Turpin's Crossed Eyes
Turpin and Sennett both appeared as themselves (in Technicolor) in Hollywood Cavalcade, a partly fictionalized movie about the silent-film era. This movie contains a sequence in which Turpin reports for work and prepares to go onto the set in character. In the dressing room he picks up a hand mirror and checks his reflection as he deliberately crosses his eyes as extremely as possible. In this sequence, it can be seen that Turpin's left eye was actually normal when he was not performing, and that he intentionally crossed it (to match his misaligned right eye) as part of his screen character.
In the film The Comic, Mickey Rooney plays a fictional silent-film comedian named Cockeye Van Buren who is genuinely cross-eyed; although this character does not otherwise resemble Turpin, the handicap given to Rooney's role is clearly inspired by Turpin.
Read more about this topic: Ben Turpin
Famous quotes containing the words crossed and/or eyes:
“Chrome: her pretty childface smooth as steel, with eyes that would have been at home at the bottom of some deep Atlantic trench, cold gray eyes that lived under terrible pressure. They say she cooked her own cancers for people who crossed her, rococo custom variations that took years to kill you.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“It is with such eyes ... that a pair of angels exiled among men ... gaze at one another in mutual recognition.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)