Notes

The film survives in an incomplete print, but the missing footage does not critically affect the storyline. The surviving print seems to end rather abruptly, as the last few seconds of the fadeout are among the lost footage. The alternate happy ending, shot at the studio’s insistence, has also been lost.

MGM delayed production of this film several years, because Chaney had already appeared as a clown character in the 1924 film He Who Gets Slapped. Chaney took pains to make the clown makeup between these films of different styles, with the Flik character in this film being portrayed in Grotesque Style, rather than the earlier character’s Neat Style.

A musical theme written specially for the film (called “Laugh, Clown, Laugh”) became a huge popular hit. Chaney’s set musicians played the song at his 1930 funeral.

This was Loretta Young’s first major movie role, at the age of fourteen. In interviews near the end of her life, she remembered her gratitude towards Chaney for his kindness and guidance, and for protecting her from director Brenon’s sometimes harsh treatment.

2002 Re-Score, 2003 Release

In January 2002, the third annual Young Film Composers Competition sponsored by Turner Classic Movies (which is owned by Turner Broadcasting System – the Time Warner subsidiary that also owns MGM’s pre-1986 films through Turner Entertainment) began. One of the entrants was a college student named Scott Salinas and he won. In November 2002, he scored it at TODD-AO digitally recorded which the film first aired in February 2003 and at the same time, a promo showing Scott Salinas’ experience composing the score for Laugh, Clown, Laugh.

At first the character had no name and was known simply as “The Clown,” or “Fleischer’s Clown.” The series was very popular and in 1921, Max and Dave Fleischer formed their own studio, Out of the Inkwell Films, Inc. Their films were distributed through the States Rights method through Warner Brothers, Winkler Pictures, Standard, and finally The Red Seal Pictures, Corporation. The “Clown” was named Ko-Ko in 1923 when Dick Huemer came to the studio as their Animation Supervisor, and it was at this time that the canine companion, Fitz was created to share the mischief. Heumer also redesigned the “Clown,” and set the drawing style that made the series famous. The illustration at the heading is an example by Huemer.

In the films produced from 1924 to 1927, the clown’s name was hyphenated, “Ko-Ko.” The hyphen was dropped due to legal issues associated with the new association with Paramount beginning in mid 1927 following the bankruptcy of The Red Seal Pictures Corporation. “Out of the Inkwell” was also retitled for Paramount as “The Inkwell Imps” and continued until July, 1929, ending with “Chemical Koko,”. “The Inkwell Imps” series was replaced by Flesicher’s new sound series, “Talkartoons”.

Throughout the 1920s, the Fleischer studio proved to be one of the top producers of animation with clever humor and numerous innovations. In 1924, Fleischer decided to go a step further and introduce a new series called Ko-Ko Song Car-tunes, sing-along shorts (featuring “The Famous Bouncing Ball“). These early cartoons were actually the first films ever to use soundtracks (two years before The Jazz Singer and three years before Steamboat Willie). These sound shorts received limited distribution through the 36 theaters owned by The Red Seal company, which became defunct shortly before the sound era officially began. While the last KOKO films were being produced, the Fleischers returned to producing sound cartoons with a revival of the song films named ["SCREEEN SONGS"], which were released to theaters starting in February, 1929. Throughout this transitional period, the Fleischer Studio continued to produce a number of innovative and advanced films between 1929 and 1933.

In 1931, Koko was taken out of retirement and became a regular in the new Fleischer Talkartoons series with costars, Betty Boop and Bimbo. Koko’s last theatrical appearance was in the “Betty Boop” cartoon, “Ha-Ha-Ha” (1934), a remake of an “Out of the Inkwell silent, “The Cure” (1924). Koko’s first color appearance was a cameo in “Toys Will Be Toys,”(1949),one of the revived “Screen Songs” series produced by Famous Studios. The colorized version of Koko also made a cameo appearance in the ending scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

In 1958, Max Fleischer set out to revive Out of the Inkwell for television, and a series of 100 color episodes were produced in 1960-1961 by Hal Seeger using the voice talents of Larry Storch.