‘Raymond Griffith: The Silk Hat Comedian’
Undercrank Productions/Library of Congress

Among the books prized by fans of film comedy, “The Silent Clowns” by Walter Kerr is considered particularly indispensable. Yes, the author is the same Walter Kerr for whom a theater is named on Manhattan’s West 48th Street, the Pulitzer Prize winning critic renowned for not mincing words when it came to reviewing the latest Broadway offerings. He was, as you might recall, equivocal about talents as notable as Samuel Beckett, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, and John Van Druten. The latter’s play, “I Am a Camera,” Kerr famously dismissed in three words: “Me no Leica.”

Kerr did, though, give the time of day to Raymond Griffith (1895-1957). An entire chapter of “The Silent Clowns” is dedicated to the “unexpected” comedian and actor who is little remembered today. There’s a reason for that: Many of Griffith’s films have been lost or are otherwise unavailable. All the same, he was enough of a presence at the box office during the 1920s that Paramount bankrolled nine feature-length films. His gifts did not go unnoticed by observers of the time. One reviewer wrote that “Griffith gives Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd or any of our million-dollar-a-year men a race for laurels.”

Journalistic hyperbole is eternal, but I recall exiting a rare screening of “Hands Up!” (1926) feeling that Griffith did, in fact, deserve a place at the table. Not only did he tread similar ground as “The General,” the contemporaneous period comedy by Buster Keaton, but he had the temerity to include historical figures as characters, including Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, and, in an aperçu that will make the fine citizens of Utah squirm in their seats, Brigham Young. With “Hands Up!,” Kerr writes, “Griffith achieves not so much the impossible as … the unacceptable. He makes Abraham Lincoln funny.”

Undercrank Productions has seen fit to produce digital restorations of two Griffith pictures, “Paths to Paradise” (1925) and “You’d Be Surprised” (1926). “Raymond Griffith: The Silk Hat Comedian” is a Blu-Ray set that utilizes 35-mm prints from the collection of the Library of Congress with new musical scores provided by New York City’s own Ben Model. Undercrank has produced similar packages dedicated to Douglas Fairbanks, Marion Davies, Edward Everett Horton, and “The Mishaps of Musty Suffer.” That’s right: Musty Suffer.

Who was Raymond Griffith? He hailed from a Boston-based family of actors and plied his trade in a number of ways — among them, circus performer, pantomimist, and vaudeville hoofer. After a stint in the Navy, he knocked around New York and then joined the company of comedy pioneer Mack Sennett. Griffith wrote screenplays, did some directing, and eventually went on to supporting roles. 

He adopted the manner of a gentleman about town, albeit one who could be as scurrilous as he was dapper. In “Paths to Paradise,” Griffith plays “The Dude From Duluth,” a thief and conman out to secure a diamond necklace and, as a bonus, the love of fellow criminal Betty Compson. The movie was a hit.

“Paths to Paradise” is a sparkling confection, a caper movie marked by dramatic cinematography, adroit direction by Clarence G. Badger, and a wily Compson, who is every bit as invested in the proceedings as Griffith. Some of the set pieces are sterling exemplars of visual comedy: a scene involving a cop in hot pursuit, a tenacious dog, and a flashlight is particularly inventive. It’s clear that Griffith and Badger took inspiration from Keaton, particularly the short comedy “Cops,” in the steady amassing of policemen in the final chase scene. Alas, the chase doesn’t finish as the seventh reel of the film has been lost. The titles explaining its wild complications can’t help but tease and disappoint.

“You’d Be Surprised” isn’t quite as good, being a whodunnit that suffers from a constricted mise en scène and an array of jokes overly dependent on the title cards. Griffith is supple throughout as a coroner more interested in wooing a suspect — that would be Dorothy Sebastian and her beestung lips — than in solving a murder. His comedic timing and facial reactions bely the slapstick norm and they come complete with a devilish undertow. Griffith was, in important regards, a very adult comedian.

“You’d Be Surprised” found favor at the box office and Griffith made a handful of additional pictures before the advent of sound did him in. It’s not that his voice wasn’t suited to his image, but, rather, that Griffith had no voice at all. Whether it was due to a childhood illness or overuse, he wasn’t able to speak much above a whisper. 

Griffith soldiered on behind the camera, taking on production duties for Warner Brothers and Twentieth Century Fox. The debonair wag he fashioned during the Roaring Twenties shouldn’t be forgotten. “The Silk Hat Comedian” is a welcome endeavor and proof, as if we needed it, that our most popular artform is deeper and more varied than we might imagine.

Correction: Betty is the first name of the actress Compson. An incorrect name appeared in an earlier version.