A proper pair of Charlies!
He’s the long-forgotten Scottish comic who last made an audience laugh in 1920. But was Billie Ritchie actually the inspiration for the most famous movie funnyman in history?
WE think we know him from the briefest glance. That over-cropped moustache, the baggy trousers, the tatty jacket and bowler hat which look like they once belonged to a smaller man.
The curly black hair, the cane and the feet splayed at right angles… yes, some legends of the silver screen are simply unmistakeable.
But this is not one of them. There was a time in the early 20th century when movie-goers would have had little difficulty in distinguishing megastar Glaswegian Billie Ritchie from London-born fellow comic actor Charles Spencer Chaplin, who was 15 years his junior.
But 100 years after Ritchie died in relative obscurity it is, of course, Chaplin who springs to mind the moment the eyes alight on the Scotsman’s picture.
Indeed, many are now entirely unaware of Ritchie’s brief but pivotal role in the earliest days of cinema – and of his Scottish origins.
It did not help that, following his death from stomach cancer in 1921, he was described both as an English comic and a Chaplin impersonator. The truth is that he was neither. Some contend that Chaplin borrowed more heavily from Ritchie than vice-versa.
Now, with just weeks to go before the centenary of his death, there are calls for this largely forgotten silent film star to be commemorated in the country of his birth.
One idea is a blue plaque. Yet so sketchy are details of his early life in Glasgow that no one seems sure where it should be placed.
Rather more is understood about his impact on cinema in his heyday. In the second decade of the last century, there were few bigger names than Ritchie’s.
‘He was once clearly a name to conjure with on both sides of the Atlantic,’ says Edinburgh University historian, Dr Trevor Griffiths, who has spent years researching the comic actor and last month gave a talk on him at the Hippfest, the silent movie festival in Bo’ness.
He adds: ‘Billie Ritchie was the first Scot really to make the successful transition from music hall to lead role in movies. In January 1915, Universal Studios plastered their headquarters building on New York’s Broadway with a giant billboard of Ritchie, hailing him as “The Man Who Made Laughter Famous”. For a time, he was the biggest thing on Broadway.’
Ritchie was even credited with performing a miracle with laughter. At the height of his fame a film he starred in, The Fatal Note, was playing in cinemas. Corporal Robert Beck, a despatch rider left deaf and mute by a First World War explosion, saw Ritchie’s turn as the groom in the film and began laughing uncontrollably.
‘He was convalescing at a military hospital near Liverpool when one day the men were allowed to go to a picture house to see a Billie Ritchie film,’ says Dr Griffiths.
‘The story goes he laughs so hard that he feels a pop in his ears and suddenly he can hear. In time, his voice is also restored. The producers were quick to advertise this as the film that was so funny it made Corporal Beck hear and speak again.’
Ritchie’s route to Hollywood closely mirrors that of Chaplin. Born William Hill in Glasgow, on September 14, 1878, his merchant seaman father died when he was a child. His mother, Mary, ran a concert party in the city where she was known as the Glasgow Soprano. At the age of ten, Billie was performing alongside his two sisters.
THEREAFTER, however, his timeline in Scotland fades. By the turn of the century, he was married and living in the south of England, where his daughter, Wyn, was born in 1900. He joined Fred Karno’s famous touring company and excelled in the role of a bowler-hatted drunk, playing it more than 5,000 times despite being a lifelong teetotaller. With Karno, he toured Britain, Europe and then, in 1905, America where he decided to stay and build his name on stage, appearing on the cover of Variety the following year.
The younger Chaplin, who joined Karno later, would end up beating Ritchie to the movies when he was snapped up in 1912 by Hollywood’s Keystone Films, run by Mack Sennett. It was not until three years later that Ritchie signed with L-KO Films, run by Henry Lehrman, Chaplin’s first director at Keystone.
Critics were quick to pick up on the actors’ similarities. ‘It was a cause celebre at the time that Ritchie had stolen Chaplin’s act,’ says Dr Griffiths. ‘When he first appears in the fanzine Picturegoer, it says, “Here’s Billie Ritchie, doesn’t he look like Charlie Chaplin?”
‘Ritchie’s publicists countered that Ritchie had been doing this act on stage long before Chaplin.’
Certainly Chaplin himself never accused Ritchie of copying him – and was rarely shy about protecting his image as unwanted impersonators attempted to cash in on his fame.
In 1917 the actor brought a blanket suit against half a dozen film companies producing spurious knock-offs. He secured an injunction against a certain ‘Charles Aplin’, while there were others against a lady Chaplin, Minerva Courtney, who made three films, and a ‘Charlie from the Orient’, Chai Hong.
Dr Griffiths says: ‘Whereas Chaplin would go after people who were impersonating him, he never went after Ritchie, which suggests he either didn’t see him as a threat or as a direct impersonator.’
Other stories appear to bind the pair together. It was reported Ritchie lent Chaplin the outfit he first wore as The Tramp in a 1914 film called Kid Auto Races at Venice.
