Iowa's Misfit Band: Susie's Kitchen Kabinet Band

Susie's Kitchen Kabinet Band

It wasn’t like any band people were used to seeing.

The instruments didn’t come from a music store. They came from the kitchen. Dish pans. Tin spoons. Pie plates. Curtain rods. Flour sifters. Everything was bent, soldered, and turned into something that could make noise.

Every instrument started out as a household object.

One of them had a kazoo soldered right into the mouthpiece. The violin player skipped the soldering altogether and just held a kazoo in her mouth while she played.

It worked better than it had any right to.

The Clown Who Outsold Charlie Chaplin: Iowa's Harry Langdon

Harry Langdon was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1884—small, pale, blinking like the sun was too bright and the world too loud. He wasn’t built for noise, so he made his own. Soft noise. Strange noise. The kind that made people lean in.

 He grew up watching more than talking, a quiet kid who turned confusion into comedy. Vaudeville grabbed him early. He drifted into tent shows that smelled like dust and popcorn, where comics fought for dimes and dignity. His act was a man-child stumbling through life like someone had swapped the instruction manual for a blank sheet of paper. “I never knew much,” he said. “That seemed to help.”

 

Crowds loved him. They felt protective, then foolish for feeling protective, then they laughed harder. One reviewer said he looked “one sneeze from disaster.” Another said, “Langdon makes you hold your breath, then giggle at yourself for it.”

 

Mack Sennett signed him in 1924. Hollywood figured he’d break instantly. He didn’t break. He shuffled his feet, and underplayed everything until audiences lost their minds. Moving Picture World said, “Langdon doesn’t hit gags. He drifts into them like fog into a valley.”