James Parrott

Slapstick experts host this look at the life and films of Charley Chase with rare film clips and photos.

The king is a juvenile dolt who tries the patience of the shrewish queen. While she's in the throne room awaiting him, he's outside playing with guns, drilling his soldiers, and dallying with the wife of a new minister. The queen catches him kissing her, her husband figures out that something fishy is going on, and the king tries his best to proceed with his plans for a night out. The queen contrives to keep him cuffed in the bedroom: king, queen, minister, and coquette end up in a game of musical beds. Will his royal highness get his night out?

When Charlie borrows the policeman's uniform of his girl's father and captures a lunatic, his prospective father-in-law dons the uniform just in time to receive the reward of $1,000.

Paul is practicing the art of being a cowboy. He consults a book before firing his gun, climbing onto a saddle on top of a chair and then falling off and dressing his wounds. He then gets back on his 'saddle' and fires his gun again, this time in the direction of another man who has just entered the room. Paul leaves abruptly and rides into town on a horse, and straight through a crowded saloon. A town marshal sees this as act act of bravery and rewards Paul with a sheriff's badge immediately. A fearful rival makes his mark when he lights his cigarette by tossing it into the air and shooting at it to ignite it!

The troubles of a movie projectionist in a newly-purchased theater are chronicled in this two-reeler starring Paul Parrot and Mildred June.

James Parrott having a lot of pets destroying the place.

SHOOT STRAIGHT - starring Paul Parrott, with Jobyna Ralston, Eddie Baker and George Rowe. A rarely-seen comedy short. Parrott is a hapless hunter in this predecessor to Tex Avery toons of the 1940s, and in a series of inventive gag sequences fails to capture squirrel, rabbit, chinchilla, bobcat, duck, and bear all in one reel.

A couple of pals tries to stay out of trouble, without much luck.

Paul plays at being a detective until dad, who is a revenue officer, sends him out to prove his worth by rounding up some desperate moonshiners.

'Snub' Pollard wants to hang himself but figures joining the circus was better idea.

Paul Parrott comedy produced by Hal Roach.

A cruel sea captain shanghais Jimmie to work on his ship, but Jimmie's girlfriend also stows away on board, disguised as a sailor.

After many difficulties getting into a baseball game with his girl, Paul is pressed into service as a pinch hitter.

The two-reel silent film comedy The Caretaker's Daughter was distributed by Pathe in 1925. Produced by the prolific Hal Roach, the film stars the great Charley Chase in a case of multiple incarnations!

James Parrott doing all kinds of handy work.

Paul's career as a shoeshine man is interrupted when he is mistaken for an escaped convict, but after the Station Master gives him a job at the train station he proves his worth.

Paul, a great college athlete, is sent to his uncle's farm to be developed, but turns against the continual round of chores. And at the table he is continually elbowed aside by the huskier farmhands, until he gives up in disgust. But a last attempt to understand the intricacies of the tractor results in his demolishing the house, and the farmer's daughter aids his escape.

Paul Parrott plays an obsessive-compulsive bill poster in this thoroughly average Hal Roach comedy from 1923. Hired to help publicize a new Gloria Snootful picture, Paul goes bonkers with glue and paper and ends up attaching promotional material to any surface within his reach, including the rear ends of a number of people, though his attempt to nail a poster to a glass window is somewhat less successful.

Tired of being constantly nagged by "Paul" and another suitor, their shared romantic interest (referred to as Paul's inamorata) purposely has herself arrested for speeding. She vows to marry whichever man is able to get her released from jail. Both men make various, often bumbling, attempts to join her in jail to facilitate her release. After both suitors successfully manage to get themselves locked up, they discover that the woman has already been freed by her father. The film concludes with the two suitors facing actual prison terms while the woman remains free.

Sid Smith plays a chauffeur to James Parrott who helps a vamp captivate his boss while foiling a bank robbery.

A James Parrott comedy short.

A landlord is attending his new tenants' rollicking and well-attended housewarming party. As midnight arrives, a ghostly apparition appears outside the window--and our frightened hero immediately breaks out the shotgun to fend off the phantom menace.

James Parrott joins every lodge in town to get in good with people as he tries to sell his fire extinguishers.

An opportunistic umbrella salesman attempts to save a musician and his daughter from blackmail.

The setting is a shoe store and the action is pretty frenetic. You get to see Paul lose the store's money, catch a shoe thief, knock down a bunch of shelves and more.

James Parrott & Ernest Morrison gets chased around a lot. Filmed in 1921 and copyrighted in 1922, but not released until 1926.

Well executed but unexceptional one-reeler about a couple of incompetent paperhangers. James Parrott, brother of Charley Chase, was an equally skilled man behind the camera, later writing and directing some of Roach's best two-reelers, before he died too young, but while the gags here are well done, he never really developed much of a personality in these pieces and they are not, somehow, quite as sharp as the stuff he was co-starring in with Sid Saylor two or three years before. The extended gag with the plank of wood seesawing is typical.

