Directing
Props, the stage man, and his assistant at the Orpheum Theater, Plunkville divide their time equally between drinking and attention to duty. Trouble starts when the new acts arrive. The Wiggle sisters, a Hawaiian act, demand the star dressing room but Props turns them down, but relents when Babe, the strong man, and his beautiful wife, Ethel Burton because he is smitten. Once the show begins Props is forever getting in the way of the performers and his bibulous assistant has an unfortunate propensity for dropping the curtain at the wrong moments. Things only get crazier from there.
In The Villain, Billy attempted something a little different. He's still imitating Chaplin, but this time he's playing the wicked, top-hatted Charlie found in some of his earliest Keystone appearances (e.g. Mabel at the Wheel), the ones where Charlie himself seemed to be imitating the studio's recently departed Ford Sterling. Throughout this short there is much spoofing of old-time melodramas, a frequent motif of Sterling's comedies.
The Hero is a 1917 silent comedy film featuring Billy West & Oliver Hardy.
When their father is reported missing at the front during World War I, Jane and Katherine are stamped and sent by parcel post across the country to their Aunt Lucille Forrest in New Jersey. The two girls manage to smuggle their dog into the mail bag as well. Aunt Lucille is in love with Lt. Tom Hayes, but she is angry with him after he resigns his commission at the start of the war. She does not know that Tom is in the Secret Service, and she becomes jealous of a female spy whom Tom is trailing. Jane and Katherine's mischievous pranks finally assist in capturing the spy and the secret plans, and getting Aunt Lucille back together with Tom.
An ordinary day - so an eventful one - of Tom Katt, a young man who works as a drugstore owner's assistant: his - very acrobatic - bike ride to his place of work; the - fanciful - way he performs his job; the - ingenious - subterfuge he finds to help his employer, who has money problems; the - swift - way he escapes the cops chasing him...
Baby Peggy, one of the biggest child stars in movie history, does not disappoint in this charming silent comedy, even though it only exists in fragmentary form. Through the short, she interacts with a number of animals, especially a goose she wants to cook.
Short King Bee Studios slapstick comedy featuring Billy West and Oliver Hardy
Jack Duffy is terrified of horses, so when Gayle Lloyd wants to lift the mortgage by running her horse in the harness race that Saturday, he's chosen to drive the rig. The rest of the movie is about the farcical mishaps on the way to his inevitable victory..
Harry is a hobo, one step ahead of the law. After accidentally foiling a purse snatcher, he cadges a ride on a flatbed truck, is knocked out when a wax figure falls on him during the ride, and is carried into a museum by someone thinking he's another manikin. Inside, it takes him a while to figure out that he's among dummies. Then, two enterprising jewel thieves arrive to steal the museum director's priceless ruby. Cops are on hand as well: when the ruby goes missing, Harry may be the perfect fall guy. Can Harry stay away from the cops, foil the theft, and behave heroically in front of the museum director's daughter, the same woman whose purse he saved that morning?
Clancy's Kosher Wedding is a 1927 silent comedy film directed by Arvid E. Gillstrom.
The Pest (aka The Freeloader) is a 1917 silent comedy film featuring Oliver Hardy and starring Billy West in one of his "Charlie Chaplin" rip-off roles.
A Paramount-Christie comedy from 1928.
Winnie Winkle's wee brother Perry captains a rag tag sandlot team.
Tired Feet (1933) is a Harry Langdon comedy short done for Educational Films.
After a busy day of playing pranks on their father's servants and guests, Harry Williams' daughters Jane and Katherine tumble into bed and fall asleep. Having seen a film depicting World War I fighting in Europe, little Jane dreams that two armies, consisting entirely of mechanical dolls, are advancing against each other in battle. While Trik leads the German troops, who are guilty of committing a score of atrocities, Trak heads the Allied army, which ultimately wins the war. In the end, Jane awakens with a start to find that it has all been a dream.
A bumbling janitor in a fleabag hotel drives the residents crazy, and a poor artist believes that his girlfriend is having an affair with a wealthy artist living across the hall, and takes unorthodox measures to find out what's going on.
We first meet Harry on the morning of his wedding day. He looks like he's been partying, but we know he's a sweet guy because he sleeps with a photo of his bride. Friends serenade Harry outside, but when he goes to the window to join in they douse him with water. As he prepares for his wedding, he looks in the mirror and it shatters. When the groom attempts to run to the church the ring slips out of his hand and is run over by a passing car. As anyone who has seen Harry's 1924 comedy HIS MARRIAGE WOW can guess, the ring sticks to the tire, and Harry must climb on to the car to retrieve it.....
Billy is a hobo who hangs around the train station. He creates disruption in the ticket office, at the lunch counter, and in the lives of some of the customers.
Privacy Robson is a downtrodden husband who takes advice from his friend Florian Slappey. He eventually gets the upper hand after starting divorce proceedings, pretending to have a new girlfriend and refusing to eat anything she cooks him.
In this film, West escapes a couple of cops and fights for the hand of Leatrice Joy with Oliver Hardy (doing his best Eric Campell). A barber by trade, our tramp serves his boorish clientele with similarly bad manners before the whole crowd attends a swanky Barbers' Ball.
