Interviewing Anthony: John Bunny, the man, the first, the forgotten

A few months ago I posted an article on John Bunny. It was WILDLY popular. To this day the only other article to rival it is the Silent Films and Family Guy post. I was also apparently the first to rediscover a long ago site http://ourworld.cs.com/silentmovies/bunnyindex.html run by Anthony Susnick, a silent film and avid John Bunny fan.

More than anyone Susnick had all the info on one of films first great comedians. However the site hadn't been updated in awhile and Susnick wrote to tell me he had lost access to it some time back but was still very interested in Bunny. To make matters even more HORRIFYING the hosting site deleted all of its sites on Halloween without notice. Thankfully via the wayback machine everything but the pictures have been saved. And I'd like to announce that a new site is indeed underway, something both me and Anthony will be working on.

While ya'll sit and wait patiently for that (and the eternally going to be fantastic Griffith Forever site) I asked Anthony if he wouldn't mind doing an interview about Bunny. 2 months, several revisions (hes a self proclaimed perfectionist), a few film historian consultations, and 14 pages later there was more Bunny info then one could ever hope for.

I didn't have the heart to edit out all this wonderful info. So its a 3 part series! Today is part 1: Who was John Bunny? Click here for part 2, and here for part 3.

Part 1: Who was John Bunny?

Forget the Talkies: So simple things first, who was John Bunny?

Anthony Susnick: John Bunny was the first internationally known film comedian. Bunny worked for one film studio - Vitagraph Company of America located in Brooklyn, NY founded in 1900 by J. Stuart Blackton, Albert E. Smith and William T. ‘Pop’ Rock. Vitagraph was one of the pioneer studios in the US and Bunny was their claim to fame.

Although Bunny’s film career lasted a little more than 4 years, he made more than 150 films (all shorts, FTT note: features wouldn't debut as form until the end of his life) and became famous the world over.

FTT: Silents are obscure to begin with and Bunny even more so. How did you first hear of him?

AS: At the age of 8 or 9, I was sitting on my mom’s lap looking at the newspaper with her when I noticed a photo of a man. My mom told me his name was Charlie Chaplin. The Gold Rush was showing that night on the PBS program The Silent Years. To make a long story short, my obsession with silent film grew from that.

My mom bought me Daniel Blum’s A Pictorial History of the Silent Screen that really brought Bunny to my attention. Being a kid, I thought his name and the way he looked was funny. Through my love of silent films I would curiously look up Bunny here and there to find practically no mention of him in even extensive film history books. Walter Kerr wrote a couple of paragraphs about Bunny in his book the Silent Clowns but it was mostly the same info in other books.

A great silent film fan, Joe Franklin recognized Bunny devoting one full page and naming him one of the seventy-five great stars in his book Classics of the Silent Screen. During my college years when I began studying film more seriously, Bunny and Vitagraph were some of my first projects...a "mystery to solve" if you will.

FTT: Bunny is mostly forgotten today, but at one point he was extremely popular. Just how famous was he in his own day?

AS: Bunny was known the world over. At one time he was billed as “the man who makes more than the president”! He was known as Paxon in Russia and Monsieur Cinema in France. One newspaper headline read, "Bunny’s Death Ranks Near English War News".

When Bunny drove down the streets of NY, people would call out “Oh Bunny”. When he toured England, he was mobbed everywhere and the “bobbies” had to control the crowd. While in England, a man approached Bunny and said he was from South Africa and everyone there loved his movies. One of Bunny’s hobbies was collecting letters from his fans ad keeping track of how many different countries wrote him. He finally got a letter he had been waiting for - somewhere in China.

FTT: Chaplin had the Tramp, Mary had the Little Girl. What was Bunny known for?

AS: Besides being the obviously portly gentleman (he weighed up to 300lbs at one time) with a distinct last name, Bunny was cast as the middle class every day common man: part Ralph Kramden, part W.C. Fields meets Benny Hill. All rolled into one character endlessly trying to sneak things past his wife or some Margaret Dumont type character.

I mention Benny Hill not just because he is usually being henpecked by a bevy of Flora Finch type characters in his skits, but because Hill would constantly break the fourth wall and make the audience laugh even more. Bunny didn’t exactly break the fourth wall but maybe cracked it a little. For example at the end of "A Cure For Pokeritis", the audience is in view of Bunny laughing and hiding behind an overturned table while the situation in the background is in chaos. Only Bunny and the audience know that he is not going to be dragged in by the police. He is not looking at the camera but he is sharing the laugh with us.

Bunny’s character would either be gambling at the racetrack, playing poker, sneaking out to the pool room with his buddies, flirting with lovely women and a cluster of other shenanigans. Coincidentally, when mentioning Ralph Kramden, it’s interesting that The very first Vitagraph Theatre Show was called "The Honeymooners"!

FTT: So he was the henpecked naughty husband! He was definitely one of the first bonafide movie stars. Why was he so wildly popular?

