The best Billy West’s comedy movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Billy West’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Billy West.
Jimmy the Gent
6.6/10
An unpolished racketeer, whose racket is finding heirs for unclaimed fortunes, affects ethics and tea-drinking manners to win back the sweetheart who now works for his seemingly upright competitor.
Newly Rich
6.1/10
Two small town widows bring their children to Hollywood, where their children become competing film stars. The girl is sweet, the boy is a killjoy sissy. For publicity, the rival families go to London to meet a middle European boy King. The three kids decide they need to escape their stifling lives and run away to the docks and join a gang.
The Personality Kid
5.8/10
An arrogant boxer (Pat O'Brien) discovers his wife (Glenda Farrell) had a hand in his success.
She Couldn't Take It
6.4/10
The wealthy Van Dyke family are constantly in the media for outrageous behavior, much to the frustration of the patriarch, Dan Van Dyke. His self-centered wife has a fondness for foreign imports, including "pet projects" like dancers and such and his spoiled children Tony and Carol have constant run-ins with the law. When Dan himself ends up in the clink for five years for tax evasion, he becomes bunk-mates with ex-bootlegger Joe "Spots" Ricardi. Ricardi lectures him on being such a push-over for an out-of-control family, so a dying Dan makes Ricardi his estate trustee once he is released from prison. Ricardi is then thrust into high society and must do everything he once nagged Dan to do.
Ex-Lady
6.3/10
Although free spirit Helen Bauer does not believe in marriage, she consents to marry Don, but his infidelities cause her to also take on a lover.
Perfectly Mismated
6.3/10
Leon's ex-wife moves into the apartment next to him.
Fiddlin' Around
A clumsy fiddler plays at an audition with a grouchy teathrical impresario, played by Oliver Hardy.
The Stranger
6.4/10
After a luckless prospecting trip, Billy starts homeward across the desert, mounted on his little burro with his pick, shovel and pack strapped up behind him. Finally he comes in sight of Red Dog Gulch and, hungry and thirsty, he pushes on toward the city. Susie is the daughter of the town drunkard. She starts out on her horse for a little ride, and a little way from town is attacked by Pedro and Little Casino, two Mexicans, who try to steal her horse. Billy happens along, runs the Mexicans off and takes Susie back to town.
A Very Honorable Guy
6/10
Well respected local good guy, "Feet" Samuels finds himself heavily in debt due to an uncharacteristic gambling binge. Feet decides the only way to settle the bill is by selling his body to an ambitious doctor who agrees to allow him one last month to live life to the fullest, then kill himself.
The Chief Cook
5/10
The film opens in the lobby of a small hotel, where the desk clerk/owner (Budd Ross) is addressing three members of staff: the cook, the waiter and the bellboy. It is obvious from their reactions, particularly the cook (Leo White) that whatever was said did not go down too well. His animated arms knock down the man standing behind him repeatedly until all three servants simultaneously quit. They storm off into the adjoining kitchen where a slavery maid (Blanche White) is on the floor scrubbing the floor. The men all trip over her, moan briefly and then leave.
The Rogue
4.5/10
'The Rogue' casts West as the slavey in a boarding-house (not a very Chaplinesque role) overseen by a landlady who seems to be a cross between Alice Davenport and Marie Dressler, with a dash of Hattie Jacques. He crosses paths with a counterfeit count (White) and a stolen violin worth $20,000.
Cupid's Rival
4.7/10
A bumbling janitor in a fleabag hotel drives the residents crazy, and a poor artist believes that his girlfriend is having an affair with a wealthy artist living across the hall, and takes unorthodox measures to find out what's going on.
Ship Ahoy
7.7/10
Charlie stays at a seaside lodging house frequented by sailors. He gets involved with a gang of crooks when a sea captain attempts to kidnap his landlady's daughter.
The Scholar
5.3/10
Short King Bee Studios slapstick comedy featuring Billy West and Oliver Hardy
The Villain
6.2/10
In The Villain, Billy attempted something a little different. He's still imitating Chaplin, but this time he's playing the wicked, top-hatted Charlie found in some of his earliest Keystone appearances (e.g. Mabel at the Wheel), the ones where Charlie himself seemed to be imitating the studio's recently departed Ford Sterling. Throughout this short there is much spoofing of old-time melodramas, a frequent motif of Sterling's comedies.
He's In Again
5.6/10
A tramp enters a cabaret and orders a drink, but then is thrown out when he cannot pay for it. After trying again, he is told by the manager that if he wants to avoid being charged and sent to jail, he will have to work.
Bright and Early
5.1/10
Billy West as does fairly random series of gags as a bellboy in a rather poor hotel run by Oliver Hardy.
The Candy Kid
4.6/10
A Fake Chaplin movie with Billy West as the tramp.
The Hobo
4.9/10
Billy is a hobo who hangs around the train station. He creates disruption in the ticket office, at the lunch counter, and in the lives of some of the customers.
