Charles Reisner

Biography

Charles Reisner (also frequently billed as "Riesner") started his professional life as a prizefighter. He performed in vaudeville for ten years and eventually wound up writing lyrics for musical comedy on Broadway. After a spell under the auspices of impresario Charles B. Dillingham, Reisner moved to California in 1915, finding a job as an actor in one-reel comedies at Universal. He added further credentials to his resume at Vitagraph before his arrival at Keystone, where he made the acquaintance of Charles Chaplin. Before long his innate ability to devise intricate visual sight gags got him involved as a gag writer (as well as occasional bit part actor) in classic Chaplin comedies at First National, including A Dog's Life (1918) and The Kid (1921). His collaboration with the famous comic ended with The Gold Rush (1925), for which Reisner was credited as assistant director. Moving on to Warner Brothers, he directed Charles' brother Syd Chaplin in The Man on the Box (1925), Oh! What a Nurse! (1926) and The Better 'Ole (1926). Reisner also worked on the frenetic Buster Keaton comedy Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), using many of the old sight gags from bygone days of vaudeville comedy. Alas, it failed at the box office and proved to be Keaton's last film for his own production company. During the 1930s Reisner made occasional forays into mystery and crime drama with minor entries like Sophie Lang Goes West (1937), but he was always more comfortable directing the screen's zaniest comedians, from Jack Benny in It's in the Air (1935) to The Marx Brothers in their hilarious and underrated The Big Store (1941), from Bud Abbott and Lou Costello who were Lost in a Harem (1944) to Joan Davis in one of the screen's last full-on slapstick farces, The Traveling Saleswoman (1950).