Larry Semon

A Toymaker tells a bizarre story about how the Land of Oz was ruled by Prince Kynd, but he was overthrown by Prime Minister Kruel. Dorothy learns from Aunt Em that fat, cruel Uncle Henry is not her uncle, and gives her a note due on her eighteenth birthday, which reveals she is actually Princess Dorothea of Oz, and is supposed to marry Prince Kynd. She, Uncle Henry , and two farmhands are swept to Oz by a tornado... (imdb.com)

Well-meaning but accident-prone bakery employee Larry is involved in numerous slapstick mishaps on the job. After accidentally causing the bakery owner to fall into a vat of cake batter Larry finds his job in jeopardy, but he redeems himself by foiling a robbery planned by the bakery foreman. (imdb)

Larry falls afoul of wanted criminal Gentleman Joe, who runs a saloon full of tough guys and gunslingers. (imdb)

A government official staying in a hotel puts some important secret papers in the hotel safe. A ring of spies out to get the papers manages to steal them from the safe, and a lady government agent enlists the help of the hotel's bumbling bellhop in getting back the papers and breaking up the spy ring. (imdb)

A bumbling sawmill employee tries to win the hand of the owner's daughter while staying out of the clutches of the mill's bullying foreman. (imdb)

A harried propman backstage at a theater must put up with malfunctioning wind machines, roosters that spit nitroglycerin, and a gang planning to rob the theater's payroll. (imdb)

Avery DuPoise is a wealthy business man, organising a race. He meets one the competitors of the race, who is in love with DuPoises daughter. Another competitor crashes into the action, who is also in love DuPoises daughter. DuPoise suggests that who ever wins the race will have the opportunity to visit his daughter every Wednesday night. An action packed races commences, with one competitor doing more than usual to win the race. (imdb)

Larry Semon produces his take on a typical Keystone farce, the flirting-in-the-park routine, where pretty Florence Curtis is pursued by four typical Keystone types: the wealthy geezer, the mustachioed Italian, the derby-wearing tough and, of course, the big-footed cop.... and here comes Larry, if not to save the day, at least to make us laugh. (imdb)

Bears and Bad Men is a 1918 silent comedy film directed by Larry Semon[1] and featuring Stan Laurel. (en.wikipedia.org)

The Roman setting provides ample opportunity for a very high concentration of gag titles, many of which are quite witty and many of which are quaint for deriving their humor from the juxtaposition of having ancient Romans use a lot of hip 1918-era slang. The whole thing is an excuse for a good send-up of how the Roman Empire has been depicted in "serious" plays, movies, &c. (imdb)

The story is of two convicts always trying to escape, until one day when they actually manage to. They meet up with a girl and become rivals for her charms. (imdb)

This film represents one of Larry Semon's pro-war films. He is a clumsy guy working in a restaurant and oddly, everyone who works in the place as well as many of the customers are Kaiser-loving spies. Why they would be headquartered in a restaurant in California, I have no idea! Regardless, their aim is to steal some plans from some old guy and his daughter. When Semon finds out, he comes to the rescue. (imdb)

Larry and his wife are desperately poor--with no food. However, the butcher and grocer show up to collect money they are owed and they won't take no for an answer. They are ready to take anything and everything and eventually chase the pair up onto the room--where various stunts occur. (imdb)

Larry Semon is in the kitchen preparing food for a high society musical evening.

A comedy short by and with Larry Semon. (imdb)

Semon as a detective trying to deal with some roughnecks. (imdb)

Larry Semon stars a guy being chased. Here we have a small twist on the sitting on the tram path and the tram goes the other way at the last minute stunt. (imdb)

The Rent Collector is a 1921 American silent comedy film featuring Larry Semon & Oliver Hardy. (imdb)

The Sportsman is an American film comedy first released in 1921, directed by Larry Semon and Norman Taurog. The film stars Larry Semon, Lucille Carlisle, Al Thompson, Frank Alexander and William Hauber. (imdb)

