Epes W. Sargent

Epes W. Sargent
Born	1872
Died	1938  (aged 65–66)

Epes Winthrop Sargent (August 21, 1872, in Nassau, Bahamas – Dec. 6, 1938 in Brooklyn, New York) was an American vaudeville critic who wrote under the pen-names Chicot^[1] and Chic^[1]. He was also a screenwriter.

He was considered "one of vaudeville's most influential critics and commentators".^[2]

He was born in Nassau, Bahamas^[1] on August 21, 1872, and moved to the United States in 1878 with his parents.

He first worked as a critic for the New York paper, the Daily Mercury.^[2][1] In the 1890s, he joined the New York Morning Telegraph.

He claimed to have critiqued the first motion picture offered in a theatre, becoming a film fan in the process."^[3] In 1905, when Variety began publication,^[1] he joined them as their first reviewer and wrote for them intermittently until his death.

In 1911, he became a staff writer for The Moving Picture World. They serialized his Technique of the Photoplay, which was soon published as a book.

In 1914–1915 he wrote the stories for a large number of split-reel and one-reel silent comedies produced by Arthur Hotaling at the Jacksonville, Florida, studio of the Lubin Manufacturing Company, which included the earliest screen appearances of Oliver Hardy.^[4]

• Works by or about Epes W. Sargent at the Internet Archive
• Works by Epes W. Sargent at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)