Laughter is the surest of sellers, particularly when times are bleak, people crave comedy to give them reasons to be cheerful, and when they are already in that place they want to seal their happiness with laughter. From the very beginning, filmmakers took note of this and recognized they had a perennial cash-cow. From L'Arroseur Arrose (Tables Turned on the Gardner,1895) onwards, comedy featured largely in their early film repertory.
These first films were a minute-long at best and confined to the sort of one-shot gag visual jokes that were quite possibly inspired by cartoons in the comic papers - as, indeed was L'Arroseur Arrose. Even when films boasted longer running times and the action of comedies was elaborated, what was funny was the happening, rather than the relationship of the people concerned. Although, it seemed infinitely funnier if the person who pulled the chair from under someone else as they sat was a cheeky-faced boy, and the victim was a stout and irascible elderly person who might wave his arms or stick and otherwise express his rage in an extravagantly comical way. Yet, despite the hints offered by the appearance in films of music hall comedians who occasionally recorded fragments of their acts for the camera and the strong characterization in Melies comic films, it would not be until the middle of the first decade of the century that the silver screen would see the regular emergence of character clowns - comedians who garnered laughter by their relationship to the world and the events encompassed.