Max Linder - Movies, Bio & Filmography

Meet Max Linder
★ Acting🎥 127 films📺 1 TV shows📅 1905–2026🔥 0
Also known as: Gabriel-Maximilien Leuvielle, Gentleman Max
Born in Cavernes, Saint-Loubès, Gironde, France
1883-12-16 (age 41 at death)
Died 1925-11-01
Although all too frequently neglected by fans of silent comedy, Max Linder is in many ways as important a figure as Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, or Harold Lloyd, not least because he predated (and influenced) them all by several years, and was largely responsible for the creation of the classic style of silent slapstick comedy.

He started out as an actor in the French theatre, but after making his screen debut in 1905 he quickly became an enormously famous and successful film comedian on both sides of the Atlantic, thanks to his character "Max", a top-hatted dandy. By 1912, he was the highest-paid film star in the world, with an unprecedented salary of one million francs. He began to direct films in 1911 and showed equal facility behind the camera, but his career suffered an almost terminal blow when he was called up to fight in World War I. He was gassed, and the illness that resulted would blight his career.

Although offered a contract in America, recurring ill-health meant that his US films had little of the sparkle of his early French work, and a brief attempt to revive his career by making films for the recently-formed United Artists (one of whose founders, of course, was Chaplin) in the early 1920s came to little, although these later films are now regarded as classics.

He returned to France and killed himself in a suicide pact with his wife in 1925.From Wikipedia
Gabriel-Maximilien Leuvielle (16 December 1883 – 1 November 1925), known professionally as Max Linder (French: [maks lɛ̃.dɛʁ]), was a French actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and comedian of the silent film era. His onscreen persona "Max" was one of the first recognizable recurring characters in film. He has also been cited as the "first international movie star" and "the first film star anywhere".
Born in Cavernes, France to Catholic parents, Linder grew up with a passion for theater and enrolled in the Conservatoire de Bordeaux in 1899. He soon received awards for his performances and continued to pursue a career in the legitimate theater. He became a contract player with the Bordeaux Théâtre des Arts from 1901 to 1904, performing in plays by Molière, Pierre Corneille, and Alfred de Musset.
From the summer of 1905, Linder appeared in short comedy films for Pathé, at first usually in supporting roles. His first major film role was in the Georges Méliès-like fantasy film The Legend of Punching. During the following years, Linder made several hundred short films portraying "Max", a wealthy and dapper man-about-town frequently in hot water because of his penchant for beautiful women and the good life. Starting with The Skater's Debut in 1907, the character became one of the first identifiable motion-picture characters who appeared in successive situation comedies. By 1911, Linder was co-directing his own films (with René LePrince) as well as writing the scripts.
Linder enlisted at the outbreak of the First World War, and worked at first as a dispatch driver and entertainer. During his service, he was injured several times, and the experiences reportedly had a devastating effect on him both physically and mentally. Linder later moved to the U.S. but was unable to achieve success. He died in 1925 in a purported suicide pact with his wife in Paris.

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