A Shout-Out to the Silent Sidekicks

From Silent Bob to Harpo Marx, a look at the supporting stars who scarcely say a word.

The Kid in “Out of the Past”

1947’s “Out of the Past” contains some of the most memorable dialogue of any film noir. And yet for a film that revels in language, it’s a movie in which the only character who could be described as heroic doesn’t speak at all. That’s The Kid, played by ex-Little Rascal Dickie Moore. He works for Robert Mitchum’s Jeff Bailey, who has to confront his dark past when it confronts him at his gas station. The Kid doesn’t appear much in the picture — he’s absent from the long flashback explaining Bailey’s history and the sequence where Bailey tries to escape a frame in San Francisco — but he does deliver the film’s coolest moment, using a fishing pole to hook and yank a gunman’s arm right when he’s got the drop on his friend. Plus, he’s the only character (save for Bailey’s innocent of a girlfriend, Ann, played by Virginia Huston) who’s motivated by loyalty and friendship rather than greed, lust, or revenge.

When the dust settles and Bailey’s dead, Ann comes to see the Kid to ask whether Bailey was killed while trying to run away with his old flame. The lie the Kid tells with a single nod enables Ann to move on with her life without him, and ensures she won’t be haunted by her past the way Bailey was. As she drives off toward her future, the Kid looks up at Bailey’s name on the gas station sign, gives a wave of gratitude, and walks away. Without uttering a syllable, Moore’s character gets the final word.

Harpo Marx in “Duck Soup”

Harpo Marx is a holdover from the silent film era, a nonvocal prankster who “speaks” with a series of horn honks and whistle slides while Groucho gabs and waggles away. Though broad of expression and vaudevillian in his physical gags, Harpo seems to be using his silence as a sort of personal strategy, a technique that gets picked up by many of the silent sidekicks that have followed him in film. Harpo became so popular that in many Marx Brothers films he doesn’t strictly fit the sidekick bill — he’s granted scenes and sequences all his own. In the “Hat Gag” sequence of 1933′s “Duck Soup,” Harpo fends off an interrogator first with silence, then with a series of physical effacements that throw the whole “conversation” into confusion. By the end, two men are basically under Harpo’s impish control, and seem to have also been infected by his silence: the hat-swapping gag plays out as a muted, beautifully choreographed dance.

Clarabell the Clown in “The Howdy Doody Show”

In total, three actors played Clarabell Hornblow, the voiceless clown who kept company over the years with with Howdy Doody on the long-running marionette-centric children’s show. But only one, Lew Anderson, got to talk. For the most part, Clarabell communicated perfectly well via pratfalls, pantomime, judicious use of a seltzer bottle and a box mounted with two bicycle horns, one for yes and one for no — and Buffalo Bob always seemed able to interpret for him when more explanation was needed. But in the famous final episode in 1960, Clarabell revealed a “big surprise…the world’s biggest surprise” in the closing moments — that he could speak. The drums rolled, the camera closed in, and Clarabell’s lip trembled as he prepared to deliver his first and last lines. The barely audible “Goodbye, kids” was accompanied by Anderson’s very real tears — the breaking of silence has rarely been so poignant.

Gromit in “Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit”

Gromit can’t talk. He’s a dog, and in the world of Wallace and Gromit, animals may be capable of reading the paper and co-operating a humane pest-control business, but they don’t speak. Plus, one could have a lengthy argument over whether or not Gromit actually has a mouth. Not to matter — even with the lack of essential orifices, he has one of the most expressive faces in animation, and there’s never a doubt about the love, worry and exasperation he directs toward his owner, the cheese-loving, disaster-prone inventor Wallace. In Gromit’s eloquent nonverbage one can read the concentrated, martyred suffering of the more responsible member of any pairing. His caretaking of Wallace is so constant and competent it often goes unnoticed by the human, who’s well-meaning but oblivious and blundering. It’s this dynamic that gives the four Aardman Animation shorts and their splendid feature a consistent melancholy undertone — Gromit will always silently be there to ensure his master’s well-being, a job that’s sometimes thankless. In “The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” he wistfully sneaks some time with the prospective prize marrow he’s been growing in anticipation of the annual contest, and there’s never any doubt that the vegetable’s doomed. Can’t a canine have dreams of his own?

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