Lon Chaney: Laugh Clown Laugh

By Craig: I have finally gotten around to updating this blog. It has now been nearly 5 months since my twin brother's death, and figured that it is time to get on with life. My 14 year old son has been spending the summer with me and we have been watching a lot of old classic movies from the silent film era. I have always been interested in the nostalgia behind these films which for the most part were made during the days of my grandparent's youth before 1930. My brother Jay was an avid fan of the silent film, so perhaps my interest of late is his influence coming through to me. Perhaps I am channeling a bit of him from beyond the grave! I have spent the past 5 months working on a sequel to my brother's novel, Astrolabe which he published a few weeks before his death. I am about a third of the way through it. This is part of the reason that I have not updated this blog, but I now find that it is time to keep it going.

The other day my son and I watched Laugh Clown Laugh. The movie was released by MGM studios in 1928. It stars Lon Chaney Sr. and a young Loretta Young. The movie starts out slow, but picks up its pace and has a climatic melancholic conclusion. Chaney stars as Tito, a performer in a traveling carnival show who goes by the stage name of Flik. One day Tito and his fellow travelling performer and friend Simon, who is played ably by Bernard Siegel find an orphaned girl who has been abandoned by the roadside. Tito adopts the girl whose name is Simonetta (later played by Young) and becomes a sort of father figure to her. As she grows older she develops into a fine performer in her own right. Tito admires her and his feelings for her change from being a father figure to one of love. However, he is afraid to tell her due to obvious reasons. The main one being that he does not want to risk losing her which he fears will happen one day. He is also a man nearing two score and ten, and could conceivably be the age of her grandfather.

Simonetta eventually meets the wealthy Count Luigi Ravelli played by Nils Asther. Tito meets Luigi in the doctors office. The irony of their meeting is that Tito is a clown who makes people laugh, but is himself a miserable wretch who is incapable of laughter due to his quiet and hidden love for Simonetta. Luigi has a condition that causes him to laugh too much. The two men become fast friends, believing that each can help the other. Of course, neither of them know about the others feeling for Simonetta. Luigi and Simonetta fall in love much to Tito's dismay who feels betrayed by his friend. After Luigi and Simonetta agree to marry the young woman returns to Tito, and realizes that he is distraught and finally comes to the conclusion that he has feelings for her other than fatherly ones. She does not want to break Tito's heart, and decides to call off the marriage to Luigi and marry Tito instead. It is a noble thing to do, and after she leaves to inform Luigi, Tito becomes morose and contemplative. He knows that Simonetta loves Luigi, and wants to see her happy, and that he is being selfish. He meets Simon for a rehearsal and Simon is surprised to see Tito dressed up in his clown outfit. Tito insists on doing a dangerous stunt and falls to his death from a tightwire. His last words as he lay dying on the ground were about Simonetta.

Laugh Clown Laugh is a movie about forbidden love. Chaney is superb in the part as Tito. One of the more poignant scenes in the film occurs when Chaney (dressed as Flik) becomes immersed in thought and is surrounded by scores of laughing heads. They are phantoms of faceless and anonymous people who are there to see him perform. But they are vapid, empty, and meaningless to him. They are nothing but images of some temporal existence which finds laughter for some brief moment on the linear plane of time. As I watched this part of the film I became engrossed with these phantom heads. Who were these people? What became of them? This movie was filmed 90 years ago. Whoever they were... one thing is certain. They are long dead. In all probability their descendants (if they had any) do not even remember them. Yet here they are...their jovial faces forever anonymous caught forever in one of the things that we all strive for...A little laughter and fun.

                                                                Lon Chaney Sr. as Tito

In Memoriam: Jay S. Hipkins (1968-2018)

By Craig: My twin brother Jay who was the co-author of this blog has passed away after a lengthy battle with GIST cancer. Jay fought the hard battle for almost 9 years before finally succumbing to the disease on February 21. Jay leaves behind his loving wife Tina, along with his mother and father and numerous friends, family and students. Jay was a teacher at the Fletcher School in Charlotte North Carolina before having to retire due to his illness 3 years ago.

Jay was born in Worcester Massachusetts on 03 September 1968. He grew up in Hubbardston, a small town in Worcester county where he attended the Center school, and then Quabbin High in Barre. He was a boy scout, and also served as an alter boy at Holy Spirit Catholic church in Gardner. As boys, Jay and I spent a lot of time riding our bikes around town, and at an early age we started delivering newspapers for the Gardner News. Jay and I started running shortly after being inspired by the 1976 Olympic games in Montreal. Although I am a decent runner, I could never match the speed of Jay. We entered a number of races over the years and I do not believe I was ever able to beat him! People could tell us apart by our posture and our demeanor. He would always stand erect, straight as an arrow, while I was content to sit back and slouch! Sometimes we would skip school. I would go off to the sand pit and shoot at cans with my .22, while he would go off somewhere and read Shakespeare or Dante!

