Epes Winthrop Sargent (August 21, 1872, in Nassau, Bahamas – Dec. 6, 1938 in Brooklyn, New York) was an American vaudeville critic who wrote under the pen-names Chicot[1] and Chic[1]. He was also a screenwriter.
Epes W. Sargent | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 1872  |
| Died | 1938 (aged 65–66) |
He was considered "one of vaudeville's most influential critics and commentators".[2]
Early life
editHe was born in Nassau, Bahamas[1] on August 21, 1872, and moved to the United States in 1878 with his parents.
Career
editHe first worked as a critic for the New York paper, the Daily Mercury.[2][1] In the 1890s, he joined the New York Morning Telegraph.
He claimed to have critiqued the first motion picture offered in a theatre, becoming a film fan in the process."[3] In 1905, when Variety began publication,[1] he joined them as their first reviewer and wrote for them intermittently until his death.
In 1911, he became a staff writer for The Moving Picture World. They serialized his Technique of the Photoplay, which was soon published as a book.
In 1914–1915 he wrote the stories for a large number of split-reel and one-reel silent comedies produced by Arthur Hotaling at the Jacksonville, Florida, studio of the Lubin Manufacturing Company, which included the earliest screen appearances of Oliver Hardy.[4]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e "Obituary for Epes Winthrop Sargent". Hartford Courant. 1938-12-08. p. 4. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
- ^ a b Anthony Slide, Encyclopedia of Vaudeville. 1995. p.453
- ^ Epes W. Sargent, "Flimflamming the Film Fans, Woman's Home Companion, November 1924.
- ^ Rob Stone, Laurel or Hardy: The Solo Films of Stan Laurel and Oliver "Babe" Hardy (Temecula, CA: Split Reel, 1996), pp. 5–61, passim.
External links
edit- Works by or about Epes W. Sargent at the Internet Archive
- Works by Epes W. Sargent at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
