Max Linder

The Linder comedies, unlike the frenetic slapstick of Sennett and Chaplin, were clever, well-plotted and often moving little playlets, with a French daring and often incorporating experimental camera techniques. The handsome, dashing Linder's height didn't inhibit his screen career, and he became something of a heartthrob. He was at the height of his fame when WWI broke out. Linder enlisted early, and was seriously wounded three times. Shell-shocked, his emotional and physical health shattered, Linder was never the same.A 1917 trip to America resulted in three Essanay films, "Max Comes Across," "Max Wants a Divorce" and "Max and His Taxi." During a second American trip, Linder made two of his best-known comedies, "Seven Years Bad Luck" (1919, incorporating the famous "mirror" gag later used by the Marx brothers and others), and his absurdist Douglas Fairbanks parody, "The Three Must-Get-There's" (1922). Still fragile, Linder returned to France and made his last few films: the dark comedy "Au secours! /Help!" (1924) and Abel Gance's "The King of the Circus" (1925). While filming "Le Chevalier barclas," Linder checked into a Paris hotel with his young wife and baby daughter. The elder Linder died in a suicide pact (though Mrs. Linder's enthusiasm for the act was never made clear). Their daughter, Maud, grew up to rescue her father's films and make the documentary "The Man in the Silk Hat" (1983), preserving his work for posterity.