For the last several weeks we’ve been looking at romantic comedies of the 1930s/40s, specifically the talented filmmakers and (mostly female) comedians whose careers flourished with the transition from slapstick to screwball. But in this story there are some gaps—potholes in history where was supposed to be, for some reason, wasn’t. Consider poor Jimmy Parrott, doomed to live and die in the shadow of his brother Charley.
Jimmy Parrott, or James Parrott, or Paul Parrott, call him what you will, was a talented screen comedian with real gifts for gag construction and physical business. Off camera he was a brilliant comedy writer and director who helped shape the careers of numerous comedy stars, and helped define the unique magic of the Hal Roach studio. Many of his contemporaries who followed the same career trajectory ended up as leading lights of the new screwball mode (as we’ve seen these last few weeks). But Jimmy Parrott was haunted by various personal demons that would bring him to a tragic and untimely end before he had a chance to reap that reward.
Part of Jimmy Parrott’s problem was his older brother Charley Chase. In a cruel “anything you can do I can do better” twist, his brother Charley was everything Jimmy was, but more ostentatiously successful. It was never deliberate, but Charley stole Jimmy’s thunder, over and over again. Charley Chase has fan clubs, web sites in his honor, biographies. Not so Jimmy, who has to suffer the added indignity of having some of his films incorrectly identified as works by his brother.
Jimmy Parrott was born in 1898 in Baltimore, Maryland. Older brother Charley left home to join the vaudeville circuit when he was just 16, and that led him to a life in the movies. After Charley quit Mack Sennett’s Keystone and started directing comedies at Fox Funfilms, their mother decided that Jimmy was running with a bad crowd in Baltimore and opted to send him to live with his brother—imagine! Sending your kid to Hollywood to get them away from the wrong crowd!
Now, there’s a bit of a chronological jumble here, waiting to be sorted out by an intrepid researcher, because Jimmy appears to be in three places at once. By one account, Jimmy joined Charley at Fox as a writer and actor, roughly around 1918. But it’s also said that Jimmy was at Hal Roach in 1917 as a gag writer for Harold Lloyd. And then there’s the claim that Jimmy was in WW1 at the time.
The best I can figure out is that Jimmy came to Hollywood in 1917, and started off at Hal Roach—which would indicate he landed his first job in movies without the nepotistic influence of Charley—but did take advantage of his brother’s position at Fox to land his second gig, working at Fox in 1918.
(But never going to war—as far as I can tell that part never happened.)
It’s hard to keep track of behind the scenes talent in those early days of movies because we’re reliant on documentation, which isn’t always available, complete, or even accurate. It’s easier to track people on screen, ‘cause ya can see ‘em, so Jimmy’s early Hollywood life comes into clearer focus in 1919 when he starts co-starring with Sid Smith in films for producer Bill Burrud. Jimmy apparently also started directing these. There were 26 of them all told, released through a company called Bulls-Eye (where of course Charley was serving as director general at the time)—and a few of them survive today.
In 1920, with the Sid Smith series ended, Jimmy was back at Roach, as a supporting player in Snub Pollard’s films. Roach recognized that Jimmy had a comic sensibility similar to Snub’s, and signed the young man to a series of his own one-reelers, at a salary of $65 a week, and re-christened him Paul Parrott, since slapstick comedians like superheroes love alliteration.
But many of the Paul Parrott shorts were filmed but then shelved for later use. Roach sat on some of them for many years after they’d been shot to finally distribute them to theaters—hardly a vote of confidence.
Jimmy had epilepsy. His fits were utterly ruinous for a screen comedian who needed to be on camera, performing, day in and day out, but infrequent enough not to stop him from being a valuable asset to the Roach organization behind the scenes. So, Roach basically swapped his two Parrotts, taking Charley from a mostly administrative role at the studio and turning him into a beloved onscreen performer; meanwhile Jimmy put away the Paul Parrott persona and went backstage where he became along, with Leo McCarey, one of the studio’s strongest and most valuable directors. During Laurel and Hardy’s heyday, he was their most frequent director. He continued directing at Roach for Charley Chase and Thelma Todd and Our Gang right up to 1935, and thereafter he continued to work as a writer for Laurel and Hardy through to 1938…
But in addition to his epilepsy, Jimmy was a drug-addict. He was overweight, he had heart problems, he had troubled marriages—his personal life was a train wreck. And the seeming continuity of credits on his CV hide the truth—he was riding a roller coaster career of being dismissed or demoted as unreliable, only to be hired back by loyal friends trying to do him a solid. There was a revolving door at Roach that he was perpetually cycling through. And in 1939 the cycle ended, with his sad death, at the young age of 41.
Officially he died from a heart attack. Charley said privately he believed Jimmy killed himself with pills. Given his roster of unhealthy habits and vices, nobody living such a life can expect to make it very far. As Rob Farr has noted, it doesn’t really matter which single detail you want to pick out and say, here’s the cause, because they were all the same thing—he was a victim of his addiction, his addiction consumed him.