West, wearing the identical "tramp" costume and makeup, copied Chaplin's movements and gestures so accurately that he is often mistaken for the genuine performer.

Five films were produced before the unit moved to New York and then to the Bayonne, New Jersey studio formerly occupied by the Vim comedy company.

"[4] Burstein soon abandoned the plan without giving a reason, while King Bee executives Arthur Werner and Charles Abrams broke away from the company to make their own comedies with vaudevillian Ray Hughes.

Bulls Eye even admitted to the ruse in public: "[Roy B. Weisberg] wanted to supervise the making of our pictures, and because we would not allow him to run our business, he deliberately broke his contract and walked out of the studio.

[13] Ellen Burford (1890-1960) worked in the Billy West comedies through the end of 1917, and then advanced to dramatic roles in feature films.

West's original leading lady Ethelyn Gibson had replaced Burford in the King Bee shorts, and had stayed with him since.

Former Chaplin assistant Chuck Reisner wrote and directed the Emerald shorts, and local boxer and wrestler Marty Cutler was hired as a comic foil.

[14] Interestingly, the two legal combatants in the Billy West lawsuit, Bulls Eye and Emerald, canceled each other out when both were absorbed by a new concern, R. C. Cropper's Reelcraft Pictures Corporation, in 1920.

Reelcraft announced that West was now starring "as himself on his merits alone, discarding the derby hat, baggy trousers, shoes, and cane.

Gibson's own plans were upset in January 1929, when her intended bridegroom Leon Glaser suddenly voided his prenuptial agreement and married Betty Cohen, daughter of wealthy diamond merchant A.

[25] In July 1925 Billy West, evidently noting the success of feature films with short-subject stars Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Larry Semon, decided to produce his own feature-length comedies, starring himself and released by independent producer W. Ray Johnston of Rayart Pictures -- the future Monogram Pictures.

In Thrilling Youth (1926) West appeared as a straw-hatted, mustached college graduate turned businessman, in the manner of then-popular star Charley Chase.

In 1932 Variety's Paris correspondent found "Billy West doing an Aimee MacPherson, staging revival meetings in his apartment.

Cohn also gave West and his third wife Marian the opportunity to operate a quick-service restaurant on the studio premises.

[33] In another opportunity possibly orchestrated by Cohn, West became a distributor for the nationally popular Screeno giveaway game in 1938.

[34] West's long history of professional setbacks and hardships seems to have embittered him, because in 1950 Variety printed news of a lawsuit: "Billy West, former film actor who wants to forget his film career, filed suit for $30,000 against Paramount, charging invasion of privacy in a picture Riding High.

West declares the studio used footage showing him as an actor in an old Columbia production Broadway Bill made in 1934, but handed him no compensation.

Billy West was still a member of the Directors Guild of America when he suffered a heart attack on July 21, 1975, while leaving the Hollywood Park racetrack.

Historians Kalton C. Lahue and Sam Gill, in their book Clown Princes and Court Jesters, wrote: "Billy's tramp was another dimension of Charlie's.

Where Chaplin's little fellow exhibited a tendency toward cynicism, tempered with a degree of hopeful optimism (which was always badly bent by the fade out), Billy's tramp was the cheerful optimist who is treated pretty decently by fate.