Charley Chase Megapack ((top))

Charley had been curator of memory all his life; he felt both honored and unnerved. He kept watching.

Unlike the slapstick of the Keystone Cops, Chase played a dapper, middle-class man whose life falls apart through social awkwardness and misunderstanding. Charley Chase MegaPack

Consider his 1928 masterpiece, The premise is simple: a man borrows his boss's car to impress a girl, only to discover a drunken, passed-out woman in the back seat. The rest of the film is a high-stakes game of trying to hide the woman from his girlfriend and his boss. It is a masterclass in tension and release, proving that comedy doesn't need to be loud to be hilarious. Charley had been curator of memory all his

A lot of it has to do with distribution. Chaplin and Lloyd owned their films, carefully curating and re-releasing them for decades. Keaton’s work fell into the public domain, allowing for widespread distribution. Chase’s films, however, remained largely in the vaults of Hal Roach Studios. Consider his 1928 masterpiece, The premise is simple: