--- name: "Charles Reisner" canonical: "https://film.one/person/charles-reisner" roles: ["Director"] born: "14 March 1887" died: "24 September 1962" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_as: "director" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-09-19T21:25:14.876481+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Charles Reisner Director. Born 14 March 1887 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Died 24 September 1962. ## Details - **Work:** Director - **Born:** 14 March 1887, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA - **Died:** 24 September 1962 - **Also known as:** Charles F. Reisner, Charles Francis Riesner, Chuck Reisner, Chas. F. Reisner, Charles 'Chuck' Reisner, Charles 'Chuck' Resiner, Charles F. Riesner, Charles Riesner - **Titles on Fi1m:** 2: 1 directing, 1 other - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Reisner, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2960106, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0718469/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/94180 ## Streaming the US now - **Tubi:** [*The Hollywood Revue of 1929*](https://film.one/film/the-hollywood-revue-of-1929.md) (62) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Charles Reisner > Charles Reisner's name is on a great silent comedy and on the film that lined MGM's stars up in front of a microphone, and in neither is he the reason you are watching. He was a hand for other people's turns, and a steady one. The curtain, the stage, the next famous face. In *The Hollywood Revue of 1929* (1929) Charles Reisner has 25 stars and a chorus of 200 to get through and no plot to slow him down, and he runs the evening the way a stage manager runs a benefit: on you go, thank you, next. It is the clearest picture we have of how he worked. He does not shape the material. He gets it on and gets it off. He came to that job by the back way. Reisner was a prizefighter and a vaudevillian before he was in films, and he went in around 1915 as an actor. Through the mid-1920s he was Charlie Chaplin's assistant director and sometime player, on *A Dog's Life* (1918) among others, which is as good an education in the timing of a fall as anyone has had. He began directing features in 1925, mostly comedies, and in 1928 his name went on *Steamboat Bill, Jr.*, co-credited with Buster Keaton and remembered for its cyclone. Then MGM put him under contract, and he stayed there through the 1940s, taking on what the studio needed: the revue in 1929, the Marx Brothers' last film for the studio, *The Big Store* (1941), and sound comedies into the early 1950s. What he could do was the set piece. The dossier of his career is a list of elaborate physical business that arrived on screen intact, and that is not nothing; a stunt that reads on film has been rehearsed, lit and cut by someone who knows where the laugh is. What he could not do, or was not asked to do, was hold a story together between the falls. Contemporary reviews of *Steamboat Bill, Jr.* noticed the slack between gags, and the credit for that film has drifted towards Keaton ever since, which tells you how the trade saw him. He was the man who made it happen, not the man who thought of it. We will own that the *Revue* bored us for long stretches, and that we still could not stop watching it, because every few minutes another face we knew only in silence opened its mouth. That fascination belongs to 1929 and to the stars, not to Reisner. What belongs to him is that the thing exists at all, in order, with everyone in frame. There are worse things to have been than the reliable director of other people's talent. If you want Reisner, watch the cyclone and then the revue, in that order, and notice that in both the camera has been put where the performer needs it and left there. ## Biography Charles Reisner (also credited as Charles F. Reisner, Charles Riesner and Chuck Reisner) was an American film director and actor. He directed over 60 films between 1920 and 1950 and appeared in more than 20 films between 1916 and 1929. He worked as an assistant director and actor with Charlie Chaplin on *A Dog's Life* (1918) and *The Kid* (1921). Reisner directed *Steamboat Bill, Jr.* (1928), co-directed with Buster Keaton, and later worked under contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Among his MGM credits are *The Hollywood Revue of 1929*, *Chasing Rainbows* (1930) and *The Big Store* (1941), the Marx Brothers' final film for the studio. He died of a heart attack in La Jolla, California, in 1962. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, catalog.afi.com.* ## On Fi1m (2) ### Directed (1) — the average rests on these - *The Hollywood Revue of 1929* (1929), Fi1m 62, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/the-hollywood-revue-of-1929.md) ### Also credited (1) — thanks, archive footage, uncredited - *The Kid* (1921), Fi1m 84, as Bully (uncredited) — [page](https://film.one/film/the-kid.md) ## Complete filmography (65) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The Chaplin Revue* (1959), as Various (archive footage) - *The Traveling Saleswoman* (1950), Director - *In This Corner* (1948), Director - *The Cobra Strikes* (1948), Director - *Bury Me Dead* (1947), Producer - *Railroaded!* (1947), Producer - *Lost in a Harem* (1944), Director - *Meet the People* (1944), Director - *Harrigan's Kid* (1943), Director - *Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die* (1942), Story - *This Time for Keeps* (1942), Director - *The Big Store* (1941), Director - *Alex in Wonderland* (1940), Director - *Winter Carnival* (1939), Director - *Manhattan Merry-Go-Round* (1937), Director - *Sophie Lang Goes West* (1937), Director - *Murder Goes to College* (1937), Director - *Everybody Dance* (1936), Director - *It's in the Air* (1935), Director - *The Winning Ticket* (1935), Producer, Director - *Student Tour* (1934), Director - *Hollywood Party* (1934), Director - *The Show-Off* (1934), Director - *You Can't Buy Everything* (1934), Director - *The Chief* (1933), Director - *Whistling in the Dark* (1933), Co-Director - *Divorce In The Family* (1932), Director - *The Christmas Party* (1931), Director - *Flying High* (1931), Director, Adaptation - *Stepping Out* (1931), Director - *Politics* (1931), Director - *Reducing* (1931), Director - *Love in the Rough* (1930), Director - *The March of Time* (1930), Director - *Caught Short* (1930), Director - *Chasing Rainbows* (1930), Director, Dialogue - *Manhattan Serenade* (1929), as Songs - *The Hollywood Revue of 1929* (1929), Director — Fi1m 62, [page](https://film.one/film/the-hollywood-revue-of-1929.md) - *China Bound* (1929), Director - *Noisy Neighbors* (1929), Director - *Brotherly Love* (1928), Director - *Fools for Luck* (1928), Director - *Steamboat Bill, Jr.* (1928), Director - *The Missing Link* (1927), Director, Story - *What Every Girl Should Know* (1927), Director - *The Fortune Hunter* (1927), Director - *The Better 'Ole* (1926), Director, Screenplay - *Oh! What a Nurse!* (1926), Director - *The Man on the Box* (1925), as Badkoff · Director - *Justice of the Far North* (1925), as Mike Burke - *All's Swell on the Ocean* (1924), as Opposition Manager - *A Self-Made Failure* (1924), as Spike Malone - *Fight and Win* (1924), as Chuck - Opposition Manager - *Her Temporary Husband* (1923), as Hector - *Hollywood* (1923), as Charles Reisner - *The Pilgrim* (1923), as Crook · Assistant Director - *Pay Day* (1922), Assistant Director - *The Idle Class* (1921), Assistant Director - *Sunless Sunday* (1921), Director - *Grief* (1921), Director - *The Kid* (1921), as Bully (uncredited) — Fi1m 84, [page](https://film.one/film/the-kid.md) - *Happy Daze* (1921), Director - *Shoulder Arms* (1918), Assistant Director - *A Dog's Life* (1918), as Employment Agency Clerk / Drummer (uncredited) · Assistant Director - *His Lying Heart* (1916), as The Barber --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/charles-reisner