Background
Turpin was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on September 19, 1869, the son of a candy store owner, Ernest Turpin, and Sarah Buckley.
His father was of French descent.
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Bob Cantfield and Jim Halloran after an initial scrap become close friends. When Bob escorts Vivian Saunders to the prom, Jim is jealous but faithful to his friend. However as Bob becomes the hero of the football team Jim's jealousy and envy build. 64 minutes - Orchestra Score by Lou McMahon. Included short CAPTAIN KIDD’S KITTENS (1927) 15 minutes.
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"Horns! Horns!" Yes, this is that Laurel and Hardy film: Ollie suffers a nervous breakdown working at a horn factory; the incessant sound of the instruments nearly drives him mad. When his doctor recommends a quiet vacation at sea, he and Stan decide to set sail in a small boat. But they have an unwelcome passenger: bulldog-puss Richard Cramer (an L&H regular), as an escaped criminal who forces them to help him get away. Cramer is delightfully nasty as the bad guy, who outsmarts their plan to poison him with fake food by making them eat it first. --Marshall Fine
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Turpin was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on September 19, 1869, the son of a candy store owner, Ernest Turpin, and Sarah Buckley.
His father was of French descent.
As Turpin later told the story, when he was seventeen his father gave him a hundred dollars and sent him out to start on his own. He promptly lost his entire stake in a crap game in New Jersey and took to the road as a hobo.
For the next five years he roamed the country, taking odd jobs from time to time. His wanderings eventually led him to Chicago, where, convinced that he had comic ability, he got up an act, answered an ad, and was soon appearing in vaudeville at twenty dollars a week.
He played the Sam T. Jack burlesque houses in Chicago; then, adopting Happy Hooligan of cartoon fame as his stage character, he toured the country in that role for the next seventeen years.
Although he had had earlier trouble with his eyes, it was apparently during this act, which included balancing a card on the tip of his nose, that his eyes became permanently crossed. At the height of his success in the early 1920's--at least, according to a publicity release-he took out a million-dollar insurance policy with Lloyd's of London against their ever becoming uncrossed.
Turpin entered the movies about 1907, working at "Broncho Billy" Anderson's Essanay Studio in Chicago. Since jobs were intermittent, he alternated for the first few years between stage and screen; by 1914, however, he was one of Essanay's leading comedians, and the studio featured him in a series of comedies with Charlie Chaplin in 1915.
In 1916 Turpin moved to the Keystone Studio in Edendale, Calif. , on the outskirts of Los Angeles. This was operated by Mack Sennett, and Turpin until his retirement in 1925 remained with Sennett.
Sennett recalls that early in the 1920's, when he was paying the comedian a record $1, 500 a week, Turpin would appear in public places, cry out "I'm Ben Turpin! Three thousand dollars a week!" and promptly perform a "108. "
Turpin was the perfect personification of the slapstick comedian--a whimsically grotesque figure willing and able to do anything for a laugh. Although he never rivaled the universal appeal and popularity of Chaplin, Buster Keaton, or Harold Lloyd, he became one of the leading exponents of the special brand of swift, zany, illogical comedy made famous by Mack Sennett and his Keystone Studio.
Sennett's two-reelers blended the broad, pantomimed buffoonery of circus and burlesque with the visual trickery made possible by the motion picture camera. And while the custard pie was virtually the symbol of Sennett's art, his farces also embraced parody, caricature, and satire.
Among Sennett's troupe of clown-acrobats, Turpin was completely at home, scoring his greatest successes in films that hilariously parodied such contemporary stars as Theda Bara, William S. Hart, Erich von Stroheim, and Rudolph Valentino. His Shriek of Araby (1923), burlesquing the vogue for exotic romances that followed Valentino's The Sheik, was one of the most popular two-reel comedies of all time.
Unlike many of the popular stars of the silent screen, Turpin saved his money, investing it in real estate and apartment buildings. He was reputed to be worth more than a million dollars.
During the late 1930's he emerged from retirement to play minor parts in such films as Swing High, Saps at Sea, and Hollywood Cavalcade.
He died in the Santa Monica (Calif. ) Hospital of coronary sclerosis and was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, Calif.
("Horns! Horns!" Yes, this is that Laurel and Hardy film: ...)
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book
He was a Roman Catholic.
He was member of the Good Shepherd Parish and the Catholic Motion Picture Guild in Beverly Hills, California.
Starred in scores of films, his crazy eyes, large toothbrush mustache, receding chin, Paderewski-like hairdo, and slight build made him the ideal foil for the outlandish mayhem of the Keystone "heavies. " His physical agility was extraordinary, and he himself took special pride in his ability to perform the "108, " a difficult and hazardous circus fall in which the performer begins to do a split and then turns it into a back somersault. Turpin's prowess extended to landing on his head or flat on his back without injuring himself in the process.
Turpin and his first wife, actress Carrie Lemieux, were married in Chicago on February 18, 1907. In 1923, Mrs. Turpin became ill with influenza, which caused the loss of her hearing. Heartbroken, Turpin took his seriously ill wife to the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in Quebec, hoping she would be healed. She eventually became an invalid, with Turpin placing his career on hold to care for her. Carrie died on October 2, 1925. Turpin remarried on July 8, 1926 to Babette Dietz in Los Angeles.