Gabriel-Maximilien Leuvielle (16 December 1883 and "the first film star anywhere".

Born in Cavernes, France to Catholic parents, Linder grew up with a passion for theater and enrolled in the Conservatoire de Bordeaux in 1899. He soon received awards for his performances and continued to pursue a career in the legitimate theater. He became a contract player with the Bordeaux Théâtre des Arts from 1901 to 1904, performing in plays by Molière, Pierre Corneille, and Alfred de Musset.

From the summer of 1905, Linder appeared in short comedy films for Pathé, at first usually in supporting roles. His first major film role was in the Georges Méliès-like fantasy film The Legend of Punching. During the following years, Linder made several hundred short films portraying "Max", a wealthy and dapper man-about-town frequently in hot water because of his penchant for beautiful women and the good life. Starting with The Skater's Debut in 1907, the character became one of the first identifiable motion-picture characters who appeared in successive situation comedies. By 1911, Linder was co-directing his own films (with René LePrince) as well as writing the scripts.

Linder enlisted at the outbreak of the First World War, and worked at first as a dispatch driver and entertainer. During his service, he was injured several times, and the experiences reportedly had a devastating effect on him both physically and mentally. Linder later moved to the U.S. but was unable to achieve success. He died in 1925 in a purported suicide pact with his wife in Paris.

Life and career

Early life

Max Linder was born Gabriel Leuvielle near Saint-Loubès, Gironde. He was called "Max" from a young age. His parents, Jean and Suzanne (née Baron), were wealthy vineyard owners and expected Linder to take over the family business; his older brother Maurice (28 June 1881 – 14 December 1959) had become a celebrated national rugby player. But Linder grew up with a passion for theater, and was enthralled by the traveling theater and circus performances that occasionally visited his town. He later wrote that "nothing was more distasteful to me than the thought of a life among the grapes."

As a child, Linder fell victim to a severe case of cholera. He survived by resting in the oven of the village baker. The heat from the oven supposedly brought down the infection to a manageable level. and Marcelle starred alongside Max in Max, The Heartbreaker (1917).

Early career 1899–1905

In 1899, Linder enrolled in the Conservatoire de Bordeaux and quickly won awards for first prize in comedy and second prize in tragedy. He continued to pursue a career in the theater and became a contract player with the Bordeaux Théâtre des Arts from 1901 to 1904, performing in plays by Molière, Pierre Corneille and Alfred de Musset. At the same time that he was performing in serious dramatic theater, he became friends with Charles le Bargy of the Comédie-Française. Le Bargy encouraged Linder to audition for the Conservatoire de Paris in 1904. Linder was rejected and began appearing in less prestigious theaters such as the Olympia Theater and the Théâtre de l'Ambigu. However, others have asserted that he became infected with pneumonia after hiding from a German patrol in icy water for several hours. After being dismissed from his duties, Linder spent the remainder of the war entertaining the troops and making films. It was also during this period that Linder had his first serious bout with chronic depression.) examples on film of the "human mirror" gag best known in the scene between Groucho and Harpo Marx in Duck Soup twelve years later. Linder next made Be My Wife later that year, but again neither films were able to find a major audience in the U.S.

Linder then decided to dispense with the "Max" character and try something different for his third (and final) attempt: The Three Must-Get-Theres in 1922. The film is a satire of swashbuckling films made by Douglas Fairbanks and is loosely based on the plot of Alexander Dumas' The Three Musketeers. The film was praised by Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin, but again failed at the box office. At the films premiere, Linder had said to director Robert Florey "You see, Bob, I sense that I'm no longer funny; I have so many preoccupations that I can no longer concentrate on my film character ... The public is mildly amused by my situations, but this evening where were the explosions of laughter that we hear when Charlie's on the screen?...Make people laugh, its easy to say make people laugh, but I don't feel funny anymore." Linder also became a heavy user of opium in the 1920s, which could have further harrowed his mind.

During his war service, Linder was involved in a car accident; he was thrown out of the vehicle and badly injured.

In early April 1923, Linder was involved in a second near fatal car accident in Nice, which resulted in a head injury. He was arrested in Nice later that month for "kidnapping a minor", who happened to be his future wife, the seventeen-year-old Hélène "Ninette" Peters. They had planned to run away to Monte Carlo.

Upon Linder and Peters' first encounter at a hotel in Chamonix, Linder was entranced by her, exclaiming to a friend, "I spent the whole night in a hotel lounge talking to the most extraordinary girl I could ever imagine. Instantly I knew this to be the woman in my life." In late October 1925, Max and Hélène reportedly attended a Paris screening of Quo Vadis (in which two characters, Petronius and his slave Eunice, as a reporter put it, "bleed themselves to death"), and died in a similar manner. They drank Veronal, injected morphine and slashed their wrists. Peters died first, while Linder was unconscious throughout 31 October, with doctors fighting to keep him alive. He died after midnight on 1 November.

