He has a silent clown's gift for physical comedy as well as a drollness in handling his character's acerbic insults.

Orient - Chip Bryant, silent vaudevillian clown.

JACK GILFORD is in the tradition of the great silent clowns, the comic masters of the early days of films.

In 1983, he returned to the theater with his original musical, "Chaplin," a biography of the silent clown and director that opened in Los Angeles to scathing reviews.

It is essentially the slapstick physical vocabulary of Hollywood's silent clowns, refined for television.

Top 100 Reasons To Quibble Where's the brilliant silent clown Buster Keaton?

Mr. Buscemi, who speaks not a word, uses his wide, buggy eyes and elastic features like a silent clown to register shades of discomfort.

Earlier Mr. Keeshan played the original Clarabell, the silent clown on "The Howdy Doody Show."

The brilliance of their comedy goes beyond the verbal cleverness of their sketches; it lies in comic body language that adapted the style of the movies' silent clowns to the video medium.

Tall and gangling, with an impish grin and a rubber-legged gait, he flaunts the unflappable insouciance of a silent clown whose nervous system is wired differently from everyone else's.