Larry Semon in “The Perfect Clown”

Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Larry Semon feature length comedy The Perfect Clown (1925).

The plot concerns a young clerk who is charged with the task of delivering $10,000 to the bank to be deposited. Finding the bank closed, he is placed in the nerve-wracking predicament of hanging onto the money overnight. This is complicated by the fact that he can’t go home; ironically, he doesn’t have the back rent to give his landlady. He winds up spending the night in a spooky barn during a thunder storm: there’s any good comedian’s third act right there. The Perfect Clown privileges gags over character, but we do keep to a single plot with a minimum of digression, which is more than can be said for many of Semon’s shorts. Directed by frequent Harold Lloyd collaborator Fred Newmeyer, the film also features usual Semon stock company members such as Dorothy Dwan, Kate Price,Oliver Hardy, Frank Alexander and Curtis McHenry.

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