By the mid-1920s, Charley Chase was a top-ten box office draw. His signature was the "slow burn"—a look of dawning, existential horror that he perfected long before Jackie Gleason or The Office’s Jim Halpert. But his films were hard to find. Due to music rights (his later films featured original songs like "On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine") and natural decay, over 50 of his shorts were considered lost... until recently. The Charley Chase MegaPack is a digital compilation that has been circulating among private collectors and educational torrent sites, though legitimate restoration houses are taking note. Ranging from 50GB to over 120GB depending on the version, this pack claims to contain over 75 surviving Charley Chase shorts, spanning from his earliest 1924 "Jimmy Jump" comedies to his sound-era masterpieces of the early 1930s.
He wasn't a slapstick acrobat. His genius was verbal and structural in a silent medium. Chase understood the rhythm of a joke better than almost anyone at the Hal Roach Studios (the same factory that produced Laurel & Hardy and Our Gang). He started as a writer, then a director, and finally stepped in front of the camera when he realized he was funnier than the actors he was writing for. Charley Chase MegaPack
Have you watched the Charley Chase MegaPack? Share your favorite discovered short in the comments below. By the mid-1920s, Charley Chase was a top-ten