You know who that man is? Bet you don't. It's Max Davidson, who once upon a time was a fairly big comedy star in this country. That he's so utterly unknown these days is due to three things. One is that his important work was all in silent films. Another is that an awful lot of the films he made have been lost. A third, which may not be unrelated, is that the character he played on the screen was a cliché Jewish stereotype. That was probably the biggest problem. Davidson was a good actor and a funny one — or at least he is in the few films of his I've ever been able to see. But he played this little hunched-over Jew who mugged and shrugged all the time. When that act started to get old, it got old in a hurry.
I didn't know much about him so I was delighted to see that Richard Bann — who knows absolutely everything about movies, especially those made on the Hal Roach lot — has written the best article ever about the forgotten clown. And it's not just the best because it's the only one.