Frank Cullen's review here contains an interesting discussion of Capra's role in the career of Harry Langdon, most of which I agree with entirely. But his vaudeville experience did not translate to the screen quite as readily as Mr. Cullen supposes (it did not so so even for Chaplin or Keaton) and it is evident from the earliest films that Langdon had no very clear idea about his screen persona when he started in 1923. The film made in that year for Sol Lesser, Horace Greely Jr., as far as one can make out from the very abbreviated Pathé-Baby (Pathex) version that survives, is a very conventional and forgettable comic western where Langdon displays none of the distinctive characteristics that would bring him fame a year later. Picking Peaches (seemingly the earliest of the shorts made for Sennett and not directed by Edwards)is a poor piece of work, combining tasteless slapstick with equally tasteless sexual innuendo. The later Langdon character is quite absent from the lecherous shoe-clerk, dapper and articulate but not in the least amusing, that he plays in this film, largely intended to show off the Sennett "bathing beauties". "The lecher" reappears in equally undistinguished fashion (this time a photographer)in Smile Please! (also not directed by Edwards and essentially still an overextended "Keystone" comedy).
Several of the other 1924 comedies appear to be lost but in Shanghaied Lovers, although a little more of an innocent than in the previous efforts, there is still little to distinguish him from other comics of the time and the slapstick is very standard fare. The First Hundred Years is another rambling farce of the late Sennett variety and once again Langdon's characterisation is entirely conventional. The first momentary signs of a more vulnerable, childlike character come in His New Mama but this too is not sustained and the film soon degenerates into yet another outing for the "bathing beauties" in which Langdon's role is negligible and then another typical "Keystone" slapstick chase-ending.
So the Langdon character did not appear fully-fledged on the screen after being first honed in vaudeville. It was unquestionably created during the course of the shorts made during 1924-1926. This was equally clearly not the work of Capra but rather of director Harry Edwards, who rapidly became Langdon's sole director, and writer Arthur Ripley. The real change comes with The Luck of the Foolish, the first of a whole series of first-rate shorts that Edwards-Ripley-Langdon would produce in the next year or so. One or two are are less good but The Luck of the Foolish, The Hansom Cabman, All Night Long, His Marriage Wow and Remember When? are all outstanding. For one thing the cinematography improves immensely (with Ernie Crockett providing "special effects") and the direction takes on a much more coherent form. A surreal element is frequently introduced along with an increasingly darker side to the comedy. But there is also a progressive development in the Langdon character towards inarticulacy (accompanied by a set of very distinctive hand gestures) and childlike simplicity.
The inarticulacy (which continues even in the early sound films and is crucial to the films he himself directed) is almost certainly an innovation due to Langdon himself. The "noir" elements and certain recurrent themes (wartime reminiscence) are more probably the contribution of Ripley.
And this is I think the crucial turning-point in Langdon's career, the moment that will bring him his greatest success and equally his eventual tragic decline. Because the balance involved in the Langdon character that now emerges is an extremely delicate one. Take it too far and the character can easily become a simple imbecile of little enduring comic or dramatic interest. And the shorts begin to unravel somewhat during 1926, with more writers introduced (too many cooks?) and notably with the arrival amongst them of Frank Capra. Increasingly the plots seem to bypass Langdon himself, who is increasingly portrayed as an imbecile. And this process culminates, after the move to First National, with Capra's The Strong Man. This starts well enough (a typical Ripley wartime reminiscence, used also in Soldier Man and extensively in All Night Long) but then turns into a slow-paced sentimental drama (entirely in the Capra manner) where Langdon seems to have little to do but act the idiot.
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the first of the First National features with Harry Edwards still directing is an excellent comedy, if a little uneven, with some classic episodes. Long Pants, the second feature directed by Capra, is again very slow-paced and would be almost entirely forgettable if it weer not for the marked "noir" element (the attempted murder of the wife) which is presumably the work of Ripley. After the break with Capra, Langdon's own first film, Three's a Crowd is, to my mind, Langdon's masterpiece. Here we have all the vulnerability, the surreal, the dark but a central character who, however inarticulate and forlorn, is anything but an idiot. Alas, as we know, the film was never appreciated at its real value at the time and failed dismally at the box office.
This film, if one comes to it after Three's a Crowd, is a major disappointment. It is also a very personal film but the idea of a divorce-judge obliging husband and wife to exchange roles is just silly and the depiction of it equally lacks any kind of credibility. Nor is the theme new (it had been used more plausibly by Charley Chase in one of his "Jimmy Jump" comedies in 1924). Moreover the Langdon character seems to have relapsed back into the idiocy from which it had been reclaimed. After the successive failure of his three Firs National features (the third, Heart Trouble, is a lost film), Langdon was doomed to continue playing the imbecile in a perfectly ghastly series of sound shorts for Hal Roach.
