Forty nine films. Ninety eight reels worth of material spanning five years and virtually nobody remembers the charming Buster Brown Series. Perhaps because it was over shadowed by the more popular Our Gang Comedies. Maybe it was because the series never made the transition to sound. It could be that the young actor who portrayed Buster Brown in the entire five year run had grown too big for the part. In all likelihood, it was all the above reasons and a main factor was because the production company, Century Film ceased to be in 1929.
Whatever the reason for it's demise, the biggest factor in the forgotten series today is simply because most of the films have vanished from view. The few films that survive give the modern viewer a clear reason why it lasted for five years and also why the Our Gang Films are generally superior but not always better than it's competitors.
A wonderful example of the difference is Buster's Mix Up, a wonderful Buster Brown Comedy made in 1926, released by Universal and made by the Stern Brothers for Century. The star, Arthur Trimble, is a very good young actor and that's what makes the Our Gang films so appealing; the kids from the gang seem like real kids whereas Trimble's Brown is polished and distinct. When the kids in Our Gang work a scene, it seems like real life - almost as if we are eavesdropping on them. Trimble is a wonderful actor who knows where the camera is placed and knows how to deliver an expression dead on. It's a different kind of film than Our Gang yet it retains a certain kind of charm that most other kiddie series lack.
Buster's Mix up may feature Trimble as the star but the real knockout is Pete the Pup who portrayed Tige the Dog in most of the run of the series. Here in this one short you can see precisely why Hal Roach wanted the dog for his series. No canine ever worked so well in comedy movies. As Tige, Pete was required to wear a black circle around his right eye. By the time he was hired for the Our Gang Series, while concurrently working on Buster Brown, the ring around his eye became impossible to wash off. So wonderful was the dog, the studio bosses at Roach decided to let him appear in the shorts with the black ring, he was that good.
In Buster's Mix Up, he gets the lion share of the screen time. At Roach he would never be allowed this much time for plot, save for a few films but in the Buster Browns, he always was the comic saving grace. Here, he keeps plot and comedic devices moving at a pace that even Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd would have been respectful of. Much of the credit has to go to its director, Gus Meins, best remembered for his work with Our Gang in the 1930's. The direction and cutting is excellent and Pete comes across as one of the biggest laugh getters in the silent era. You may bark at that remark (and the bad pun) but if you see this picture, you will find it completely true. Pete is a gem. From rescuing a baby in a pram to ordering chocolates in a confectionery shop to patching up Buster and Mary Jane's relationship, Pete is the real hero of the Buster Brown comedies.
A surviving print of Buster's Mix up was located in the British Isles and delivered to the states in 2007. The print, in very good shape but still in need of some preservation, was privately screened on May 30th. 2007 and brought the small house down. This series needs rediscovery and if anyone knows of any prints, they should contact me because it deserves to be given its proper place in film history.
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