There is still some question, however, as to whether the deaths were really a result of a suicide pact, or whether Max murdered his much-younger wife or pressured her into killing herself. On 2 November 1925, The New York Times reported that Hélène Linder had told her mother by letter, "He will kill me." The article also claims that "no one believes she herself opened her veins." In addition, Maud Linder reported in her memoir that the head of the workmen at Linder's house in Neuilly overheard Max tell a friend, probably Armand Massard, that he planned to kill his wife along with himself, as he could not bear the thought of her belonging to another after he was gone.

Linder was buried at the Catholique cimetière de Saint-Loubès. His wife is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Legacy

Upon receiving the news of Linder's death, Chaplin is reported to have closed his studio for one day out of respect.

In the ensuing years, his jealous and alcoholic elder brother won custody of sixteen-month-old heiress Maud Linder to get the girl's fortune, before her grandmother (Hélène's mother) legally fought back and took over. Meanwhile, many of his films were lost because most reels had been buried unprotected in a garden. Max Linder had been relegated to little more than a footnote in film history until a compilation film titled Laugh with Max Linder premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was theatrically released. The film was a compilation of Linder's last three films made in Hollywood and its release was supervised by Maud Linder.

In 1983, Maud Linder made a documentary film, The Man in the Silk Hat, about Linder's life and career. In 1992, Maud Linder published a book about Linder in France, Max Linder was my father and in 2008 she received the Prix Henri Langlois for her work to promote her father's legacy. In his honor, Lycée Max Linder, a public school in the city of Libourne in the Gironde département near his birthplace was given his name in 1981.

Linder's influence on film comedy and particularly on slapstick films is that the genre shifted from the "knockabout" comedies made by such people as Mack Sennett and André Deed to a more subtle, refined and character driven medium that would later be dominated by Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and others. Linder's influence on Chaplin is apparent both from Chaplin's sometimes borrowing gags or entire plot-lines from Linder's films, as well as from a famous signed photo that Chaplin sent Linder which read: "To Max, the Professor, from his disciple, Charlie Chaplin."

The award-winning feature length documentary, Life and Deaths of Max Linder, released in 2024 and screened at film festivals throughout Europe including the prestigious Camerimage.

Selected filmography

  • 1905 The Legend of Punching
  • 1906 Le pendu (The Man Who Hanged Himself AKA Attempted Suicide)
  • 1907 The Skater's Debut
  • 1909 A Young Lady Killer
  • 1909 Max And The Lady Doctor
  • 1909 The Cure for Cowardice
  • 1910 Max Goes Skiing
  • 1910 Max Takes a Bath
  • 1910 Max Linder's Film Debut (Les Debuts de Max au Cinema)
  • 1911 Max en Convalescence
  • 1911 Max, Victim of Quinine
  • 1911 Max and His Mother-in-Law
  • 1911 Max Takes Tonics
  • 1911 Max Prends un Bain (Max takes a Bath)
  • 1912 A Farm-House Romance
  • 1912 Max Lance La Mode
  • 1912 Max and His Dog
  • 1912 L'Amour Tenace
  • 1912 Max a Peux de l'Eau (Max is Scared of the Water)
  • 1912 Max et Jane veulant faire du Theatre
  • 1912 The Romance of Max
  • 1912 Une nuit agitée (An Agitated Night AKA Max in One Exciting Night)
  • 1912 A Waterplane Elopement
  • 1912 Entente Cordiale
  • 1913 Max's Hat
  • 1913 Max Takes a Picture
  • 1913 Max's First Job
  • 1913 Max Virtuoso
  • 1913 Les Vacance de Max
  • 1913 Max Pedicure
  • 1914 Max Does Not Speak English
  • 1914 Max and the Jealous Husband
  • 1914 The Second of August
  • 1914 Max and His Mother-in-Law (Max et sa Belle-Mere)
  • 1916 Max and the Clutching Hand
  • 1917 Max Comes Across
  • 1917 Max Wants a Divorce
  • 1917 Max and His Taxi
  • 1919 The Little Cafe
  • 1921 Seven Years Bad Luck
  • 1921 Be My Wife
  • 1922 The Three Must-Get-Theres
  • 1924 Au Secours!
  • 1925 The King of the Circus
  • The Porter from Maxim's (1927, screenplay)

References

  • Institut Max Linder
  • Max Linder at YouTube
  • Max Linder at Internet Archive
  • Max Linder at Golden Silents
  • Photographs and literature at virtual-history.com