Jay attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte graduating with a bachelors degree in English. Over the years he developed a mastery of the English language, and studied the classics. He was particularly fond of the works of Victor Hugo, and also took an interest in medieval history, Latin and the medieval church. He moved to New Zealand and earned a CELTA certificate and ended up teaching English to non-English speakers in Hamilton, New Zealand. He moved back to the United States in 2005 where he began teaching at the Fletcher School. He also served as the schools first cross country coach. Jay was a prolific reader and writer. In 2014 he published An Ocean of Stories which is a collection of tales and sketches that he had worked on over the years. Just before his death his novel Astrolabe was published. It is his masterpiece and shows the true genius of my brother. It is the story of a young man, the son of the 12th century scholar Peter Abelard and his lover Heloise. He battles the inner demons within himself, and the conflict of his emotions pertaining to good and evil. At the same time it is a love story that transcends the boundaries of time. Another collection of short stories called A Forest of Stories is forthcoming and should be available sometime in the next few months. It is a collaborative effort that I have joined him in, and he worked on editing the stories with his wife Tina and his sister in law Tracy up until he no longer had the capacity to do so. He has also left some unfinished writings which I will be working on to complete.  However, Jay's biggest achievement was nurturing the young minds of his students.

I loved my twin brother. I will find it hard to move on into the uncertain future without him. When he died, part of me died with him. I was there with him at the beginning, and I held his hand at the end knowing before he took his last breath when it would come. I cannot explain this except to say that I was his twin. We were inseparable, but I know that he will always be there as his essence is a part of my soul that can never be detached from me. I will plod onward toward my own destiny. The ghost of my twin helping me toward the finish line...

                                                                  Craig & Jay (1982)

A Lost Moment in Time: Wacky Packs: BeastBall

By Craig: It is been quite a while since I have updated this blog. There is a reason for this which I shall be revealing sometime in the next few weeks, but for now I shall say that I just haven't been in the frame of mind to write lately...or for that matter...to think. Every now and then I come up with an idea and then presto!...nothing...just a blank.  I was talking to my brother Jay the other day and he asked me if I remembered the wacky pack stickers that we use to get when we were kids. I smiled. I remembered them fondly. Anyone that grew up in the 1970s was familiar with wacky packs. This was probably more true for boys than girls, but I imagine that girls collected them too. Technically they were called "wacky packages", but kids where I grew up just called them wacky packs. I guess it was too much to add the "ages" to the "pack" but I don't really know how we bastardized the real name of them. I suppose it doesn't really matter. A generation of children who are now in the throes of middle age, and rapidly advancing toward old age remember "Crust Toothpaste" Brush teeth twice a month, tastes lousy, or "Beast Ball" Creepy Cards, with shocking bubble gum, or perhaps they might recall the "Weakies," "The breakfast of chumps" or "Blunder Bread,"" Extra heavy bread, build your body just by lifting package"

Wacky Packages came in a pack with 2 or 3 stickers and a puzzle piece. I don't really remember if gum came in the pack like it did with baseball cards, but kids bought them for the stickers not the gum, or the puzzle that you could never find all the pieces for. My brother and I would stick them all over the place. On our bed headboard, our desks, our bureaus, on the wall and basically any place that they would stick. Our mother must have cringed every time we got a pack of this new art deco. I can imagine that a lot of mothers back in the 1970s cursed Topps Chewing Gum Incorporated for this marvelous invention. I can vividly remember attempting to remove a wacky pack from the baseboard on my bed. No such luck. The edges could be peeled back but that was it. It would have taken patience (which I did not possess) and a boy scout jack knife to remove it. Even then it would have been a tedious and laborious task. Once a wacky pack made its mark it was permanent whether your mother liked it or not. I believe that I was about 6 or 7 when I first started collecting them. Some of the artwork was morbid...almost disturbing.  As a child who was still getting use to the world and all its mysteries the wacky packs threw a wrench in it. I can remember pausing and reflecting on the unreal images as if I had entered some parallel universe that was similar, but not quite the same as the one we lived in. What if I fell asleep and woke up in the wacky pack universe? Was it possible? Would I wake up and find myself drinking "Kook Aid" rather than "Kool Aide?" Impossible...or was it? To a 6 or 7 year old anything is possible. The whole world is a mystery.

I was curious to see if there was a market in the 21st century for the ubiquitous 1970s wacky pack. I was amazed to find that they were still being made, and had been brought back on numerous occasions over the past 40 years. You can buy a whole box of them for about $20. Needless to say they are not the same wacky packs that came out in the 1970s. They are knock offs and a cheaper version. The original stickers fetch a tidy little sum if one wanted to start collecting them. Do I regret sticking them all over my bedroom when I was a kid knowing now that I could fetch a few dollars for them? Absolutely not! The memory is what matters, after all, the 1970s were the golden age of wacky packs. I am glad that I was a part of it! I asked my 14 year old son if he had ever heard of a wacky pack and got a blank look... "A wacky what dad?"