Chapter 11

Death by Ostrich

Billy Ritchie—Los Angeles

By 1916, Charlie Chaplin was the most recognizable person in the world. In the age of silent films, subtitles could be easily translated and in most cases, especially with Chaplin’s Little Tramp character, body language told the story and delighted audiences from America to Russia. There were all kinds of merchandise, such as dolls and toys, with images of the Little Tramp, and Chaplin look-alike contests were a global phenomenon. There is an old Hollywood yarn that Charlie Chaplin himself entered one of those contests—and did not win.

While look-alikes were happy to receive prizes for winning contests, Chaplin had many imitators in film and stage who wanted to cash in on his style. Billy West, Stan Laurel, and Bert Wheeler all imitated Chaplin when they were trying to make it big any way they could. Chaplin sued one imitator who was bold enough to call himself Charles Aplin. Billy Ritchie was another Chaplin impersonator; however, Ritchie claimed that Chaplin stole the Little Tramp character from him.

Ritchie was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in either 1874 or 1878, and he seemed to have been on stage his entire life. His parents were stage actors who saw to it that Ritchie received formal training at England’s oldest theater, the Theatre Royal at Plymouth. He claimed to have originated Chaplin’s “slide and wobble” while playing the drunken father in the plays Ten Nights in a Bar-room and Night in an English Music Hall. Sporting a derby hat, cane, and long-tailed jacket, Ritchie performed his act all over Europe and North America. He even maintained that he originated Chaplin’s trademark makeup.

As a member of the popular Karno Fun Factory and Comedy Troupe, Ritchie came to America with Stan Laurel and Charles Chaplin in 1910. Crotchety, arrogant, and fifteen years older than Chaplin, Ritchie could well have originated the Little Tramp character in English beer halls while Chaplin was just a babe in arms, and Ritchie had no problem expressing this to the press.

Ritchie never had much of a chance to challenge his old stage mate. In 1914, he signed a contract with Henry “Suicide” Lehrman’s L-Ko Comedy films. Lehrman was notorious as an injury-plagued director and producer who cared little about the physical well-being of his actors and crew.

In the fall of 1919, while acting in a Lehrman production, Ritchie was attacked by a pride of ostriches in a scene gone wrong. He suffered severe internal injuries, as well as broken bones. He never recovered from his injuries and died at his home at 1200 North McCadden Place, Los Angeles, on July 6, 1921. He was either forty-two or forty-seven years old.

It has been said that Charles Chaplin took pity on Billy’s widow and set her up with a job in the wardrobe department of an unnamed studio.