In this 1922 Pathe-distributed, Hal Roach silent-era comedy, the owner of a local streetcar business is in danger of losing his franchise, but the streetcar operator (played by Paul Parrott) and his girl friend (who happens to be the boss's daughter; portrayed by Jobyna Ralston) try to save the day.

Two lifelong friends vie for the affection of the same woman.

Hal Roach short is a spoof of the 1923 Western COVERED WAGON, which was a huge hit for Paramount. In this film a group of people are heading out West to Hollywood so they pack up their "wagons" and head out where they must battle various elements including crossing a dangerous river and battling Indians. The "wagons" are actually cars with a cover on them and the Indians even ride in on bicycles so you can tell the type of humor that Roach is going for.

Hapless photographer James Parrott attempts to shoot a bathing beauty pageant.

The Golf Bug,1922, directed by James D. Davis, starring James "Paul" Parrott and Jobyna Ralston, is a short silent comedy film.

Hank Mann heads Way Out West in this silent comedy.

A woman and her dog defend an innocent man.

Paul Parrott stars as a detective in a hotel trying to recognize a fake sheik

James Parrott as a very persistent book salesman.

James Parrott, little Sammy Brooks, Baker and Jones ("the strong guy" = the drunk) are all workers on a construction-sit run by violent and exploitative boss Noah Young and it is a "building a skyscraper" comedy.

The penniless tourist, "Appetite Andy" (Paul Parrott) stops by at the Hollywood Cafateria (sic) where the gullible boss (Mark Jones) welcomes him in to sample many of the soups and delicacies available to customers. After savoring many of the dishes, Andy refuses them all and attempts to leave, never intending to pay. The boss is having none of it and drags him back inside and puts him to work in the kitchen. The head chef (Charles Stevenson) is chopping food when the order comes in for chicken to be prepared. He instructs the new employee to grab a chicken (from a crate in the corner) and "prepare" it.

Bebe and girlfriend go shopping for new corsets. Harold sneaks into the corset shop and a customer asks him to take her measurements - a ticklish task, as the brash young man suddenly becomes playfully bashful.

The Lamb is a 1918 American short comedy film starring Harold Lloyd. It is believed to be lost.

Stan Laurel is picked up at the train depot and brought back by the husband to the family home where the wife is having a suffragette meeting. None too pleased they cause mayhem and then the neighbours are brought into it as Stan cleans up the backyard by throwing all the rubbish into their award winning garden.

In this early short Harold Lloyd sneaks into a movie studio in order to locate an attractive young lady he's just met at a snack bar. He's retrieved a letter she dropped and wants to return it to her, but it's pretty clear that his interest extends beyond mere politeness. (She's the adorable young Bebe Daniels, so this is easy to understand.) The movie studio setting provides Harold with lots of opportunities to do what comedians do in comedies like this one: flirt with actresses, anger the studio brass, and dash through sets disrupting everything.

In this popular two reeler where Harold runs to the rescue of a woman on a fire engine, he is seen hanging on the moving vehicle by the released water hose that forces him closer to the ground.

Harold and his rival fight over Bebe on her birthday, first at her home and then at a nearby skating rink.

Harold invades the "Gilded Guzzle" café, where he appropriates a lady's roll of money, hides under a table and impersonates a cigar store Indian.

A bumbling American soldier saves a girl from a bunch of Cossacks.

Harold becomes the victim of a clever bulldog pup who chases him in and out of various places.

Stan plays a janitor at a hotel dropping letters and trying to retrieve them with a vacuum, getting wet, helping a lady shoot her cheating husband and being chased by the police.

Not one but two of Charlie Chaplin impersonators, Harry Mann and Monty Banks, a film directed by Charley Chase still under the name of Charles Parrott. They go driving around town experiencing various car theft problems.

A nervy young man follows a pretty lady into a diner to flirt with her, but winds up getting stuck with the tab.

Harold visits the Ozarks, where he has some funny experiences with a mountain girl and her eccentric family.

A rich man's daughter has more suitors than she's interested in, and he's going to marry her off -- even if she doesn't know about it.

Harold Lloyd starred in the successful Lonesome Luke series. However, he soon grew tired of the obvious Charlie Chaplin imitation. In an attempt to reinvent himself, Lloyd donned a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, and thus, a new comedy legend was born. Setting himself against Chaplin, Lloyd's "glasses character" was an everyman, a resourceful go-getter who embodied the ambitious, success-seeking attitude of 1920s America.

While running away from his girl's father, Harold's car breaks down in front of a dance hall run by crooks. Harold has to not only stay one step ahead of the girl's father, but also those trying to rob them of everything they have.

A photo studio operator seems only interested in flirting with women. Hilarity ensues.

A short film starring Harold Lloyd.

Our hero is a janitor in a old age rest home who actually runs the place.

A short film starring Harold Lloyd.

A crooked lawyer sells his car.

A short film starring Harold Lloyd.