‘The story goes that Chaplin’s costume was actually made for Billie Ritchie by his seamstress wife, Winifred,’ says Dr Griffiths. ‘It would be lovely to think the story is true, but the question is, would Chaplin know Ritchie well enough to turn to him of all people and say, “I need help with my wardrobe, what do you suggest?” I am not even sure the two of them were the same size.’
True or not, the suit was snapped up for £3,500 at auction by Devon antiques dealer John Cabello in 2005 and is now reckoned to be worth more than £100,000. According to movie legend, Chaplin was unhappy with the country squire act he was playing and Ritchie, who was appear
ing in a stage sketch show along with the English star, offered to lend him his suit. The famous ‘Little Tramp’ was born when Chaplin found the boots were too large for him and put them on the wrong feet to make them fit. After making the seven-minute silent film, Kid Auto Races, he is said to have returned the suit to Ritchie who, ironically, was later asked to make his own routine more Chaplinesque. Another version is that Chaplin simply trawled through the props store for things that looked familiar from the music hall. ‘That sort of down-ontheir-luck character was a popular type in music hall sketches, of course,’ says Dr Griffiths. While accepting the obvious similarities between the two stars from opposite sides of the Border, Dr Griffiths argues there are key differences too. He says: ‘They had different walks and very different characters. You see the bowler hat, the tight-fitting jacket, the big feet and the cane, and you think Chaplin. But the whole set-up is different; Ritchie’s character is never a tramp. In the film Live Wires and Love Sparks from March 1916, he is a married man working for a telephone company.
‘Chaplin rarely plays married men and while he tries to tug the heartstrings, Ritchie’s character is just out for himself and the next bit of skirt to chase. He is not the sort of moral centre that Chaplin was. Ritchie’s character deserves everything that’s coming his way.’
MOVIE-GOERS lapped it up though. ‘There is a cartoon in the Picturegoer from November 1915 of [silent star] Mary Pickford wearing a moustache and bowler hat and the caption is “Mary Pickford dons Billie Ritchie’s togs”. Not Chaplin’s. You can throw his name around and people knew it.’
Sadly for Ritchie, his films never evolved beyond slapstick. While Chaplin’s characters grew in depth and emotional resonance, Ritchie’s were superficial sketches drawn purely for the quick laugh. His films, says, Dr Griffiths are often ‘quite incoherent’.
‘You don’t know why people are hitting each other, the chases are very badly put together, they don’t flow. That’s Lehrman’s poor technique getting in the way.’
The director was widely known as Mr Suicide, pushing his actors into ever more reckless stunts and Ritchie was only too happy to oblige.
Indeed, it was his willingness to perform stunts which would make latter day film stars blanch that led to serious injuries delivered by an ostrich on the set of the film Poor Policy and a career lay-off of several months. Some say he never recovered. His career certainly never did. It stalled in 1917 when Lehrman quit L-KO and became consumed by a new protégée, a 26year-old aspiring actress named Virginia Rappe.
Infamously, she was found dying at a 1921 party hosted by silent film star Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle who was later accused – and cleared – of her manslaughter. By then, Ritchie – still only in his early 40s – was gravely ill with stomach cancer and unable to work. ‘His last film is 1920’s Wild and Wetter. I haven’t seen it but those who have say he looks ill, very subdued,’ says Dr Griffiths.
When he died on July 6, 1921, death notices in the UK press confirmed his Scottish roots, but others referred to him as English.
Worse, when Picturegoer published its review of showbusiness names who had died that year, he was marked down as an imitator of Charlie Chaplin. ‘That’s a bit cruel, for his reputation to go so quickly,’ says Dr Griffiths.
After his death, Chaplin stepped into the frame once more and helped out his friend’s impoverished wife and daughter, Wyn. ‘Lehrman left Ritchie and his family pretty destitute when he became too ill to work. Chaplin makes Ritchie’s wife wardrobe mistress at his studio. He also went to Ritchie’s funeral, which shows the respect he held him in.’ Ritchie’s daughter would follow her father into showbusiness before marrying Oscar-winning lyricist Ray Evans, co-author of tunes such as Que Sera Sera, Buttons and Bows, and Mona Lisa. When she died in 2003 aged 102, her 55-year marriage was arguably more celebrated in Hollywood than her father’s short career.
Dr Griffiths hopes to redress the balance: ‘He may not have been in the same league as Chaplin, Keaton or Harold Lloyd. But he was a star and he deserves his place in movie history,’ he says. ‘In 1915, one trade paper said there were just a few names who could sell films and add box-office appeal, and those were the original Vitagraph Girl Florence Turner, America’s sweetheart Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Max Linder, who was known as the French Chaplin, and Billie Ritchie.
‘I suspect that at the time of his death, popular culture wasn’t valued as much in Scotland or Britain as it later was, when Glasgow wanted to be remembered as Cinema City. But it is a shame there is not a memorial to him, such as a blue plaque.’ Details of his early life are so scant, however, that no one knows where it should go. Dr Griffiths says: ‘I know there are relatives in Scotland and England, but those with whom I’ve had contact haven’t been able to add greatly to details of his early life.’
He was, however briefly, one of the biggest stars in the world, with a comic talent that brought joy to millions. How odd that, 100 years on from his death, he has become perhaps the greatest Scottish enigma in cinema’s history.