Mickey Mouse is an American cartoon character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime icon and mascot of The Walt Disney Company, Mickey is an anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves. Inspired by such silent film personalities as Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, Mickey is traditionally characterized as a sympathetic underdog who gets by on pluck and ingenuity in the face of challenges bigger than himself. The character's depiction as a small mouse is personified through his diminutive stature and falsetto voice, the latter of which was originally provided by Disney. Mickey is one of the world's most recognizable and universally acclaimed fictional characters.
Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. Slapstick may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from inept use of props such as saws and ladders.
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American actor, comedian and director. He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".
This is an overview of 1923 in film, including significant events, a list of films released and notable births and deaths.
Edward Francis Cline was an American screenwriter, actor, writer and director best known for his work with comedians W.C. Fields and Buster Keaton. He was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin and died in Hollywood, California.
Limelight is a 1952 American comedy-drama film written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin, based on a novella by Chaplin titled Footlights. The score was composed by Chaplin and arranged by Ray Rasch.
Steamboat Bill, Jr. is a 1928 silent comedy film starring Buster Keaton. Released by United Artists, the film is the final product of Keaton's independent production team and set of gag writers.
Silent comedy is a style of film, related to but distinct from mime, invented to bring comedy into the medium of film in the silent film era (1900s–1920s) before a synchronized soundtrack which could include talking was technologically available for the majority of films. Silent comedy is still practiced, albeit much less frequently, and it has influenced comedy in modern media as well.
Kevin Brownlow is a British film historian, television documentary-maker, filmmaker, author, and film editor. He is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era, having become interested in silent film at the age of eleven. This interest grew into a career spent documenting and restoring film. Brownlow has rescued many silent films and their history. His initiative in interviewing many largely forgotten, elderly film pioneers in the 1960s and 1970s preserved a legacy of early mass-entertainment cinema. He received an Academy Honorary Award at the 2nd Annual Governors Awards given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on 13 November 2010. This was the first occasion on which an Academy Honorary Award was given to a film preservationist.
Educational Pictures, also known as Educational Film Exchanges, Inc. or Educational Films Corporation of America, was an American film production and film distribution company founded in 1916 by Earle Hammons (1882–1962). Educational primarily distributed short subjects; it is best known for its series of comedies starring Buster Keaton (1934–37) and the earliest screen appearances of Shirley Temple (1932–34). The company ceased production in 1938, and finally closed in 1940 when its film library was sold at auction.
David Robinson is an English film critic and author. He is a former film critic for both the Financial Times and The Times and wrote the official biography of Charlie Chaplin.
Al St. John was an early American motion-picture comedian. He was a nephew of silent film star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, with whom he often performed on screen. St. John was employed by Mack Sennett and also worked with many other leading players such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Mabel Normand. His film career successfully transitioned from the silent era into sound, and by the late 1930s and 1940s he was working predominantly in Westerns, often portraying the scruffy comedy-relief character "Fuzzy Q. Jones". Among his notable performances in that role are in the "Billy the Kid" series of films released by the Producers Releasing Corporation from 1940 to 1946 and in that company's "Lone Rider" series from 1941 to 1943.
Brian Patrick Stepanek is an American actor. He is known for his role as Arwin Hawkhauser on the Disney Channel original series The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and Brian on Brian O'Brian. He was also a Sector Seven Agent in the 2007 Michael Bay film Transformers, and also had a supporting role in The Island. Stepanek is also known as the voice of Roger in Father of the Pride and played Tom Harper on the Nickelodeon series Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn from 2014 to 2018. Since 2016, he has voiced Lynn Loud Sr. on the Nickelodeon animated series The Loud House, and has since portrayed the character in the 2022 live-action spinoff series The Really Loud House.
Jules White was an American film director and producer best known for his short-subject comedies starring The Three Stooges.
Mickey's Gala Premier is a Walt Disney cartoon produced in 1933, directed by Burt Gillett, and featuring parodies of several famous Hollywood film actors from the 1930s. It was the 58th Mickey Mouse short film, and the eighth of that year.
Spite Marriage is a 1929 American silent comedy film co-directed by Buster Keaton and Edward Sedgwick and starring Keaton and Dorothy Sebastian. It is the second film Keaton made for MGM and his last silent film, although he had wanted it to be a "talkie" or full sound film. While the production has no recorded dialogue, it does feature an accompanying synchronized score and recorded laughter, applause and other sound effects in some scenes. Keaton later wrote gags for some up-and-coming MGM stars like Red Skelton, and from this film recycled many gags, some shot-for-shot, for Skelton's 1943 film I Dood It.
The Comic is a 1969 American Pathécolor comedy-drama film co-written, co-produced, and directed by Carl Reiner. It stars Dick Van Dyke as Billy Bright, Michele Lee as Bright's love interest, and Reiner himself and Mickey Rooney as Bright's friends and work colleagues. Reiner wrote the screenplay with Aaron Ruben; it was inspired by the end of silent film era and, in part, by the life of silent film superstar Buster Keaton.
Thames Silents is a series of releases of films from the silent era produced by the British ITV contractor Thames Television. Kevin Brownlow and David Gill were the two main people involved in the project.
Raymond Rohauer was an American film collector and distributor.
The Coppertop Flop Show, also known as Coppertop Flop, is a series of television shorts which first aired on the Disney Channel on August 1, 2013. The series was created by Derek Baynham, Kelly May and Calum Worthy. Individual episodes are quick comedy sketches, less than 5 minutes in length. The final original short premiered on February 6, 2014.
