If Laurel and Hardy were grown men who acted like children, Harry
Langdon, the most helpless, immature, sexless, timid and downright stupid of
all the silent clowns, regressed even further, becoming, in effect, a
middle-aged baby, seemingly retaining, by some dogged self-abstraction, the
obliviousness and immunity of an embryo to the outside world. His most
characteristic gestures and roles, among them the main characters of Frank Capra’s
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp and The Strong Man, both released in 1926,
combined the masculine and the feminine, the adult and the child. Langdon’s
innocence and pathos infuse every frame of film, heightened by complete
intellectual blankness to most of what surrounds him. A master of the slow
burn, every action and reaction he ever emitted on screen betrays a truly
infantile perplexity.
Even his makeup created a strange mixture of discordant opposites—the
white powder and dark, heavily outlined eyes—that turned him into a combination
of clown, infant, and hermaphrodite. Layered over an obviously adult face, the
childlike getup resulted in what James Agee called the look of “an elderly
baby” or “a baby dope fiend.” His outfit, made up of round, battered soft hat
turned up at the brim, tight jacket with the top button fastened, the others
unbuttoned, spreading open ridiculously at the hips, baggy trousers and
awkward, oversized shoes, only heightenaed the childish absurdity and inadequacy
of his characters, who were completely unfit for the world of men—and
especially of women—and incompetent at adult social behavior.
