Biography for
Larry Semon More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

16 July 1889, West Point, Mississippi, USA

Date of Death

8 October 1928, Gracelon Ranch, near Victorville, California, USA (lobar pneumonia)

Birth Name

Lawrence Semon

Nickname

Ridolini (in Italy)

Mini Biography

Slapstick comedian known for his charming, white-painted face and clownish smile, mugged his way to being a very highly paid and popular actor. His career was marred by personal problems and his fortune was lost to high spending. By the time he died, he'd already been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown and was penniless. He was 39 years old.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous

Mini Biography

American silent film comedian whose hugely successful career disappeared virtually overnight. The son of a traveling vaudeville magician, Zera the Great, Larry Semon grew up in show business and was trained in stage comedy and acrobatics. A talent for drawing and cartooning led to art school and then work as a cartoonist for various New York City newspapers. The humor evident in his published cartoons prompted executives at New York's Vitagraph Studios to hire Semon as a gag writer in 1916. He quickly proved himself and was promoted to director for the Hughie Mack series of comedies. His background in magic helped him create interesting new gags for the comedian. When Mack left the studio in 1917, Semon took over the starring part himself. His one-reelers were quite successful. Thus, Vitagraph sent him to California to participate in its new west coast operation. He produced as well as wrote, starred, and directed his own films, as well as producing films for other comics. In 1918, Semon began featuring in his films a young comedian named Stan Laurel, and their successful pairing seemed to portend a new comedy team. But for reasons variously given, Laurel left the partnership in its infancy. Coincidentally, within a year, Laurel's future partner Oliver Hardy would join Semon's troupe, eventually becoming a prominent member. By that time, Larry Semon was one of the top movie comedians, operating almost as his own boss on the Vitagraph lot, with substantially increased salary and budgets. Semon began having problems with the Vitagraph brass, due to costs exceeding even his increased budgets and to his own arrogant behavior. After various lawsuits between Vitagraph and its erratic star, a new contract made Semon himself responsible for his own production costs and decisions. Just as critics were beginning to complain of a scarcity of new ideas in his films, Semon became answerable to no one but himself. Vitagraph eventually complained that the product Semon was providing was sub-standard, and in 1923 he ended his association with the studio. A foray into feature films was none too successful, and Semon, in a new partnership, Chadwick Pictures, returned to two-reelers. Semon then embarked on a disastrous dream project, an adaptation of 'The Wizard of Oz.' Armed with a superb cast, with Semon at the helm, the project was wildly expensive but enormously promising. Yet Semon failed utterly to capitalize on that promise, completing not a film classic but a trite and inept standard comedy which seemed only to share a title and character names with L. Frank Baum's classic story. Reeling from this failure, Semon moved desperately into work for hire while attempting to stave off creditors. Chadwick Productions folded, and by 1927, Semon was working as a gag writer again. A gangster role in von Sternberg's Underworld (1927) was impressive, but a mere ripple. An agreement which was a remnant of Chadwick Productions' deal with Educational Pictures led to a last-ditch effort to produce two-reelers. These too failed, and Semon faced bankruptcy. He lost everything he owned and Semon, only 39, now considered a has-been in movies, returned to vaudeville. In the summer of 1928, Semon apparently fell ill with tuberculosis and simultaneously, it seems, suffered a nervous breakdown. He entered a sanitarium near San Bernadino, California, where he reportedly died on October 8. However, an air of mystery surrounds his death, since his wife (and former co-star) Dorothy Dwan was allowed almost no contact with him and never saw his body, which was ordered cremated after a tightly-secured funeral which was carried out as per Semon's "previous instructions" and to which almost no attendees were allowed. The whereabouts of Semon's cremated remains are to this day a mystery and his widow professed until her death to be mystified by the circumstances of his death. With enormous financial obligations facing him, Larry Semon could easily have considered a dramatic escape of this sort from his creditors. Whether he did, or whether his death was just that, the actual sad final chapter to a high-rising, briefly brilliant, but ultimately short-lived career may never be known for certain.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver

Spouse

Dorothy Dwan	(22 January 1925 - 8 October 1928) (his death)
Lucille Carlisle	(? - 1923)

Trivia

In scores of short films, Semon rivaled Charles Chaplin in comic popularity during the early 1920s. He directed The Wizard of Oz (1925), one of his very few feature-length films, in which he played the Scarecrow with Oliver Hardy as the Tin Man. He married his leading lady, Dorothy Dwan, who played Dorothy, just before the film's release. Unfortunately, it was not a success and effectively killed Semon's career, which was already on the skids. He died a few years later.

Son of vaudeville comedian Zera the Great.

The somewhat mysterious circumstances surrounding his death have lead some to believe that he faked his own demise.

Salary

Lightning Love (1923)

$5,000/week

Browse biographies section by name

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z