be a waiter by the cafe owner. The film made over a million francs in Europe and briefly revived his career, but was financially unsuccessful in the US. Four years after failing to become a major star in the U.S., Linder made another attempt at filmmaking in Hollywood and formed his own production company there in 1921. His first film back in the U.S. was Seven Years Bad Luck, considered by some to be his best film. The film contains one of the earliest (though not the first) examples on film of the "human mirror" gag best known in the scene between Groucho and Harpo Marx in Duck Soup twelve years later. Linder next made Be My Wife later that year, but again neither films were able to find a major audience in the U.S. Linder then decided to dispense with the "Max" character and try something different for his third (and final) attempt: The Three Must-Get-Theres in 1922. The film is a satire of swashbuckling films made by Douglas Fairbanks and is loosely based on the plot of Alexander Dumas' The Three Musketeers. The film was praised by Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin, but again failed at the box office. At the films premiere, Linder had said to director Robert Florey "You see, Bob, I sense that I'm no longer funny; I have so many preoccupations that I can no longer concentrate on my film character ... The public is mildly amused by my situations, but this evening where were the explosions of laughter that we hear when Charlie's on the screen?...Make people laugh, its easy to say make people laugh, but I don't feel funny anymore." With his depression making it difficult for him to work, Linder returned to France in 1922 and shortly afterwards made a semi-serious film: Au Secours! (Help!) for director Abel Gance. The film is essentially a horror film set in a haunted house, with occasional moments of comedy by Linder. The film was released in England in 1924 and was critically praised, however the legal copyright of the film prevented it from being released in France or the US for several years. Linder's last film was The King of the Circus directed by Édouard-Émile Violet (with pre-production collaboration from Jacques Feyder) and filmed in Vienna in 1925. In the film, "Max" joins a circus in order to be closer to the woman that he