If you've heard of Billy Ritchie, you've heard of him as a Chaplin imitator who claimed that Chaplin imitated him. Ritchie's claim is a little closer to reality; he was an early member of the Fred Karno pantomime company, a decade or more before Chaplin. He originated some of the routines that Chaplin used. Ritchie left Karno and was a reasonable success in America. When Henry Lehrman left Keystone to form his own film comedy company, he recruited Billy Ritchie and worked out his character, a truly nasty psychopath... when he was behaving well. After that, he turned mean.
He's in full cry in this one, trying to strangle Henry Voss with his own trombone and climbing to the church roof like Quasimodo and caving in the bell tower because Peggy Pearce, for some reason he doesn't understand, doesn't care for him.
It's a bit over the top for my comparatively genteel, Keystone taste, but it's an impressive act.
He's in full cry in this one, trying to strangle Henry Voss with his own trombone and climbing to the church roof like Quasimodo and caving in the bell tower because Peggy Pearce, for some reason he doesn't understand, doesn't care for him.
It's a bit over the top for my comparatively genteel, Keystone taste, but it's an impressive act.
