Karl Dane's Final Bow
The other night I was watching Karl Dane's last screen appearance, in a 1933 Mascot serial called The Whispering Shadow. Dane wasn't onscreen much; he was mostly there for comic relief. He had been a star of the silent era who, like many of his colleagues, fell on hard times when the talkies arrived.
But Dane's journey down was more tragic than most. His guttural Danish accent made him sound like he had marbles in his mouth; his old studio MGM shunned him, even when he asked for work as a carpenter or stagehand. Even small studios had little use for him now. His old Hollywood friends disappeared, and a restaurant that hired him as a waiter let him go when his once-famous name didn't bring in customers.
On April 13, 1934, a pickpocket lifted $18 off him, the last money he had in the world. The next day he shot himself.
Watching him stumble through The Whispering Shadow, playing an oafish radio dispatcher, I imagined that I could see the beaten-down man he had become, see it in the tilt of his head and the way his ungainly body moved, and in the way he struggled and struggled and struggled to spit out his lines.
Maybe not. But maybe.
Ah well, we say, crazy world isn't it, and there has never been a shortage of sad stories. But you wonder sometimes, reading stories like his, why the indifference of the universe must so often translate to the indifference of people. We all like to think we're better than the fair-weather friends who deserted Karl Dane -- but are we?
