Albert Edward Duncan was born in Brooklyn, the son of a ventriloquist. He made his vaudeville debut at 15 and first appeared in films for the Biograph studio in 1908. Diminutive (4'11") and pudgy, he was typed in comic roles.
In 1914 Duncan joined the Kalem Co., where he was teamed with the hulking, bear-like Lloyd Hamilton for a series of one-reelers that came to be known as the "Ham and Bud" comedies. These often grotesquely violent slapstick shorts were so popular among unsophisticated audiences that Kalem churned them out at the rate of one a week, over 100 films in all through 1917. It could even be said that "Ham and Bud" were the Laurel & Hardy of their day. For Duncan that day was short-lived. Fame inflated his ego and made him difficult to work with, and when Kalem went out of business he and Hamilton parted company.
Duncan failed to make it as a solo act and ended his career playing sidekicks in Poverty Row westerns.
