Between 1912 and 1918, Fred Evans and his elder brother, Joe, produced several
series of short comedies, the most popular being the long-running series
featuring the character of Pimple, played by Fred himself. Both brothers wrote
and directed, and Joe played other parts as required.
The brothers were descended from generations of music hall and circus
performers - their uncle was the famous comedy sketch writer and silent
music hall performer, Will Evans (his father before him, another Fred Evans, was
a celebrated stager of harlequinades) - and their parents were part of several
touring musical troupes. When young, Fred and Joe worked together and
individually in music hall and for Sanger's Circus. Fred first appeared in films
after meeting the filmmakers Cricks and Martin at his uncle's house in 1910. His
first regular role was as Charley Smiler, a 'dude' character dressed in frock
coat, waistcoat and spats.
After an argument over money, Joe and Fred left Cricks & Martin and went
to work for Precision Films in Whipps Cross, where they produced more short
knock-about comedies. But again, they soon left, this time to work with Will
Kellino at the Ec-Ko studios in Teddington. With help from their uncle, Will
Evans, and relatives in the music hall business, they set up their own concern
and began producing as Folly Films, handled by Phoenix. The brothers were
obliged to change Fred's dude character under threat of a lawsuit from Cricks
& Martin, owners of the Charley Smiler films, and thus Pimple was born. The
character did not have a consistent costume - although there was a tendency to
tight jackets and baggy pants or a schoolboy blazer and cap - but for the first
years Pimple did sport a kind of pared-down clown make-up, consisting
principally of white pancake round the mouth and nose. The central hair parting
further emphasised the overgrown schoolboy look.
The early films tended to be of the 'chase' genre. In Pimple and the Snake
(1912), which came to light only recently, Pimple attempts to retrieve a snake
that has escaped from the Zoo, only to chase instead a lady's black feather boa,
causing havoc along the way. As time went on, these chase films became more
sophisticated, and in Pimple Has One (1915) the physical gags have developed to
a degree that would be recognisable to anyone familiar with the better-known
early American comic film. The Evans brothers drew upon the same well-developed
physical gags of the British music hall and sketch comedies from which great
comics such as Chaplin, Lupino Lane or Stan Laurel had derived much of their training and material, but Fred Evans was not primarily a physical comedian and relied more on character, situation and absurdism.
In 1913 Joe Evans wrote the first of the Pimple parodies. Inspired by the British &
Colonial film The Battle of Waterloo (released the same year), Joe wrote a skit
on this lavish production, making the Evans' lack of production value part of
the joke (they shot most of their early films in the back yard of their Eel Pie
Island premises on the Thames). The use of comic intertitles has sometimes been
criticised for interrupting the kinetic physicality of the great (and much
later) comic films such as those of Buster Keaton or Chaplin, but any lack of elegance is more than compensated for by the humour in the titles, which was greatly
enhanced by topicality and the audience's familiarity with the subject being
spoofed. An article on Pimple in The Bioscope for 22 January 1914 praises Evans'
fertility of invention and refers to his brand of humour as "often as nearly
akin to wit as is possible in a medium which receives no assistance from the
spoken word."
The parodies became a staple format of the Pimple films from this time on and
Joe and Fred gleefully lampooned topical situations and every important film and
play of the era (including Trilby, Humanity, Ivanhoe, the Lieutenant Rose
serials and even Shakespeare). By the mid-1910s they were producing six titles a
month (Fred claims in an interview in Pictures and the Picturegoer in 1915 that
he had made over 200). Some of these parodies became quite elaborate. Pimple in
the Whip (1917), based on a famous stage melodrama, used the play's narrative to
set up other parodies of topical events and dramatic conventions, as well as
ridiculing the lavishness of the production of the stage play - which used live
horses - with very cheap sets and pantomime horses.
The Evans brothers were brought up with the traditions of the music hall, and
the pantomime seems to have been a significant influence; certainly Fred had
played Clown in pantomime harlequinades, which shared this topical burlesque
function. It is possible also that Fred's clown make-up was inherited from a
previous Pimple character at Sanger's circus and that, having won the privilege
of his own make-up, he was reluctant to perform without it. Another tradition
from the theatre that the brothers took with them into film was the production
of Christmas specials, harlequinades, for the younger audience. Certainly the
live performance element was present throughout their careers. Even when
producing several films a week, Fred promoted the films by travelling round the
country and doing presentations or live acts in mixed film/variety programmes.
During WWI in particular, Fred constantly toured to promote and raise funds for
servicemen at the front.
Film historians have, so far, largely neglected these traditions of topical
burlesque and pantomime, but the misinterpretation of these early films is
beginning to be overturned as we understand more of the cinema's interaction
with contemporary forms of entertainment such as the music hall, early
fairground attractions and the legitimate theatre. The study of comedy in a
wider context is also revealing. In many ways the topical skits of Pimple have
more in common with the Crazy Gang, Benny Hill, the Goons, Monty Python or topical sketch shows like French and Saunders (BBC, 1987-) and The Fast Show (BBC, 1994-2000) than with the
classic Hollywood silent comedies, or indeed with the feature film, which had
just began to become popular as Fred and Joe Evans reached the height of their
careers.
Bryony Dixon
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