Career
Before his Vaudeville and Broadway stage career and making his films, he was a clown for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Among his Broadway shows were the George Gershwin musical Tip-Toes and five editions of the Ziegfeld Follies. The most high profile of his few feature films was the Marion Davies vehicle Zander the Great, but he is perhaps best recalled as the star of a series of bizarre silent comedy shorts, The Mishaps of Musty Suffer.
Two volumes of surviving Musty Suffer titles were restored by the American Library of Congress and released with music by Ben Model on Digital Video Disc by Undercrank Productions in 2014 and 2015.
That Mr. Harry Watson, Junior., is one of the finest comic artists of the American stage is demonstrated anew with each successive year. Yet the fact doubtless remains that this Watson is an actor of uncommon quality, not a mere slapstick pantaloon, an assaulter of trousers" seats, a professor of the bladder, but a mimic of exceptional capacity, a pantomimist of the very first grade and a comedian of real histrionic parts.
