Biography
A veteran vaudeville performer and the author of several musical comedies, Pennsylvania-born Joseph Mitchell's screen career was mainly spent as a gag writer/intertitle writer for
Buster Keaton. Mitchell wrote or contributed to most of Keaton's successes in the 1920s, including The Three Ages (1923), Sherlock, Jr. (1924), and
The Navigator (1924). Several of Mitchell's original stories were later turned into screenplays by others, including The Regular Fellow (1925), starring
Raymond Griffith, and
Ragtime (1927). Jean Havez,
Clyde Bruckman, and Mitchell's screenplay for
Buster Keaton's
Seven Chances (1925) was used for 1999's
The Bachelor. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide