6/01/01

Slapstick, a first novel from Laura Mazzuca Toops, is a fast-paced tale of a frewheeling era. It’s the end of the 1920s in Hollywood, and the movie industry is enamored with new technologies—"talkies," the medium that’s threatening to put a quick end to silent slapstick as its practitioners know it. But silent slapstick is Harold Gilbert’s bread and butter—and his art—and he fights against the change. Harold isn’t only resisting the future, though; he’s also haunted by his past, and a mysterious dead girl he just can’t forget. In 1927, everything that brought him to the success he enjoys seems to be converging to push him back into obscurity and poverty.

Harold has his own studio, which produces silent comedies with titles like "April Showers," "Lucky Day," and "Battling Biggles." The films are peopled with the same regular cast—Harold’s old vaudevillian friends and his leading lady, the young and winsome Lila Lenore. Together, the team puts out picture after picture, all successful and all well-crafted. Harold knows his art, and knows where its limits lie. He won’t make talkies because, as he sees it, the introduction of sound forces the pacing to slow, sacrificing comic timing for the gimmick of noise. Neither will he make "serious art" pieces, and sacrifice the comedy to statement. Harold has refined his art form, and he cannot adapt it, no matter what the market may call for.

Unfortunately, the market calls for talkies, and Harold’s pictures, as well made as they are, seem out-of-date to his audiences. Harold, fortunate enough to control his own studio, manages for a time to keep making silent films, but still, he can’t make them successful. His studio starts to fail, and his film-making team is torn between their loyalty to him and their eagerness to stake their own places in the new industry. Already betrayed by his audience, Harold sees his tight-knit team begin to break up as well.

On top of his unravelling business, Harold’s personal life is crumbling. His wife and former leading lady has long been distant, mourning the dramatic career she believes she gave up for him. She quickly retreats in alcoholism and mental illness. He’s becoming entangled with his new costar Lila Lenore, who has her own complicated back story. And his past is catching up with him, embodied by the long-dead girl who still appears in his dreams. His old friend and former business associate, Hollywood producer Max Randolph, is plotting against him in revenge for long-ago slights and jealousies.

As his studio falters and his pictures fail, Harold’s entire movie-star life goes under with them. He can no longer afford the accoutrements of fame, and sees himself on the brink of losing the cars, the servants, and the luxurious estate he has built for himself. His family, already under the strain of his career, begins to break down. He distances himself from his friends. The straight-laced young movie star who lived for his work has very little left when work fails.

The story of Harold’s downfall is told from all sides—chapters follow the thoughts of Harold, his wife, Lila, and Max Randolph. We even hear from Harold’s six-year-old son in one chapter. From each of them is pieced together Harold’s story. Some chapters enlighten with information that bring sense to previous episodes. Others serve only to illustrate the enigma that Harold Gilbert is, even to his family and closest friends. All of them, though, add depth to the complex picture of old Hollywood.

No small part of the novel is devoted to developing the character of Lila Lenore, creating the foundation, it seems, for a whole new novel devoted entirely to her. Likewise, some plot points are left tantalizingly unfulfilled or underdeveloped. These points might be covered later: Ms. Toops is said to be working on a prequel to Slapstick, which presumably will tell the stories hinted at here. Another novel about these characters and this time would certainly be a welcome good read; however, Slapstick stands quite well on its own.

Parts of the novel are reminiscent of the historical research process itself, wherein the researcher finds bits and pieces of information from different sources and pieces together much of the story, and is left wondering what juicy secrets lie behind the facts. Chapters near the end which take the form of a scrapbook of newspaper and magazine articles, serve as apt reminders that Harold Gilbert’s whole life is a collection of shadowy facts that belie the more complicated and shady truth. These last chapters drive home the novel’s theme of things never being quite as perfect as the glossy photos make them seem.

Ms. Toops has done an admirable job of capturing the spirit of her chosen time and place. She recreates the independent spirit of movie-making when Hollywood was just a cow town on the edge of glamour. The details are a testament to the painstaking research. The houses and cars, the language and clothes, and especially the inner workings of the film business in the late 1920s all come alive in the text.

In the end, the novel evokes the wistful memory of a lost time of glamour and possibility. The time of silent pictures passed quickly in entertainment history, and in Slapstick, we can follow its meteoric rise and swift fall as embodied in one man who did his job too well to change. Although the era was brief, the novel reminds us that it was also a time of remarkable promise and mind-boggling changes. Above all, Slapstick is more than a tribute to Hollywood’s past; it’s also great deal of fun, as freewheeling and artfully paced as any of Harold Gilbert’s silent films.

Laura Mazzuca Toops. Slapstick. Oakville, Ontario: LTDBooks, 2000.
Also available on CD-ROM

 Read an interview with Laura Mazzuca Toops at Amazon.com