, and so many other great actors and actresses.  Watch an old movie, pick out almost any uncredited player, and look them up.  They made the movies what they are.

The Bank Dick

One of everyone's favorite W. C. Fields movies is The Bank Dick from 1940.  This was the second to last Fields movie and by this time his popularity allowed him do whatever he wanted.  The story seems a little disjointed by today's standards, but each part is so much fun that it doesn't matter.  Don't be a moon-calf, don't be a jabbernow, you just have to enjoy it as it unfolds.

Fields came from vaudeville, so he could put on an act all alone on stage.  In his movies he surrounded himself with character actors like Grady Sutton, (Og Oggilby) Una Merkel (Myrtle Souse), Shemp Howard (the bartender, Joe Guelpe) and Franklin Pangborn (J. Pinkerton Snoopington, bank examiner).  These people have wonderful comedic timing, and Fields used them to great effect.


Russell Hicks played J. Frothingham Waterbury.  Hicks started his film career in the silent classic The Birth of a Nation in 1915.  He had 316 roles in movies and TV over 42 years.  His deep voice and ability to project it, and his perfect diction was great in the talkies.  Look for him in You Can't Take it with You (Directed by Frank Capra), Buck Privates Come Home (Abbott and Costello), The Big Store (Marx Brothers), Great Guns (among other films with Laurel and Hardy), Dark Alibi (A Sidney Toler - Charlie Chan film)...it's another endless list by a great bit actor!  For most of his career on the screen he averaged 13 films a year.

One of my favorites in this film had a small part.  David Oliver was the bank teller with the straw hat.  Billy Mitchell comes in and wants to withdraw his money because the teller with the hat makes him nervous.  He made ME nervous with his nervous little voice and that sneeze!  Billy Mitchell was a tenor sax player with Dizzie Gillespie and Count Basie.  David Oliver also appeared in Fields' You Can't Cheat an Honest Man a year earlier, and I also noticed him in Pot O' Gold (1941) with Jimmy Stewart and Paulette Goddard.

I guess its time to watch some more W. C. Fields movies.  I had the pleasure of meeting his grandson, Bill Fields, at one of our Sons of the Desert meetings quite a few years ago.  I believe he still lives in the Philadelphia area.

Franklin Pangborn

To really see bit actors en masse, you have to go back to the days of two-reel comedies.  Here we find the likes of James Finlayson, Edgar Kennedy, Billy Gilbert, Charlie Hall, Tiny Sandford, and of course, Franklin Pangborn.

Pangborn was born in 1889 and lived until 1958.  He started acting in plays and went on to silent films.  It takes years to develop a persona for an acting career (if you want one) and he started out doing some very serious parts in dramas.  No one will remember them because he so effectively became a comedian.

Think about almost all of the Pangborn films.  He mostly played a man in some type of authoritarian position who gets flustered with the situation.  In his frustration to keep everything going on his terms, he lets his comic genius escape.  He usually is cast as the hotel manager, store clerk, butler, salesman, and as the bank examiner, J. Pinkerton Snoopington in The Bank Dick.  I loved watching him drink with Fields in that movie.

He started in films after WWI in 1926 and made over 200 movies.  He worked with most of the greats including Bing Crosby, Mack Sennett, Fred Astaire, Our Gang (where he played Otto Phocus, a photographer), with William Powell and Carol Lombard in My Man Godfrey, and so many others.  He was in quite a few films with his friend Edward Everett Horton.


There is a lengthy biography of Pangborn found on IMDb.  Of course, anything you read on the web could be less than accurate (including my blog, but I try to check things out) so check the details if you need to.  This one is worth it.

Watch for him in a more dramatic role in Now, Voyager with Bette Davis.  I have seen that film, but it was a while ago.  I will watch it again and pay more attention to the bit parts!  Later Franklin played a few small cameos on TV.  I guess his character worked well for quite a while, but audiences got more sophisticated and he got older.  It is sad to think about how that happens, and it probably happens to most of us.  Franklin Pangborn will be remembered.