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Pool Sharks (1915)
Character: Primary Pool Adversary
Two romantic rivals play a game of pool for the hand of their lady love. W.C. Field's debut film.
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The Hobo (1917)
Character: (as Budd Ross)
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.
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The Hero (1917)
Character: The Butler (as Budd Ross)
The Hero is a 1917 silent comedy film featuring Billy West & Oliver Hardy.
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Bright and Early (1918)
Character: Old Man
Billy West as does fairly random series of gags as a bellboy in a rather poor hotel run by Oliver Hardy.
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His Day Out (1918)
Character: N/A
In this film, West escapes a couple of cops and fights for the hand of Leatrice Joy with Oliver Hardy (doing his best Eric Campell). A barber by trade, our tramp serves his boorish clientele with similarly bad manners before the whole crowd attends a swanky Barbers' Ball.
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Cupid's Rival (1917)
Character: Bell Boy
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.
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Broke in China (1927)
Character: Singer With Toupee
Donald Drake, a deep sea gondolier ex soda jerk, arrives at the All Nation Cafe in Shanghai. The proprietor believes he's a penniless ne'er-do-well - which he is - but he unexpectedly comes into a small windfall. So the proprietor orders slightly rough around the edges Maud and Mollie, two of his American good time girls working their way around the world, to get him to spend all his money while there. As Donald ends up telling the two good time girls his life story - most specifically about the blonde he let slip through his fingers, she who was the love of his life - a few revelations and the errant coin he left at the roulette wheel betting table change his life.
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He's In Again (1918)
Character: A Drunk (as Budd Ross)
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.
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Ice Cold Cocos (1926)
Character: Diner With Banana
Billy and Andy impersonate two ice-delivery men in a suburban town. Billy takes a fancy to a newly-wed bride and most of his loose cash is liquidated as he flirts with her. Her husband is not pleased at Billy's attentions to his new bride. There is a skating contest at the local ice-rink, and the bride, her mother and her husband are in attendance, as are Billy and Andy, the icemen.
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The Chief Cook (1917)
Character: Boggs (as Budd Ross)
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.
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Married to Order (1920)
Character: Car Salesman (as Budd Ross)
Boy meets girl. Father hates boy. Girl dresses up as her brother to get out of the house to elope but the near-sighted father mistakes her for the twin brother and all chaos follows.
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The Pest (1917)
Character: The Bellboy
The Pest (aka The Freeloader) is a 1917 silent comedy film featuring Oliver Hardy and starring Billy West in one of his "Charlie Chaplin" rip-off roles.
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The Scholar (1918)
Character: Elderly Pupil
Short King Bee Studios slapstick comedy featuring Billy West and Oliver Hardy
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Easy Curves (1927)
Character: N/A
Billy Dooley buys a book on jiu-jitsu to court a fashion model.
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According to Hoyle (1922)
Character: Silent Johnson
"'Boxcar' Simmons, a tramp, represents himself as a mining millionaire in a small town. The population accepts him at his own valuation, and two of the town's 'slickers' make desperate efforts to 'take him for his roll.' One of their schemes is to sell him a worthless ranch, but he turns the tables on them by making them believe that the ranch is a veritable bed of silver ore, and then, after they buy it, he presents the major part of the proceeds to the girl who owns the place and with whom he had fallen in love." (Moving Picture World, 24 Jun 1922, p. 736.)
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Playmates (1918)
Character: N/A
A comedy inspired by Charles Chaplin's "Easy Street" (1917).
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Brilliantine the Bull Fighter (1922)
Character: Her Son-in-Law
Brilliantino the Bullfighter (originally titled Flood and Sand) is one of the first spoofs of Blood and Sand, Paramount’s smoldering matador melodrama that set box offices ablaze. Like Mud and Sand, starring Stan Laurel, the Banks parody was rushed into theaters in November 1922, while memory of the Valentino vehicle was fresh. The concept of Monty Banks impersonating the passionate matador must have been innately hilarious to audiences who had seen the original picture.
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Galloping Bungalows (1924)
Character: Lotts' Accomplice
All the qualified men line up to be chosen, as an heiress advertises that she will marry the man with the most interesting mustache, that marriage which comes with a mansion. John Syrup Soother wins the marriage to who he believes is the heiress, Olive Palmer, a tank of a woman who has lost her beauty with age. But he learns that he his betrothed is not the heiress, Diana Palmer, but her mother. Howson Lotts, a shyster and one of Diana's other suitors, sells John a beach-front house for his new life, that house which is not all that it seems on the surface. In the meantime, others still will do anything to be Diana's betrothed, that choice in which John now has a different but still vested interest.
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The Hollywood Kid (1924)
Character: Actor in Swimming Pool Scene
A short packed with more stars and gags than most features of its day, this film delivered a gaggle of guffaws!
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The Sea Squawk (1925)
Character: The Ship's Purser (as Budd Ross)
A Scottish immigrant on board ship becomes a pawn in a jewel heist aboard the S.S. Cognac, a three-star liner. Blackie Dawson, the uncrowned king of jewel thieves, and his accomplice Pearl Blackstone, have stolen a huge ruby. A detective is searching every cabin, so Blackie forces our young Scot to swallow the gem and, under threat of being shot, to stay mum. The detective is assisted by Flora Danube, a blue-eyed Bulgarian daisy who keeps those eyes open. To escape death, the young Scot disguises himself as a woman, but that draws a lot of attention; when his disguise is discovered, he must climb for his life. Is a European union in the offing?
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Ten Dollars or Ten Days (1924)
Character: The Night Watchman
In this silent comedy, a pretty department store cashier is charged with a robbery that occurred overnight at the store. However, circumstantial evidence points to the store's soda clerk having committed both the $10,000 robbery and the assumed murder of the store's nightwatchman, who is missing.
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The Villain (1917)
Character: Nell's Sweetheart
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.
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Yukon Jake (1924)
Character: Nell's Father - the Mayor
Cyclone Bill is the popular sheriff of Mustang Gulch, where "a gun in the hand is worth two on the hip." Bill keeps the town free of criminals, and is also in love with the mayor's daughter. But when Yukon Jake brings his gang to town, causing trouble and kidnapping Bill's girl, it looks as if Bill might have more trouble than he can handle.
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Little Robinson Corkscrew (1924)
Character: Husband in Store
Returning to his hometown a fitness equipment salesman falls in love with the store keeper's daughter.
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Bright Eyes (1921)
Character: The Nearly Bankrupt Father (as Budd Ross)
An oil heir and the daughter of a social climbing family are set to marry.
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The Stranger (1918)
Character: Susie's Father
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.
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The Cat's Meow (1924)
Character: Mr. Downe - Ida's Father (as Budd Ross)
Mild-mannered Harry gets roughed up by a slum gang. Later he returns as a cop to see that justice is done.
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