Just look at the title of this one. It's just called "Golf." No reference to the events of a story involving golf, because it's really a showcase for crazy Larry Semon gags involving golf. Some semblance of a situation is introduced in the beginning. At first it seems like an excuse to set up some very punny title cards (which I must admit appreciating), but then it becomes clear that it's also setting up a funny bit wherein Larry is introduced rather destructively playing golf indoors. (imdb)

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, 'counter jumper' was the term used in both Britain and the U.S.A. to describe the lowest dogsbody clerk in a general store or emporium. Here, Semon is employed in that capacity in an Old West general store that caters for desperate characters. As usual for Semon, most of the gag set-ups are deeply contrived and implausible. We get here not one but two separate sequences in which randomly splattered stains just happen to resemble a human face. (imdb)

A Pair of Kings is a 1922 American silent comedy film featuring Larry Semon & Oliver Hardy. (imdb)

The storm, which takes up most of the second reel, is a trial run for the storm sequence in The Wizard Of Oz which Semon would make in 1925. Fox released a comedy that was an exact copy of Lightning Love just before the Semon film was due to come out. Albert E. Smith noticed the similarities and on September 5, 1923 attempted to have the Fox film pulled from the exhibitors. (lordheath.com)

he Midnight Cabaret is a 1923 American film directed by Larry Semon and featuring Oliver Hardy. (imdb)

Larry arrives at his girlfriend's house to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Her father, who is in the middle of winning a chess game for the first time in 20 years, immediately throws Larry out the window. Meanwhile, the girl is kidnapped by a Chinese servant, who is secretly the henchman of a gangster who has developed a sleeping potion he wants to try out on an unsuspecting woman. Larry finds out, and he sets out to rescue his girlfriend and try not to get thrown out of a window... (imdb)

A boxer offers $50 to anyone who can stay in the ring with him for an entire minute. Larry, through a series of mix-ups--including hitting the boxer in the face with a tomato--winds up in the ring with him but, with the aid of some strategically placed horseshoes, manages to knock the boxer out. When he comes to and finds out what happened, the outraged boxer sets out after Larry. (imdb)

Here we have 'The Gown Shop', very much in Semon's usual style but with fewer laughs than usual. Semon plays his default character, a grotesque hard-working incompetent. (I'm going to be using the word 'grotesque' a lot in this particular review.) This time round, he blunders into a boutique. After causing some damage he can't pay for, Larry is put to work as a general dogsbody. Mayhem ensues. (imdb)

Young and beautiful Iva Method is spying for the police at the Dropem Inn, a sleazy club that the police suspect is a front for a bootlegging operation run by gangster Slim Chance. Chance discovers Iva's identity and kidnaps her, and the police chief sends his somewhat bumbling son to rescue her. (imdb)

The plot of this film really isn't that important. Instead, the sight gags and chase scenes are paramount--with some of the most impressive chase footage you'll ever see. All the near-misses with the speeding train were amazing and the scene where the car gets smashed by the truck are absolutely priceless. (imdb)

A movie stuntman, whose wealthy girlfriend has just turned down his marriage proposal, is determined to prove to her that he is man enough for her, and in doing so proceeds to ruin take after take, driving everyone on the set crazy, especially his director. (imdb)

He is the utterly inept janitor in an office building, where an inventor is busy cutting a deal for a new sort of -- well, it looks like it might be a racing car, but it might be a zeppelin. But when Larry is not wielding a broom and forcing everyone into either ducking or taking a pratfall, or dunking an ice cube into the water cooler like an over-sized tea bag, he is fouling up industrial espionage. (imdb)

Larry has to fight off a bunch of crooks who are after his bag of jewels. (imdb)

Larry working behind the scenes at a vaudeville show and mess things up.

Larry helps a girl escape her wedding to a fat man. (imdb)

Larry in school and always gets in trouble until he falls asleep and dreams of when he's all grown up.

Larry having to go through a lot of trouble to get his girl. All from bomb baking cooks to high flying crashes.

Larry going investigating a Oriental opium den. And opium is to Larry what spinach is for Popeye!

