Believe Me, If All Those Edgar Dearing Young Charms

With apologies to Irish poet Thomas Moore, a celebration today of Hollywood bit player Edgar Dearing (1893-1974).

Dearing was best known as a silent and slapstick comedy heavy, especially for Hal Roach studios, frequently playing motorcycle cops. His screen debut was in Harold Lloyd’s Hot Water(1924). With Laurel and Hardy he appeared in The Second 100 Years (1927), Why Girls Love Sailors (1927), The Battle of the Century (1927), Leave ’em Laughing (1928), Their Purple Moment (1928), Two Tars (1928), and The Midnight Patrol(1933). He’s also in Charley Chase’sFluttering Hearts (1927) and Limousine Love (1928) and numerous shorts with Our Gang and others.

In the sound era you can see him in comedy classics asFree and Easy (1930) with Buster Keaton; Mr. Lemon of Orange (1931) with El Brendel; Horse Feathers (1932), Go West (1940), and The Big Store (1941) with the Marx Brothers; Million Dollar Legs (1932); Kentucky Kernels (1934) and The Nitwits (1935) with Wheeler and Woolsey; The Awful Truth (1937); Every Day’s a Holiday (1937) with Mae West; You Can’t Take it With You (1938), Honolulu (1938) with Burns and Allen; The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939); Buck Benny Rides Again (1940) with Jack Benny; Sullivan’s Travels (1941); and comedies with Bob Hope, Olsen and Johnson, Abbott and Costello, and ones in the Blondie, Maisie, and Henry Aldrich series, among others!

Dearing was in pictures across all genres; westerns were another specialty. His final credit was a 1964 episode of The Twilight Zone.

For still more on silent and slapstick comedy films please read  Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.