AS: Around 1910 the movie studios began to recognize that the quality of films was more important than quantity. The practice to that point had been to produce as many films as possible from their stock company of stars. Audiences were growing weary of being bombarded with too many films. The public started to distinguish the quality and expectations of the film by what company made them. If it was a film from Biograph, chances are, it would be of good (FTT adds: thanks to Mr. Griffith!). In addition, viewers would begin to recognize their favorite Biograph actors and actresses. The problem was that no one knew their names! One concern of the film studios was that if an actor became well known and more popular than others, there would be a demand of more money and the stars would have the upper hand.

Studios continued to ignore the pleas of the public to reveal star names. Instead they began advertising popular players by titles. Florence Lawrence became “The Biograph Girl” while still having her remain anonymous (FTT adds: Mary Pickford later received the same title when Florence fled becoming one of the first named stars).

Studios finally had to give in especially when they discovered there was money to be made by doing it. The star and publicity system was born. Bunny entered at just that right time. He was the very recognizable, lovable plump guy with a funny last name. This was further helped by Bunny’s name appearing in the titles of his films. "Private Bunny", "Bunny’s Scheme", "Bunny Buys a Harem"! Then came cigarette cards, magazines and souvenirs. Even a Bunny doll (that in mint condition today is worth around $500)!


FTT: Publicity aside his talent definitely helped. What about his acting made him so special?

AS: For Bunny’s popularity as a comedic actor, I believe the central device (believe it or not) was his face which by the way he insured for $100,000. This element is something rarely discussed about Bunny today, but during his celebrated career it was a continual topic. Audiences didn’t laugh at Bunny because he was heavy. I don’t think Bunny’s weight had much to do with getting laughs as much as his overall gnome like figure.

John Palmer, a writer for Saturday review wrote: “Mr. Bunny has an extensive and extremely flexible face. When he smells a piece of gorgonzola cheese there is no doubt whatever that his nose has been seriously offended. When he sees for the first time a pretty and eligible young woman, there is no doubt whatever that he is immensely excited and moved with intentions so extravagantly honorable that they seem almost too grievous to be borne. Mr. Bunny’s emotions are all on the grand scale. His despair is incredible. His grief is unendurable. His smile is an ignis fatuus."

In interviews, Bunny would be asked about his expressions and if he studied his own facial expressions, Bunny stated, “No, no: that's fatal; it makes everything you do hard and unreal. If you can manage to be the character you're impersonating, feel it so thoroughly and vitally that you really transform yourself for the moment, your actions will tell more than you realize. That is, of course, when you are mastering this particular technique.”

Alfred Smith in his (factually unreliable for the record) book, Two Wheels and a Crank said, “Bunny was a 'Mr. Four by Five' whose screen posturing of unendurable grief, incredible despair, and apoplectic wrath were imitated in every backyard Saturday playlet in America."

FTT: Why was he forgotten so quickly? Was it because his death was so early in film history?

AS: Yes, his name is forgotten partly due to his early arrival into film. But then, how many people can name a famous actor from 1913? Who was president in 1911? The year Bunny died, Chaplin was becoming incredibly successful at Essany and Griffith released "Birth of a Nation". The advancement of storylines and comedic work made Bunny’s sophisticated middle class films somewhat dull and archaic.

Bunny was not immediately forgotten. Vitagraph reissued some of his films in 1917 so there must have been a sense of some demand. I am not aware if these reissues were met with any success or not. To give an idea of how Bunny films were perceived as dated, just 10 years after Bunny’s death, an article in Motion Picture Magazine, quoted Bunny’s toothpick co-star Flora Finch as saying, "Some of my pictures, especially those which John Bunny and I were featured, I remember as downright funny. One of these entitled, 'Bunny Buys his Wife a New Hat' were especially amusing, would be even in this day of sophistication."


FTT: He died in 1915 while still very popular. Was his death the first of its kind or had other picture stars passed before him? How did they think he would be remembered at the time of his death?

AS: Bunny should not only be remembered as film’s first great comedian, His death was the first of its kind in the history of motion pictures. Bunny was film’s first great star to die and that showed for the first time, the impact of film made on the public. The only other early deaths were Chaplin villian Eric Campell who died 2 years later, and Vitagraph's Sydney Drew, but neither had the impact that Bunny or his death had.

I have postcards, tributes and article after article stating how he will always live on and never be forgotten because we will always have his films. “The name John Bunny will always be linked to the movies.” That was the prediction from the writer of John Bunny's obituary in the New York Times. Scores of newspapers all over the world printed tributes making statements such as, “The death of Bunny was a loss to millions of people”, “He was the father of acting without words” and “John Bunny is dead. The best known man in the world.”

One month before his death, Bunny made this poignant and sad prophecy: "I shall live longer than Irving and Booth, not because I deserve to, but because there is a record of me that they did not leave; the public can have me always the same, so long as the pictures are preserved. To be remembered the feet must move. It is the single photograph that gets put away, but throw me on the screen when I am only ashes and the people will respond the way they always responded. Indeed, I would wager that they would rise up and become enthusiastic toward a dead comedy actor who, in pictures, went right on amusing them with over country rides in pursuit of a runaway daughter. It has a tang of the game in it. Most dead people are dead for a long while, but the moving picture actor goes right on living and loving and laughing and walking, even if he is languidly strumming upon a stringed instrument in another world.”

Click here to read Part 2: Flickers and Career