---
product_id: 86545799
title: "The silent clowns"
price: "E£ 3608"
currency: EGP
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 10
url: https://www.desertcart.com.eg/products/86545799-the-silent-clowns
store_origin: EG
region: Egypt
---

# The silent clowns

**Price:** E£ 3608
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** The silent clowns
- **How much does it cost?** E£ 3608 with free shipping
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## Description

The silent clowns [KERR, WALTER] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The silent clowns

Review: Very interesting and informative book - If you have any interest in the three most famous silent film comedians, you will want to buy this book. I wasn't expecting the giant, coffee table book format and I don't love that about it but I guess it must have been deemed necessary to include the amount of pictures and information that they did. Worth it!
Review: An enthralling, engaging and thoroughly elucidating read! - Very well written and easy to follow even if you have no real education on the subject when starting the book. If you're interested in Chaplin, Keaton or Lloyd, then this book will have something for you. It's not in-depth to the point of biography on any of the characters within, but it will whet your appetite for more knowledge and give you a firm grasp on the silent comedy.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #866,478 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #600 in Acting & Auditioning (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars (39) |
| Edition  | First Edition |
| ISBN-10  | 0394469070 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-0394469072 |
| Item Weight  | 1 pounds |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 372 pages |
| Publication date  | January 1, 1975 |
| Publisher  | Publisher |

## Images

![The silent clowns - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/318du-cWi0L.jpg)
![The silent clowns - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41BoQNbm2sL.jpg)
![The silent clowns - Image 3](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41HWXoZIz6L.jpg)
![The silent clowns - Image 4](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41PagqN+CmL.jpg)
![The silent clowns - Image 5](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41bLWPUe0UL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very interesting and informative book
*by M***T on April 23, 2021*

If you have any interest in the three most famous silent film comedians, you will want to buy this book. I wasn't expecting the giant, coffee table book format and I don't love that about it but I guess it must have been deemed necessary to include the amount of pictures and information that they did. Worth it!

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ An enthralling, engaging and thoroughly elucidating read!
*by I***N on May 21, 2014*

Very well written and easy to follow even if you have no real education on the subject when starting the book. If you're interested in Chaplin, Keaton or Lloyd, then this book will have something for you. It's not in-depth to the point of biography on any of the characters within, but it will whet your appetite for more knowledge and give you a firm grasp on the silent comedy.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Embracing The Aesthetics Of Silence
*by B***M on August 31, 2011*

Walter Kerr starts his book about the silent-comedy era with a quote from Mary Pickford, a silent star who suggested: "It would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talkie instead of the other way round." It's a strange line that reads a good deal less stranger after you have the chance of reading Walter Kerr's 1975 overview, "The Silent Clowns," which takes on the legacies of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and many others whose best moments on film were captured before the era of sound. As Kerr explains it, there was something about the way silent comedy functioned that made it both funnier and a purer art form than what came after. People may agree with him already: How many times do you hear the phrase, in regard to Jerry Lewis, say, or Peter Sellers, "best screen comedian of the sound era"? Reading "The Silent Clowns" makes a convincing case for this perspective. Kerr takes on the greats and near-greats in a manner that both engages and (slightly) repels. It engages because he's in love with the material, with the stars, and with the comedy as comedy. Like others note here, you find yourself laughing at Kerr's descriptions of such scenes unseen as, say Raymond Griffith distracting a firing squad by throwing up a plate every time they try to shoot him and then angering the soldiers because the plates keep getting smaller. It repels because Kerr's academic focus feels at times too ladled on, as he talks about reading Chaplin's "City Lights" as "a structural exercise" reflecting on the duality of identity or Keaton's films as existential metaphors. Kerr also brushes off some good comics (Fatty Arbuckle and Charley Chase, especially) for being merely funny, while celebrating Harry Langdon's brief time in the sun more than it deserves. Yet for the most part I was with him, at least after getting past a long and windy introductory section dealing with silent film as a whole from which only Pickford's opening quote seems worthwhile. Kerr is a stickler for something he calls "the realm of factual fantasy that was silent film comedy's distinctive vein." Silent film allowed jokes sound didn't, like a wheel rolling up and knocking over someone who was looking the other way. You'd hear the wheel in a sound film, Kerr notes, and expect the victim to do the same. Beyond this, silent film created a vaccuum for developing ideas, no matter how random or abstract. Keaton was best at this, Kerr notes, and he goes on to explore Keaton's comedic handling of such things as disaster (flying over houses in a hurricane "Steamboat Bill Jr." was something Keaton had actually done as a child) and film itself (as a projectionist, Keaton steps into a movie screen in "Sherlock Jr.") Even when Kerr goes overboard about Keaton, which happens often, he's engaging and full of ideas. Most importantly, he puts the spotlight on the humor above all else. If you don't run out and borrow a Keaton comedy from the library after reading this book, you may need a doctor's appointment. Kerr still defers to Chaplin as the greatest silent comedy, even as he points out the defects and even a weak movie ("Sunnyside") along the way. It's hard not to agree, as the descriptions he offers of Chaplin's films are the funniest. I wish he had given Lloyd a bit more attention. If he's a third wheel, he's a good deal more interesting than Kerr presents him, though his point about how Lloyd's popularity (the greatest of the three in terms of pure box office, Kerr points out) defined what it was to be American in a way his audience liked seems rattling good judgment to me. I enjoy this book a lot, and while I can't recommend it as someone's first exposure to silent comedy (that should be the films themselves), it's fine criticism that offers some deep analysis about what makes these movies work and why we are still made happy watching them all these decades on.

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*Product available on Desertcart Egypt*
*Store origin: EG*
*Last updated: 2026-02-27*