Harry Watson, Jr.

Harry B. Watson Jr. (June 12, 1876 – October 1, 1965) was an American actor and comedian. Before his Vaudeville and Broadway stage career and making his films, he was a clown for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.Among his Broadway showswere the musical Tip-Toes and five editions of the Ziegfeld Follies.The most high profile of his few feature films was Zander the Great- one of his three Hearst Cosmopolitan Productions -but he is perhaps best recalled today as the star of a series of bizarre silent comedy shorts, The Mishaps of Musty Suffer. Two volumes of surviving Musty Suffer titles - many featuringWatson’s comedy partner, George Bickel -were restored by the American Library of Congress and released with music by Ben Model on DVD by Undercrank Productions in 2014 and 2015.

That Mr. Harry Watson, Jr., is one of the finest comic artists of the American stage is demonstrated anew with each successive year. An alumnus of the same burlesque troupe that graduated that other excellent comedian, Mr. George Bickel, Watson's authentic talents, like those of his colleague, have long been overlooked — or if not entirely overlooked, greatly disparaged — by annalists of the stage who vouchsafe to low comedy merely a casual and then grudged attention. Yet the fact doubtless remains that this Watson is an actor of uncommon quality, not a mere slapstick pantaloon, an assaulter of trousers' seats, a professor of the bladder, but a mimic of exceptional capacity, a pantomimist of the very first grade and a comedian of real histrionic parts..

— George Jean Nathan, Comedians All