We seem to be dwelling on the subject of Death here at POVonline. A recent entry in this category is Joe Cobb, who's being identified in newspaper obits as "the fat kid" in the silent "Our Gang" comedies. That's a bit confusing because, first of all, Cobb did appear in the first few "Our Gang" talkies before Management decided he'd grown too old and replaced him with "Chubby" Chaney. Secondly, most folks will miss the distinction of the deceased having appeared in silents and will confuse him with "Spanky" MacFarland, whose career was wholly in sound films.
In any case — and boy, I'm getting morbid here and I don't mean to — Cobb was 85 when he passed away last week. We need to face the reality that we are very close to the day when every single human being who worked in silent films, on either side of the camera, will be gone. The last time Leonard Maltin and I were together, we got onto the topic and between us, we could only name about a dozen, all well into their eighties or nineties, all former child stars who remember very little of those days.
Lately, as a couple of veteran creators have passed in the fields of animation and comic books, I find myself among younger folks who are muttering, "Boy, they're all dying on us." To some extent, that's true. The men who worked in the so-called Golden Ages of theatrical animation and comic books are all in their eighties and nineties though, happily, there are a lot more of them around than we might think. This is not the case with silent films, a field which had its Golden (and only) Age twenty-some years earlier. Joe Cobb was twelve when the first talkies were made and an era ended.
There will probably be no notice when the last silent film performer leaves us and, in truth, not that much will change. Still, I can't help but get a little whiplash at the passage of time and the missed opportunities. When I was around twenty, I went out to the Motion Picture Country Home a few times to see Larry Fine of the Three Stooges. Larry was not a silent film star but he was surrounded by them there. He introduced me to Babe London, whose obits later identified her as "the fat girl" in Buster Keaton and Laurel & Hardy comedies. She, in turn, introduced me to at least a dozen silent film veterans — this was around 1972 — and I now wish I'd spent more time with those folks and taken some notes. I don't even recall the names of some of them. Later, I went up to the home of the great producer, Hal Roach, and spent an afternoon chatting with him about "Our Gang," Laurel, Hardy and (especially) Charley Chase. Mr. Roach enjoyed the chat and invited me to come back anytime but I guess I figured he'd always be there. I never got around to going back.
There's no real point to all this, other than that we have to keep reminding ourselves not to take people for granted. There are plenty of great animators and comic book creators around who can tell us about working for Disney in the thirties, DC Comics in the forties, EC in the fifties, etc. We need to respect them, honor them, interview them. We need to remember that future generations will not have that opportunity and — eventually — we won't, either. Let's make use of these people (in a nice way) before they're extinct. And next time I post here, it'll be about someone who's alive. Promise.