150 Years Ago Today: The Birth of Leo Sulky

There were at least a half dozen other people I might have written about today. I keep a daily tickler, and today’s entry contained several folks I haven’t written about, nearly all of whose names you’ll know better, and probably would have preferred that I’d written about. But that’s not how I roll — such is my doom. I wasn’t feeling it, for any of them. When that happens I go back to the drawing board and scout around to see who else is out there who was born on this day in history, and I usually find somebody. It may be somebody more obscure, which does nothing for my own fame. But the important thing is that they speak to me. Anyway, this is how I learned that today is the 150th anniversary of vaudeville vet and classic comedy bit player Leo Sulky (Leonard Bernstein, 1874-1957). (Ha! Yes! Leonard Bernstein, obviously a different gent from this one).

Most of my info on this fellow comes from the research of that intrepid national treasure, Brent Walker. And thank God for him! Wikipedia, always a dubious source, has nothing on his biography, and groups his films by director rather than by the comedians he supported, which is truly absurd. Even what Walker has uncovered seems a little murky. Originally from Cincinnati, he may have been a Chicago bartender, and he may have been with a vaudeville team called Leo and Sulky. Find a Grave tells us that his professional surname was his wife’s maiden name.

In 1920 he appears in Alice Howell-Dick Smith comedies like Cinderella Cinders and Her Lucky Day, and this seems to have led to his move to Hollywood. He went on to appear in over 100 films. He was mostly a bit player, though in the silent days he occasionally had slightly larger supporting parts.

For Mack Sennett, he was in almost all of Harry Langdon‘s shorts, as well as other classics like Yukon Jake (1924) with Ben Turpin, and Lizzies of the Field (1924) with Billy Bevan, and the “Smith” comedies starring Raymond McKee.

At Hal Roach he supported Laurel and Hardy in Habeas Corpus (1928), The Hoose-Gow (1929), Pardon Us (1931) Beau Hunks (1931), and Our Relations (1936), as well as shorts starring Charley Chase, Our Gang, and the Taxi Boys.

Other comedy connections include Duck Soup (1933) and A Night at the Opera (1935) with the Marx Brothers, The Rainmakers (1935) with Wheeler and Woolsey, Sons O’ Guns (1936) with Joe E. Brown, the screwball favorite Destry Rides Again (1939), and Always Leave Them Laughing (1948) with Milton Berle. Sulk’s last screen credit was in the Lloyd Bacon comedy She Couldn’t Say No (1953) with Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons.

For much more on Leo Sulky, including a great photo lay-out that IDs him in several Laurel and Hardy films, see Brent Walker’s excellent article here.

For more on silent and slapstick film please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube — now also available on audiobook!