Chester Conklin(1886-1971)
- Actor
- Writer
Iowa-born Chester Conklin was raised in a coal-mining area by a
devoutly religious father who hoped that his son would go into the
ministry. However, Chester got the performing bug one day when he gave
a recitation at a community singing festival and won first prize.
Knowing his father would never approve of his desire to become a
comedian, he left home. One night in St. Louis he caught a vaudeville
act by the famous team of Joe Weber
and Lew Fields, who were doing what was
called at the time a "Dutch" act. Conklin thought that he could do
that act himself, and better, so he decided to develop a character
patterned after his boss at the time, a German baker named Schultz.
Schultz had a thick accent and a very bushy "walrus"-type mustache,
which Conklin appropriated for his new character. He managed to break
into vaudeville with this act and spent several years on tour with
various stock companies. Eventually he secured a job as a clown with a
traveling circus. After seeing several of
Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops shorts in
theaters, Conklin went to the Sennett studio and applied for a job
there. Sennett hired him as a Keystone Kop (at $3 a day). He stayed
with Sennett for six years, and became famous for his pairing with
burly comic Mack Swain in a series of
"Ambrose and Walrus" shorts and appeared in several of
Charles Chaplin's shorts for the studio
(Chaplin adapted Conklin's "walrus" mustache as part of the costume for
his "Little Tramp" character). Conklin was approached by Fox Films to
do a series of comedy shorts, and when Sennett refused to match the
offer Fox made, Conklin left Sennett and signed with Fox. He stayed
with Fox for several years, then freelanced for several independent
producers in a series of comedy shorts. Conklin worked steadily into
the sound era, and retired from the screen in 1966. His last movie was
the well-received Western comedy
A Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966),
in which his character was named "Chester."
