Epes Winthrop Sargent (August 21, 1872 – December 6, 1938) was an American vaudeville critic who wrote under the pen-names Chicot and Chic. He was also a screenwriter.
He was considered "one of vaudeville's most influential critics and commentators".
Early life
He was born in Nassau, Bahamas on August 21, 1872, and moved to the United States in 1878 with his parents.
Career
He first worked as a critic for the New York paper, the Daily Mercury.Anthony Slide, Encyclopedia of Vaudeville. 1995. p.453 In the 1890s, he joined the New York Morning Telegraph.
He claimed to have critiqued the first motion picture offered in a theatre, becoming a film fan in the process."Epes W. Sargent, "Flimflamming the Film Fans, Woman's Home Companion, November 1924. In 1905, when Variety began publication, he joined them as their first reviewer and wrote for them intermittently until his death.
In 1911, he became a staff writer for The Moving Picture World. They serialized his Technique of the Photoplay, which was soon published as a book.
In 1914–1915 he wrote the stories for a large number of split-reel and one-reel silent comedies produced by Arthur Hotaling at the Jacksonville, Florida, studio of the Lubin Manufacturing Company, which included the earliest screen appearances of Oliver Hardy.Rob Stone, Laurel or Hardy: The Solo Films of Stan Laurel and Oliver "Babe" Hardy (Temecula, CA: Split Reel, 1996), pp. 5–61, passim.
He died from a stomach hemorrhage in New York City on December 6, 1938.
Selected works Making a Sister, a Mock Initiation for Ladies (1910) Technique of the Photoplay (1913) Picture Theatre Advertising (1915)
References
External links