From left: stills from Dumb Daddies (1928) and Call of the Cuckoo (1927).

MAX DAVIDSON (1875-1950)

CAREER OVERVIEW / THE CRITICS RAVE / A GAG FOR THE AGES / MAX DAVIDSON MYSTERIES / LOST MASTERPIECES?

Squinting through his beady eyes, Max Davidson peered out at a world in which he was forever bedeviled by incompetent tradesmen, larcenous businessmen, and most of all... his own family. Playing an old world Jew adrift in a land of goyim, Davidson was a comedian whose stock-in-trade was the stereotypical European Jew. His full beard, shaggy hair, bowler hat, and dark clothes from an earlier century, marked him as an immigrant. His characterization was a catalogue of hand gestures, winces, beard strokes, and shrugs. He played Ginsbergs, Cohens, Gimplewarts, and Weinbergs. He portrayed rag men, junk men, pawnbrokers, and most often, tailors. Jokes about stinginess, greed, and pork were all part his comic repertoire. The character was not original. Comic and/or villainous Jews had precedents in literature and stage stretching back to Shylock and beyond.

A case could easily be made that Davidson and his films should be tossed into the "Moran & Mack" dustbin of justly forgotten ethnic comedians. But the actor could and often did transcend that genre. There's something more to his character that attracts us.

He played a fish out of water. Davidson's character was struggling to adjust to mainstream America and his comedy grew out of the gulf between his old world manners and the new world that his children were born into. It was a tension that millions of Americans in the 1920's were either experiencing or witnessing. Between 1877 and 1927 the Jewish population in the U.S. rose from 229,000 to 4,228,000. The earlier wave of Jewish immigrants were succeeding in various trades and professions, but later arrivals (most of whom came from Poland or Russia) struggled to rise from utter poverty in urban ghettos. In a 1927 feature, Pleasure Before Business, Max makes a bad bet at the racetrack. His line, "If my bet ain't canceled, we'll be immigrants again.", must have resonated with millions of new Americans.

A small man (5'4" and 130 lbs.), Davidson was not an athletic comedian, but used his face and hands to garner most of his laughs. Rarely the perpetrator of mayhem, his forte was in reacting to the chaos around him. It's no wonder he found his artistic home at Hal Roach Studios, where directors knew that an actor's reaction to a gag could get a bigger laugh than the gag itself.

Max Davidson is best remembered for his wonderful series of shorts made for Hal Roach between 1927 and 1929. Like much of the Roach product of the era (or at least those shorts other than Laurel & Hardy's or Our Gang's) are lost. But surviving gems like Jewish Prudence, Don't Tell Everything, Should Second Husbands Come First? (all 1927) and Pass the Gravy (1928) rank among the funniest two-reelers ever made.

CAREER OVERVIEW:

• May 23, 1875: Born in Berlin, Germany
• circa 1890: Arrived in the United States.
• 1895: Made a living touring the country as an actor. Known to have been same Louisville, Kentucky stock company as D.W. Griffith.
• 1912: Earliest known film appearance, in D.W. Griffith's The Narrow Road.
• 1913-1915: In short comedies for Reliance/Majestic "Komic Films".
• 1915-1917: Comic and supporting roles for Fine Arts/Triangle, including D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916).
• 1918-1926: Successful freelance career as character actor in features, the most notable of which are two films with Jackie Coogan, The Rag Man and Old Clothes (both 1925).
• 1926-1929: While continuing to make appearances in feature films, stars in a successful series of two-reelers for Hal Roach.
• 1930-1942: Bit parts in talking shorts and features.
• September 4, 1950: Died at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, California.

 THE CRITICS RAVE:

DON'T TELL EVERYTHING. This comedy is of the type that makes reviewers and critics laugh aloud so it would be hard to understand an audience, viewing the film simply for entertainment, not laughing at the facial expressions of Max Davidson nor the grins of Spec O'Donnell; not to mention the bright gags worked up, some old and some new, but all funny because of the manner in which they are executed. Davidson has established quite a reputation for his delineation of Hebrew characters.

Max, a widower with an incorrigible son, attends a party at which is a rich widow; love at first sight between Max and the lady, but, fearing his chances of marriage lessened, Max denies relationship to the boy whom the lady dislikes. It is around this theme that the gags are built--and they come funny and fast.

In addition to Davidson and O'Donnell the cast comprises Jess Devorska, Lillian Elliott and James Finlayson. Leo McCarey directed and made a good job of it.

"'Nuff sed--Max Davidson is in this one, and that's tantamount to a de luxe endorsement of any short subject."

BLOW BY BLOW. As far as the throwing of food is concerned this must be put on record as the most completely done thing of its kind the writer has ever witnessed. As an accomplishment in the way of hurling a full course of dinner--from soup to nuts--in the several faces around a dining table--it must be rated as a masterpiece of this sort of comedy making. Never, we dare state, has food ever traveled faster across a table--or with truer aim. Max Davidson is the head of a quarrelsome family. Daughter is entertaining the boy-friend amid the racket. Boy-friend states that more laughs are needed in the house as they gather at the table. Spec O'Donnell playfully shoots a piece of butter to the side of his father's face. From this point on the game gathers headway, ending in a fusilade of food throwing--of course providing the missing humor in this household.

A GAG FOR THE AGES:

Certainly the biggest laugh-getter of Davidson's surviving shorts is "Pass the Gravy" (1928). The highlight occurs when Max's daughter and son-in-law attempt to warn Max that he is serving a prize-winning Bingham rooster to it's owner. Martha Sleeper and Gene Nelson perform hilarious gyrations to silently convey this fact to an uncomprehending Papa Gimplewart (Max).

THREE MAX DAVIDSON MYSTERIES:

Was Max Davidson responsible for D.W. Griffith' entry into the movies? Linda Arvidson (D.W. Griffith's wife in the Biograph days) remembered it that way. In her 1925 memoir, the former Mrs. Griffith recalled that it was Max Davidson who told the future director, "I work in [motion pictures] during the summer; make five dollars some days when I play a leading part, but usually it's three...Now you could write the little stories for the pictures. They pay fifteen dollars for the good ones. Don't feel offended at the suggestion. It's not half bad, really." Mrs. Griffith's recollection may have been apocryphal, for Davidson's own studio biographies consistently date his film debut as 1912, not 1907 when this exchange is reported to have occurred.

Were Jewish pressure groups really responsible for the demise of the series? Scanning through exhibitors' reports in the weekly trades, I have not found any evidence of this. Perhaps the Roach collection at U.S.C. has some letters on file of this nature. I suspect that the series simply ran out of gas in late 1928, probably more due to the transfer of Leo McCarey to the newly hot Laurel and Hardy series than for any other reason.

A final mystery is whether Max appeared in any films after DeMille's Reap the Wild Wind in 1942. Perhaps this will be answered with the long-awaited publication of the AFI's "Catalogue of Feature Films 1941-1950".

TWO LOST MASTERPIECES?

One would give much to see at least two lost films in the Davidson canon. The first is the feature length version of Don Quixote (1916) with DeWolfe Hopper as the knight errant and Max as Sancho Panza. Contemporary critics were not particularly enthusiastic, but it would certainly be a fascinating curiosity.

Blow-by-Blow (1928) is one of the most intriguing shorts of the series. Like Pass the Gravy, it was based on the simplest of premises. The Gimplewarts are always quarreling, but when Spec O'Donnell incites a food fight, all hostilities dissolve into laughter. Motion Picture News called it "...a masterpiece of this kind of comedy making. Never, we dare state, has food ever traveled faster across a table - or with truer aim."

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