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mrbertiewooster
Joined: 26 Jun 2007
Posts: 532
Location: London, UK
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 Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 6:06 am Post subject: DEE LAMPTON |
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Fort Worth Star Telegram, TX, 24 August 1915:
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JLNeib
Joined: 26 Jun 2007
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 6:49 am Post subject: |
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| Interesting. The article states he is trying out at Keystone, but I don't think he worked for them until later on. He started out at Roach, didn't he? I know he also was at Essanay for A Night in the Show. |
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josemas
Joined: 25 Nov 2006
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 10:05 am Post subject: |
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| JLNeib wrote: | | Interesting. The article states he is trying out at Keystone, but I don't think he worked for them until later on. He started out at Roach, didn't he? I know he also was at Essanay for A Night in the Show. |
The earliest that I have pegged Dee Lampton at Rolin is March of 1916 when he began playing supporting roles in Harold Lloyd's Lonesome Luke comedies starting with LUKE RIDES ROUGHSHOD.
Lampton was promoted to the "Skinny" series that summer and left Rolin that fall after the series was dropped.
He returned again to Rolin in the fall of 1917 playing support first in the Toto comedies and then in the Lloyd "glasses" comedies (which he continued to do until his sudden death in 1919).
It's quite possible that Roach may have met Lampton during his brief tenure directing for Essanay in the spring of 1915. Lampton is supposed to be in the Essanay comedy FUN AT A BALL GAME which is one of the 1915 Essanay comedies that Essanay expert David Kiehn believes may have been directed by Roach. Several Essanay personel who worked with Roach there later migrated to Rolin in 1915-1916.
Maybe some of our Sennett scholars can pinpoint any work he did for Keystone?
Joe Moore |
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mrbertiewooster
Joined: 26 Jun 2007
Posts: 532
Location: London, UK
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 11:58 am Post subject: |
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Presumably every aspiring comedian who went out West sought a tryout with the biggest comedy producer in the business and, given the way the article contrasts Lampton's optimism about Sennett with the rejection slips he received from other West Coast production companies, it looks as if Lampton was lucky enough to have been granted an audition with Sennett, albeit an unsuccessful one.
Nevertheless both the 1915 clipping and 1919 article below do tend to accord with David Kiehn's theory that Lampton did successfully pitch up at Chaplin's Essanay unit, where Roach was directing.
As Joe intimates, there were quite a few players in the same unit who would in short order form the backbone of Rolin, including Bud Jamison, Snub Pollard, Tom Crizer, Harry Todd and Margaret Joslin.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 4 September 1919:
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mrbertiewooster
Joined: 26 Jun 2007
Posts: 532
Location: London, UK
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 4:32 am Post subject: |
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Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 5 October 1919:
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mrbertiewooster
Joined: 26 Jun 2007
Posts: 532
Location: London, UK
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| Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 5:30 pm Post subject: |
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Futher evidence that Lampton received at least a tryout at Keystone. From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 24 September 1915:
Two months later however, Fort Worth exhibitors were giving local boy Lampton's equal billing with Chaplin in advertisements promoting "A Night in the Show". That seems to suggest, as per earlier posts, that the audition with Sennett was not a successful one and that Essanay gave him his first break. |
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mrbertiewooster
Joined: 26 Jun 2007
Posts: 532
Location: London, UK
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| Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 9:11 am Post subject: |
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Lampton's starring contract for Hal Roach, dated July 1916, is currently on sale on EBay.
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