Chaz Chase, The Unique Comedian (1928)
Comedian Chaz Chase performs his vaudeville act.
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Really Surprised!
Fantastic!
Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
I have never heard of Chaz Chase before I saw this Vitaphone short and can only assume he must have been reasonably successful on stage but certainly never had much of a film career.As far as this short goes, there really isn't much to it. Chase is on camera wearing a bizarre hobo-like outfit that is somewhat like that worn by Harpo Marx...and I could also easily imagine Harpo doing a similar routine. He slowly starts taking his outfit apart...eating it. First he eats his dickie (an article of clothing, folks!) and then the flower he's wearing on his coat and then a ukele!! What follow is ONE joke--and it didn't make it worth watching all this.By the way, portions of the ending are missing--the victim to nitrate decomposition. But considering everything, you won't miss it. Also, the hosts on TCM said that Chase did NOT swallow the things he seemed to eat but packed them in his cheeks and spit them out later. Now THAT is an interesting act!
Just saw this unique short on Mark Evanier's site. It has the title comedian doing various bizarre stuff to "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" and "Merrily We Roll Along" (best known as the themes of "Looney Tunes" and "Merry Melodies" respectively). Among them: Dancing with a song sheet on the ground then turning the pages as he reaches the end of one, setting a cigarette light on both ends while smoking them both, and lighting matches and then eating them afterward and then eating some of his shirt...This is the same act Mr. Chase would keep doing until his death in 1983. If you have a taste for the truly bizarre, Chaz Chase, the Unique Comedian is the one to definitely seek out! Mr. Evanier linked this from YouTube.
Chaz Chase -- not to be confused with Charley Chase -- eats a variety of interesting items, including a lot of cardboard. Absolutely bizarre: this sort of act, which used to prosper in vaudeville, wound up going into the carnivals after vaudeville died.Apparently the diet agreed with Mr. Chase, since he was doing the same act thirty years later