While trying to flirt with a young woman, Billy ends up engaging in a séance with a mystic. Intrigued by the occult, Billy decides to attempt his own rituals but is ridiculed by the membes of his club. Such an insult cannot stand and Billy has just the way to get back at his tormenters.
Home Media Availability: Stream courtesy of EYE.
Medium Rare
The spiritualism rage in the English-speaking world brought with it psychics, séances and automatic writing. The movement rose in the mid-nineteenth century and was still popular in the twentieth, but had been battered by debunkings and exposure of fraud. Such a dominant force in pop culture would, naturally, find a place in popular fiction, theater. and movies.
Billy’s Séance follows its title character (John R. Cumpson) as he tries to make time with an attractive woman. She enters the home of a medium ($1 per session, or $30 in modern money) and he follows, taking a seat at the table as the séance begins. At first, his only interest is in flirting (the medium has to smash his wandering hands with a book at one point) but he soon becomes seduced by the spirits instead of his crush and leaves the medium’s home with a book on spirituality. (For another dollar, naturally.)
Billy retreats to his club, where he takes a table and attempts to contact the dead. Fellow members of the club find this to be hilarious and mock him by banging pots and pans during his attempt at a séance. Billy chases them off and decides to seek revenge.
His séance table is conveniently located near the club’s electrical room (how much electricity does the club need anyway?) and he asks the electrician to rig wires to a metal plate. The plate goes on the table and is covered with a cloth.
The trap set, Billy invites his friends in to experience his spiritual revelation—and then signals the electrician to let ‘er rip. The clubmen writhe and scream in undercranked agony while Billy looks on and laughs.
Now, you might think that this seems like a rather extreme reaction considering the relatively minor offense and the police in this film agree. They show up to arrest Billy for causing such problems but they are soon electrocuted as well and Billy wanders off, presumably to kill again.
Billy’s Séance is a rare chance to see John R. Cumpson’s work for the Imp film company (future Universal). Cumpson was a popular comedian in pre-WWI America and part of the first wave of movie stars. Imp was attempting to make a name for itself in comedy—every studio worth its salt needed a comedy arm—and Billy’s Séance was a Split Imp. Split Imps were split reel comedies (half a film reel, about four to seven minutes long) released every Saturday. Split reels were common during this era and were sort of a mix between a short and a skit.
At this point in film history, the studio system did not exist and, while there were contracts, they were not as long or ironclad as those under the system. Players frequently studio-hopped as rivals offered larger incentives to lure away popular players.
Cumpson had a successful stage career, not a superstar but he worked steadily, and he tried his hand at the movies. He found popularity under the Biograph banner in the Jonesy series of domestic comedies, then he jumped over to Edison and proved popular in the Bumptious series. Billy’s Séance was Cumpson’s first film for Imp and his third studio stint in as many years.
Billy’s Séance was a departure for Cumpson, as his domestic comedies included some degree of slapstick but not the violence that we see in this picture. The Jonesy comedies are pretty easy to find, while his Bumptious series is a bit rarer on the ground but both series went for situation comedy over, say, deliberate electrocution.
I cannot say for certain if Billy’s Séance was an outlier in Cumpson’s Imp filmography but the other Imp Cumpson film that I have seen, Mr. Smith, Barber (1912), heads back into domestic comedy territory. The plot revolves around a man trying to sneak out with his friends, only to be confronted by his wife disguised in drag. This plot device was used a few weeks later by Vitagraph for a John Bunny and Flora Finch comedy, Diamond Cut Diamond.
It is worth noting that Imp was considered one of the coarser and more vulgar studios. It relied heavily on crime pictures and was quick to jump on the human trafficking exploitation picture bandwagon. Imp followed the money and if the cost of doing business was a bit of condemnation that was free publicity anyway, so be it. With this context in mind, the early jump to slapstick is not surprising and certainly paid off for Mack Sennett. (Keystone was founded just months after Billy’s Séance was released.)
However, Cumpson is generally more appealing in his roles as a fussy husband and it is good to see that he seemed to back away from his electrical antics at Imp. It is possible that he could have reached the heights of popularity enjoyed by Bunny and Sidney Drew but, tragically, his career was cut short by his sudden death in 1913. Variety reported that he passed away from pneumonia in the hospital after a brief illness. His age varies by source but all agree he was only in his mid-forties.
As a performer, Cumpson is appealing and reminds me of Antoni Fertner, a Polish comedian who was charming audiences in the Russian-produced Antosha series. Like Cumpson, Fertner played a terrible husband always trying to cover his tracks and making his situation worse as a result. (See my review of Antosha Ruined by a Corset.)
Cumpson performed well to the camera and, while his performances were broad as a genre necessity, he doesn’t mug. He also was adept at enunciating so that major plot points could be discerned by lipreading. His calculated clumsiness is timed very well (you can’t just be clumsy in the movies, nothing is more difficult to plan than absolute chaos). All in all, long story short, I like him.
There is very little information about Cumpson available and the primary source seems to be a 1915 interview with Florence Lawrence, Cumpson’s co-star in the Jonesy series. She states that Cumpson was deadly serious and never thought anything was funny but I am doubtful of this as he may have preferred a deadpan delivery or merely have been keeping in character between takes. In any case, Margaret Dumont was often accused of not getting the jokes in her Marx Brothers roles, despite being a seasoned and respected comedian in her own right. Her survivors felt compelled to have “SHE GOT ALL THE JOKES” inscribed on her tombstone.
Further, Lawrence states that Cumpson’s Bumptious series for Edison was not a hit with the public as his Jonesy work with her had been. This is in stark contrast to how his career was discussed in the coverage of Cumpson’s death. Moving Picture World listed his Bumptious work first and, while it praised the Jonesy series, stated that he was “perhaps best known to photoplay-goers as Bumptious.” The Motion Picture Story cited Bumptious and his Imp work without mentioning Jonesy at all. Two decades after his death, International Photographer listed Cumpson as an Edison film notable. Clearly, Bumptious made some kind of impression on the public memory. (I quite liked the one I saw.)
This likely wasn’t a case of malice or intentional deception on the part of Lawrence but the casual reminisces of movie veterans are sometimes the only source of information for this dubiously documented time and it is important to take them for what they are: personal memories of players that may or may not be 100% accurate to the facts.
Billy’s Séance is not a very good comedy or even a very good Cumpson comedy. How Bumptious Papered the Parlor and Mr. Smith, Barber are both better showcases for him. However, Billy’s Séance is an interesting artifact from the fast-moving, early days of the studio system.
Where can I see it?
Stream online courtesy of EYE.
☙❦❧
Like what you’re reading? Please consider sponsoring me on Patreon. All patrons will get early previews of upcoming features, exclusive polls and other goodies.
Disclosure: Some links included in this post may be affiliate links to products sold by Amazon and as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Movies Silently 