A graduate of the Boston Polytechnic Institute, Clarence Badger had a
varied early career as an artist, stage actor, editor and journalist
with several newspapers and magazines (including "The Youth's
Companion") before entering the film business with
Mack Sennett in 1915. At Sennett's
Triangle-Keystone, his qualifications ensured rapid promotion to
writer/director of numerous two-reel situation comedies. Badger's style
was gentler, more subtle and based on character development, rather
than on the prevalent visual slapstick. Several of his early shorts
featured a young Gloria Swanson in the
first stages of her climb to stardom.
Badger was lured away from Sennett by
Samuel Goldwyn in 1917 to direct a
series of comedies with Will Rogers,
including the small town farce
Jubilo (1919),
Doubling for Romeo (1921) and
Honest Hutch (1920). During the
1920s, he worked for Paramount and Metro where his best films were
the Civil War romp Hands Up! (1926),
Potash and Perlmutter (1923),
and the romantic comedy that made
Clara Bow into a major star,
Das gewisse Etwas (1927). During the remainder of the decade,
Badger directed some of the biggest names in the business, from
Colleen Moore and
Betty Compson, to
Jack Buchanan and
Bebe Daniels. Pick of the bunch among his
last few directorial efforts (under contract to Warner Brothers/First
National) was the high-spirited first-time screen adaptation of the
Broadway hit musical
No, No, Nanette (1930). There
were also two back-to-back box office flops: the
Herbert Fields musical
The Hot Heiress (1931) and the
woefully under-acted melodrama
Woman Hungry (1931). These failures
may have persuaded Badger to leave the industry.
In 1935, he moved out of his Spanish colonial-style mansion in the
Hollywood Hills and emigrated to Australia a year later. Except for a
couple of independently produced melodramas filmed in New South Wales,
Clarence G. Badger spent the remainder of his life in happy retirement.
