Clarence G. Badger on AllMovie

American director Clarence Badger was somewhat overqualified compared to his unschooled colleagues at Mack Sennett's Keystone studios; a graduate of Boston Polytech, Badger had been an artist and a newspaper reporter before walking through the Keystone gates in 1915. Nonetheless, he threw himself full-force into the Sennett maelstrom of wild slapstick and frantic farce. Badger preferred situational comedy to slapstick, however, and to that end he developed a series of romantic comedies starring newcomers Gloria Swanson and Bobby Vernon. The best of these, Teddy at the Throttle (1917), proves that the director never completely abandoned the Keystone brand of humor, but the storyline was better constructed and the characters more clearly defined than was usual for the studio. In 1917, Badger moved to Goldwyn Studios (a fact that Sam Goldwyn trumpetted in big letters in the trade papers), where he directed comedy features with such stars as Mabel Normand and Will Rogers. At Paramount in the mid 1920s, the erudite, even-tempered Badger directed Bebe Daniels, Raymond Griffith, and the up and coming Clara Bow;} he also pacified pretentious British authoress Elinor Glyn to the point that he was able to talk "Madame" Glyn into making a guest appearance in Clara Bow's} It (1927). Talkies posed no obstacle for Badger: He spent 1929 and 1930 helming such Warner Bros./First National films as No No Nanette and The Hot Heiress. Retiring from the Hollywood scene in 1933, Clarence Badger moved to Australia six years later, where, after directing a brace of comedy features, he retired for good.