Max Linder
Known For
Acting
Born
1883-12-16 in Cavernes, Saint-Loubès, Gironde, France
Died
1925-11-01
Biography
Although all too frequently neglected by fans of silent comedy, Max Linder is in many ways as important a figure as Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, or Harold Lloyd, not least because he predated (and influenced) them all by several years, and was largely responsible for the creation of the classic style of silent slapstick comedy. He started out as an actor in the French theatre, but after making his screen debut in 1905 he quickly became an enormously famous and successful film comedian on both sides of the Atlantic, thanks to his character "Max", a top-hatted dandy. By 1912, he was the highest-paid film star in the world, with an unprecedented salary of one million francs. He began to direct films in 1911 and showed equal facility behind the camera, but his career suffered an almost terminal blow when he was called up to fight in World War I. He was gassed, and the illness that resulted would blight his career. Although offered a contract in America, recurring ill-health meant that his US films had little of the sparkle of his early French work, and a brief attempt to revive his career by making films for the recently-formed United Artists (one of whose founders, of course, was Chaplin) in the early 1920s came to little, although these later films are now regarded as classics. He returned to France and killed himself in a suicide pact with his wife in 1925.
Most Known For
Easter Parade
as Audience Member (uncredited)
Max in Monaco
Max se marie
as Max
Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma
as Self (archive footage)
Joined Lips
Charlie Chaplin, The Genius of Liberty
as archive footage
Max est distrait
as Max
Au secours !
as Max
Troubles of a Grass Widower
The Three Must-Get-Theres
as Dart-In-Again
Life and Deaths of Max Linder
as Self (archive footage)
Seven Years Bad Luck
as Max
The Way of the World
as (Archive Footage)
Max and His Dog Dick
as Max
The Husband's Trick
Birth of the Tramp
as Self (archive footage)
Max Speaks English
as Max
Max Sets the Fashion
as Max
Be My Wife
as Max, the Fiancé
The Theft of the Mona Lisa
as (archive footage)