Larry might be a hick causing a lot of trouble at the farm, but he shows he can outsmart those crooked city folks!

A young man is part of a traveling medicine show owned by an elderly "professor" and his beautiful daughter. His job is to keep the audience entertained with his ventriloquist's act (which includes a monkey) while the professor hawks his patent medicines. One day the show's receipts are stolen by a gang of thieves, and in order to impress the professor's daughter, the young sets out to catch the crooks and retrieve the money. (imdb)

A bumbling grocery-store employee must deal with such job-related problems as a conniving boss, unruly customers, a baby alligator and an escaped lunatic, all of which culminates in a wild melee involving hurled cakes, pies, buckets of jam and bags of flour. (imdb)

Larry in Sing Sing prison..... (imdb)

Larry goes driving... and flying... and falling.... (imdb)

Big Ben has the largest store in the town of New Ralgia. His chief clerk is in love with the post mistress. The three of them get involved in a series of mishaps with their customers and with the town ladies' man, whose advances conceal a more sinister purpose. (imdb)

Golf, we discover in this early Semon short, is a game that is played by striking a croquet ball with a hockey stick and seeing how many times it can hit Larry Semon. (imdb)

A Vitagraph comedy directed by Larry Semon and starring fatty Hughie Mack an a battle over a stolen ruby.

In the knockabout one-reeler set in a dance studio, three suitors compete for the girl. James Aubrey, the actor playing the father's preferred suitor, may look like a Chaplin imitator, but he came by those skills honorably. Nevertheless it's Alice Mann, with her wacky headdress and knowing glance, who steals the show. Suffice it to say that many vases are broken and pants ripped before she escapes out the window with the handsomest of the beaus.

A farce in which a man comes home drunk, and locks himself in to avoid his angry wife. He then starts hallucinating, and a thief also tries to break in.

A slapstick comedy directed by Larry Semon and starring Hughie Mack & Patsy De Forest.

A man decides to stage a fake robbery in front of his girlfriend's father (who doesn't like him), hoping it will make the father change his opinion. Unfortunately, real crooks wind up taking the money from the "robbery", and the boyfriend has to get it back. (imdb)

A detective sets out to nab Notorious Nora, the tough female leader of a gang whose headquarters is in a dangerous speakeasy. He decides to infiltrate her gang in order to get the goods on her, but things don't turn out exactly the way he expected them to. (imdb)

Larry Semon comedy for Vitagraph.

"Risks and Roughnecks" is an early Larry Semon effort with outrageously funny acrobatics as takes care of business in a big brawl.

It's still very early days for Larry Semon with this chaos-in-a-cheap-restaurant comedy. It's clearly modeled on what was going on at Keystone. Hughie Mack is doing Arbuckle, Jimmy Aubrey is wearing a Ford Sterling look and his angry persona, and I think I see an Al St. John type. They even do the broom slapping routine.

Larry Semon goes out west.

A comedy short produced by Vitagraph and released in 1916. This is entitled Walls and Wallops, and features Hughey (also spelt Hughie) Mack with Lawrence (also Larry) Semon directing this. It is about cops, capers, and a love interest.

Unlucky Larry finds himself pursued by the police after he inadvertently steals a man's car and kidnaps his girlfriend.

Larry Semon working as a stage hand.

This film, with Larry as a dry agent, pokes fun at the situations which the enforcement act has produced throughout the country.

Tony and Freddie, who've been rivals all their lives, vie for the hand in marriage of their childhood sweetheart. Big Freddie seems to have the upper hand when Tony gets himself kidnapped by a ring of muggers whose M.O. is to have one of their members dress up as a woman in order to lure men into the back seat of their limousine, where they're beaten up and robbed. (imdb)

Larry Semon winds up in possession of a stolen sacred necklace, so the Hindoos of the title chase him.

The headwaiter does tricks with spaghetti that the greatest spaghetti handlers in the world never heard of. The sight makes your mouth water. Besides food, the scenes are garnished with a couple of trayfuls of beautiful girls.