Becoming Charley Chase is a labor of love from a group of film collectors and historians. It combines rare silent comedy finds from archives and their own personal collections to highlight one of the unheralded geniuses of silent film comedy: Charles Parrott (aka Charley Chase).

Chase was a renaissance man in the world of American slapstick comedy, a writer, director, producer, and star who was instrumental in changing the course of the rambunctious, frenzied slapfests of Mack Sennett into the slower, character driven, tightly constructed slapstick of the Hal Roach studios. Chase came to Roach after Harold Lloyd, Roach's big star, left to go independent, and Chase, as writer-director, changed the tenor of the studio, brilliantly directing a series of shorts with Snub Pollard and becoming the guiding force in the creation of Our Gang/Little Rascals comedies. But when the Pollard comedies proved unpopular at the box office, Chase became an actor again, performing in a successful series of one-reelers as the middle class worker Jimmy Jump and introducing comedies of manners, embarrassments, and misunderstandings.

This massive four-disc set of 40 shorts charts the course of Chase's career as director and star from his beginnings to his directorial stints before arriving at Roach and on through his one-reel Jimmy Jumps until he becomes Charley Chase starting a two-reel series of masterpieces (not part of this collection but available through Kino Video).

Disc One presents Chase's work at Keystone from 1915 with Chase clearly on the fringes of all the slapstick action as the Sennett regulars kick each other in the ass and drive off cliffs. But there are simmerings of something different, particularly in The Rent Jumpers, where the story barrels its way ahead of the mindless slapstick.

Disc Two takes Chase to Roach in his early starring years as Jimmy Jump. Replacing the Snub Pollard shorts, the Jimmy Jumps slow down the action and Chase willingly becomes part of an ensemble of players, who are all given their moments to shine. The shorts try to make the gags come in service of the story as they become more tightly constructed and the gags reflect character. It all comes brilliantly together once Leo McCarey becomes Chase's director. After that all of Chase's shorts become tiny diadems of comic construction. McCarey and Chase even go for the guest stars -- here the washed-up athletes Barney Oldfield and Jim Jeffries. Most fascinating is the 1924 short Sittin' Pretty, which features the first version of "the mirror scene" that McCarey later copies in Duck Soup.

Disc Three follows Jimmy Jump as the character graduates from one-reelers to two-reelers and the character is abandoned. Of particular interest here is No Father To Guide Him, a slapstick version of Kramer Vs. Kramer in which Chase has to vie for his son's affections after a divorce but is kept at bay by his ex-wife's hateful mother. Chase finally succeeds by having his mother-in-law arrested for child abuse.

Disc Four highlights Chase as a director in a fascinating disc that includes two Chaplin imitators (Billy West and Harry Mann), two Snub Pollards, Chase's brother Paul Parrott and a wonderful Will Rogers short, Just Passin' Through, with Rogers as a hobo trying to get something to eat on Thanksgiving Day.

There is no way to praise this collection too highly. Becoming Charley Chase is everything the DVD format should be -- introducing rare films, burnishing the reputation of a forgotten performer, and, most importantly, making people aware that films made around 90 years ago can still be as vital and current and funny as anything coming out of the Judd Apatow comedy mill.



I became him!