[2] His performance as a director declined with the advent of sound, suffering from the increased censorship, and his difficulty adapting to a less mobile camera and studio editing of his work.

[7] A former associate at the Express, Lige Conley, was performing as a Keystone Kop for Mack Sennett, and introduced St. Clair to actor Owen Moore who co-starred with Mabel Normand.

[10] St. Clair left the Keystone Kops in early 1916 under the auspices of Mabel Normand, joining the company of players who performed comic roles at Triangle studios.

[11] His first credited film was Dollars and Sense (1916), in which he was cast as “the Englishman.” His final role at Triangle was as “The Crown Prince" in Yankee Doodle in Berlin (1919) and its associated release The Mack Sennett Bathing Beauties in Why Beaches Are Popular(1919), in which represents a post-World War I comic “Teutonic heavy.”[12] Between 1919 and 1921 St. Clair graduated to directing and made about two dozen 2-reel comedies for Sennett, inventing some of the characteristic gag routines.

Clair directed a number of screen stars of the silent era while under contract to Paramount among them Pola Negri, Florence Vidor, Esther Ralston, Tom Moore , Adolphe Menjou, Clara Bow and Louise Brooks.

In a 1989 interview with biographer Barry Paris, Brooks denounced St. Clair, who had directed her in three Paramount feature films, alleged that he was an incompetent and a drunkard.

St. Clair's performance as a director declined, suffering from the increased censorship, and his difficulty adapting to a less mobile camera and studio editing of his work.

[3] He made a handful of pictures during the early 1930s at various studios, including MGM, (Montana Moon, Remote Control), Paramount (Dangerous Nan McGrew}, Universal (The Boudoir Diplomat), Fox (Olsen's Night Out), and RKO (Goldie Gets Along).

The highlights of his career, the silent work at which he became so adept, lie forgotten.”[34]St. Clair was noted for using an array of “signature” camera shots as cinematic devices with which to tell a story, among these the “back shot” and “hand and foot shot.”[35] In addition, highly compressed sequences of facial close-ups in reaction to one another or an event are widely identified as characteristic of St. Clair's story-telling method.

[36] A camera shot notable in St. Clair's oeuvre, this cinematic technique presents an actor engaged in some action, but facing away from the audience or perhaps another character in the frame and, as such, concealing the subject's true behavior or condition.

Film historian Ruth Anne Dwyer explains that the function of these shots serve to “fool” the observer and was “a recognizable St. Clair ‘signature.’” Dwyer offers as an example from Canary Murder Case (1929) in which ‘Canary’ Odell (Louise Brooks} is viewed through a keyhole, seated with her back to the camera, a lighted cigarette visible in her hand: evidently alive, she has actually just been murdered.

A woman's feet clad in elegant evening slippers are shown pacing up and down, then stamping violently: the camera cuts to a trembling chandelier on the ceiling of the room below in (The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926))[39] Dwyer observes that this “hand and foot” device was widely used by St. Clair's contemporaries, among them Ernst Lubitsch and Alfred Hitchcock, serving as a means to paint “a psychological portrait of their owner.” Dwyer adds that “St.

A notable application from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928) presents “a rapidly spaced exchange of glances between the heroines [Ruth Taylor and Alice White], each of the shots reflecting a change of mood or expression.”[41] St. Clair used this device successfully in his boxing-themed films, including Knockout Reilly (1927).