Although all too frequently neglected by fans of silent comedy, Max Linder is in many ways as important a figure as Charles Chaplin , Buster Keaton , or Harold Lloyd not least because he predated (and influenced) them all by several years, and was largely responsible for the creation of the classic style of silent slapstick comedy. He started out as an actor in the French theatre, but after making his screen debut in 1905, he quickly became an enormously famous and successful film comedian on both sides of the Atlantic, thanks to his character "Max," a top-hatted dandy. By 1912, he was the highest-paid film star in the world, with an unprecedented salary of one million francs. He began to direct films in 1911 and showed equal facility behind the camera, but his career suffered an almost terminal blow when he was called up to fight in World War I. He was gassed, and the illness that resulted would blight his career. Although offered a contract in America, recurring ill-health meant that his US films had little of the sparkle of his early French work, and a brief attempt to revive his career by making films for the recently-formed United Artists (one of whose founders, of course, was Chaplin) in the early 1920s came to little, although these later films are now regarded as classics. He returned to France and killed himself in a suicide pact with his wife in 1925.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945." Pages 671-677. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.When Charles Chaplin , who called Max Linder "his Professor," heard that Linder had committed suicide, he closed his studio one day to show his deep respect.Father of Maud Linder .Earned 1 million francs a year in 1914.Widely considered the very first International movie star.Max Linder was the first actor in movies to be credited as director in the opening titles.The "mirror routine," made famous in The Marx Brothers ' Duck Soup (1933) was in fact first performed by Linder, in Seven Years Bad Luck (1921).At an early point in his career, while movies were still silent, Linder discovered the importance of adding the right music to films in order to put an audience in the perfect mood; he frequently sent notebooks with music he considered fitting for his films. The compositions could be amusing, dramatic or romantic.Dropped out of school at 17 in order to become an actor in the theater and vaudeville, which did not please his parents.Appeared in more than 400 films during 1905-1925, most of which were short comedies; out of these, little more than two hundred have been possible to identify, and to date, less than a hundred of them are known to still exist.Made over 500 short films/movies. Only about 82 survive.First time married, in Paris, at the age of forty (1923) to his twenty-year old bride Hélène Peters.Nice, France, 1923, he suffered minor injuries when thrown from his car after losing control, at high speed on a bend.Dressed as a matador in Barcelona's arena (15th November 1912) and "fought" with a calf with false horns while on tour in Spain with André Deed and Stacia Napierkowska. The event was also filmed.