- Born
- Died
- Birth nameLawrence Semon
- Nickname
- Ridolini
- Height5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
- Slapstick comedian known for his charming, white-painted face and clownish smile, mugged his way to being a very highly paid and popular actor. His career was marred by personal problems, and his fortune was lost to high spending. By the time he died, he'd already been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown and was penniless. He was 39 years old.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
- American silent film comedian whose hugely successful career disappeared virtually overnight, Larry Semon was the son of a traveling vaudeville magician, Zera the Great. He grew up in show business and was trained in stage comedy and acrobatics. A talent for drawing and cartooning led to art school and then work as a cartoonist for various New York City newspapers. The humor evident in his published cartoons prompted executives at New York's Vitagraph Studios to hire him as a gag writer in 1916. He quickly proved himself and was promoted to director for the Hughie Mack series of comedies. His background in magic helped him create interesting new gags for the comedian. When Mack left the studio in 1917, Semon took over the starring role himself. His one-reelers were quite successful, and Vitagraph sent him to California to participate in its new West Coast operation. He produced as well as wrote, starred in and directed his own films, at the same time also producing films for other comics.
In 1918 Semon began featuring in his films a young comedian named Stan Laurel, and their successful pairing seemed to portend a new comedy team. However, for reasons that were never made quite clear, Laurel left the partnership in its infancy. Coincidentally, within a year, Laurel's future partner Oliver Hardy would join Semon's troupe, eventually becoming a prominent member. By that time Larry Semon was one of the top movie comedians, operating almost as his own boss on the Vitagraph lot, with substantially increased salary and budgets. He began having problems with the Vitagraph brass, due to costs exceeding even his increased budgets and his own arrogant behavior. After a series of lawsuits between Vitagraph and its erratic star, a new contract made Semon himself responsible for his own production costs and decisions. Just as critics were beginning to complain of a scarcity of new ideas in his films, Semon became answerable to no one but himself. Vitagraph eventually complained that the product he was providing was substandard, and in 1923 he ended his association with the studio. A foray into feature films was none too successful, and Semon, in a new partnership with producer I.E. Chadwick's Chadwick Pictures, returned to two-reelers. He then embarked on what would turn out to be a disastrous dream project--an adaptation of L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." The film boasted a superb cast, with Semon at the helm, and while it was wildly expensive it was enormously promising. Yet Semon failed utterly to capitalize on that promise, and the film (The Wizard of Oz (1925)) turned out to be a trite and inept run-of-the-mill comedy that seemed only to share a title and character names with Baum's beloved story, instead of the classic film it could have been. Reeling from this failure, Semon moved desperately into work-for-hire while attempting to stave off creditors. Chadwick Pictures folded, and by 1927 Semon was working as a gag writer again. A gangster role in Josef von Sternberg's Underworld (1927) was impressive, but a mere ripple. Semon cut a deal with Educational Pictures, reminiscent of the one he had with the now-defunct Chadwick Pictures, in a last-ditch effort to produce two-reelers. These also failed, and Semon faced bankruptcy. He lost everything he owned and, only 39, was now considered a has-been in movies and returned to vaudeville.
In the summer of 1928 Semon apparently fell ill with tuberculosis and simultaneously, it seems, suffered a nervous breakdown. He entered a sanitarium near San Bernardino, CA, where he reportedly died on October 8. However, an air of mystery surrounds his death, since his wife (and former co-star) Dorothy Dwan was allowed almost no contact with him and never saw his body, which was ordered cremated after a tightly secured funeral, which was carried out per Semon's "previous instructions" and to which almost no attendees were allowed. The whereabouts of Semon's cremated remains are to this day a mystery, and his widow professed until her death to be mystified by the circumstances of his passing. With enormous financial obligations facing him Larry Semon could easily have considered a dramatic escape of this sort from his creditors. Whether he did, or whether his death was the sad final chapter to a high-rising, briefly brilliant, but ultimately short-lived career may never be known for certain.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net> (qv's & corrections by A. Nonymous)
- SpousesDorothy Dwan(January 22, 1925 - October 8, 1928) (his death)Lucille Carlisle(? - 1923)
- In scores of short films, Semon rivaled Charles Chaplin in comic popularity during the early 1920s. He directed The Wizard of Oz (1925), one of his very few feature-length films, in which he played the Scarecrow with Oliver Hardy as the Tin Man. He married his leading lady, Dorothy Dwan, who played Dorothy, just before the film's release. Unfortunately, it was not a success and effectively killed Semon's career, which was already on the skids. He died a few years later.
- The somewhat mysterious circumstances surrounding his death have led some to believe that he faked his own demise.
- Semon taught Oliver Hardy to play golf. Hardy became one of the best golfers in Hollywood.
- Son of vaudeville comedian Zera the Great.
- Before entering show business, he was a cartoonist for The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper.
- Lightning Love (1923) - $5,000 /week
- The Grocery Clerk (1919) - $5,000 /week
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