From big top to PC screen

Eighty years after the glory days of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, circus star Bello Nock is trying to join the ranks of silent-film greats.

Nock, the carrot-topped main attraction at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus — which opens Wednesday for a five-day run at the World Arena — is starring in a series of silent shorts styled after Chaplin and Keaton.

“It was as creative as what people are seeing now, and sometimes more so,” Nock said of the silent-film era.

The new films are the brainchild of a pair of Colorado businessmen, Kerry Berman and Mark Margulies. They used to get their families together for movie nights, but they were continually stymied in finding truly clean family fare. Margulies’ collection of classic films from Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin and Keaton, however, proved to be just as funny with kids today as it was 80 years earlier.

“There were some wonderful, wonderful comedic and very gifted actors at that time,” Margulies said of the silent movies of the 1920s.

They thought that if they could resurrect that style of comedy and translate it to the Internet, they could hook a new generation on the form and provide others with the sort of clean content they were looking for. After two years of planning and filming, the Parker-based site, called Family Flickers (familyflickers.com), went live in January.

Nock, the jester famous for his 8-inchhigh shock of hair, was their first choice to star in their comedies.

“I had taken my daughter and my wife to Ringling Bros. when Bello’s tour came through town,” Margulies said. “I was telling my wife, ‘This guy was born 80 years too late. He should have been a silentmovie star.’”

Nock was onboard with the idea as soon as he heard about it. Every comic, he said, owes a debt to silent stars. And the family-friendly aspect of the shorts appealed to him, too.

“To me, it was being able to do something that I wouldn’t have to be embarrassed of,” Nock said in a phone interview. “Everyone in the family could enjoy a very simple story.”

The physical comedy that made Nock famous in the big top — such as riding a tiny bicycle and balancing atop a swaying 70-foot pole — is similar to what worked in silent films, Nock said.

“I speak six languages. One of them is silence,” Nock said. “It’s not mime, but basically just to be able to communicate without saying a word.”

Nock shot four shorts for Family Flickers last year, traveling to Colorado on his days off from the circus. Berman and Margulies acted as producers, and hired professional directors and editors to create the films.

The films revolve around Nock’s misadventures, getting locked out of the house, cleaning the kitchen or getting into shape.

A second series of films stars Denver actor Ron Vigil as a bumbling detective.

DETAILS

Bello Nock and The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 11:30 a.m., 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: World Arena, 3185 Venetucci Blvd.

Tickets: $11-$65; 576-2626 or http://tickets west.rdln.com.

- You can also see Nock in a new series of family-friendly short films styled after the silent comedies of the 1920s at the Family Flickers Web site, familyflickers.com.