← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 17354 | Posts: 39 | Started: 2005-03-17
2005-03-17 01:37 | User Profile
Just the other day we were bitterly arguing over the relative uselessness of tv, so this topic dovetails nicely. Next month, April, the Turner Classic Movies station will be broadcasting what can only be described as an [I]orgy [/I] of classic and obscure screen comedy, including an insane amount of rediscovered and newly-restored silent comedy as well. And when I say 'orgy' I mean a baggy-pants baccanale [I]unprecedented in any era[/I]. Whether you have TIVO, a DVD recorder or just a sturdy old VHS....get it oiled and ready. The list is so long I hadda parcel it out in clumps. Bear in mind a few of these comedy teams like Lum & Abner and Wheeler & Woolsey might play awfully archaically nowadays…but where/when else are you gonna get a chance to sample them yourself and find out?
[QUOTE]Laurel and Hardy April 1 6AM MGM'S BIG PARADE OF COMEDY (1964) 7:30AM PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES (1932) 8:45AM THE DEVIL'S BROTHER (1933) 10:15AM BEAU HUNKS (1931) 10:45AM THE BOHEMIAN GIRL (1936) 12PM THEM THAR HILLS (1934) 12:30PM TIT FOR TAT (1935) 1PM PICK A STAR (1937) 2:30PM CHICKENS COME HOME (1931) 3PM NOTHING BUT TROUBLE (1944) 4:15PM AIR RAID WARDENS (1943) 5:30PM A CHUMP AT OXFORD (1940) 6:45PM SWISS MISS (1938 ) 8PM WAY OUT WEST (1937) 9:15PM SONS OF THE DESERT (1933) 10:30PM THE MUSIC BOX (1932) 11:15PM BLOCK-HEADS (1938 ) April 2 12:30AM PARDON US (1931) 1:30AM BLOTTO (1930)
Charley Chase April 4 6AM APRIL FOOL (1924) 6:15AM FRAIDY CAT (1924) 6:30AM BAD BOY (1925) 7AM ISN'T LIFE TERRIBLE (1925) 7:30AM THE CARETAKER'S DAUGHTER (1925) 8AM THE UNEASY THREE (1925) 8:30AM WHAT PRICE GOOFY? (1925) 9AM INNOCENT HUSBANDS (1925) 9:30AM LONG FLIV THE KING (1926) 10AM MIGHTY LIKE A MOOSE (1926) 10:30AM BROMO AND JULIET (1926) 11AM BE YOUR AGE (1926) 11:30AM MAMA BEHAVE (1926) 12PM MUMS THE WORD (1926) 12:30PM DOG SHY (1926)
Fatty Arbuckle April 4 1PM FATTY JOINS THE FORCE (1913) 1:15PM A FLIRT'S MISTAKE (1914) 1:30PM THE KNOCKOUT (1914) 2PM THE ROUNDERS (1914) 2:15PM LEADING LIZZIE ASTRAY (1914) 2:30PM MABEL AND FATTY'S WASH DAY (1915) 2:45PM FATTY AND MABEL AT THE SAN DIEGO EXPOSITION (1915) 3PM WISHED ON MABEL (1915) 3:15PM FATTY'S TINTYPE TANGLE (1915) 3:45PM HE DID AND HE DIDN'T (1916) 4:15PM THE WAITERS' BALL (1916) 4:45PM CONEY ISLAND (1917) 5:15PM LOVE (1919) 5:45PM LEAP YEAR (1921)
Max Linder April 4 6.45PM SEVEN YEARS BAD LUCK (1921)
Harold Lloyd April 4 8PM THE KID BROTHER (1927) 9:30PM SAFETY LAST! (1923) 11PM THE FRESHMAN (1925) April 5 12:15AM SPEEDY (1928 ) 1:45AM GET OUT AND GET UNDER (1920) 2:15AM WELCOME DANGER (1929) 4:15AM HAROLD LLOYD'S WORLD OF COMEDY (1962)
Olsen and Johnson April 8 6AM GOLD DUST GERTIE (1931) 7:15AM FIFTY MILLION FRENCHMEN (1936)
The Marx Brothers April 8 8:30AM THE COCOANUTS (1929) 10:15AM ROOM SERVICE (1938 ) 11:45AM AT THE CIRCUS (1939) 1:15PM GO WEST (1940) 2:45PM THE BIG STORE (1941) 4:15PM A DAY AT THE RACES (1937) 6:15PM A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935) 8PM DUCK SOUP (1933) 9:15PM HORSE FEATHERS (1932) 10:30PM MONKEY BUSINESS (1931) April 9 12AM ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930)
Harold Peary as The Great Gildersleeve April 8th 3:30 AM GILDERSLEEVE'S BAD DAY (1943) 4:45 AM GILDERSLEEVE'S GHOST (1944)
Charlie Chaplin April 11 6AM CHAPLIN AT KEYSTONE STUDIOS 7AM THE IDLE CLASS (1921) 7:45AM THE KID (1921) 8:45AM PAY DAY (1922) 9:15AM THE PILGRIM (1923) 10AM A WOMAN OF PARIS (1923) 11:30AM THE CIRCUS (1928 ) 12:45PM CITY LIGHTS (1931) 2:15PM CHARLIE: THE LIFE AND ART OF CHARLES CHAPLIN (2003) 4:30PM MODERN TIMES (1936) 6PM THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940)
Buster Keaton April 11 8PM THE PALEFACE (1921) 9:45PM COPS (1922) 10:15PM OUR HOSPITALITY (1923) 11:45PM SHERLOCK, JR. (1924) April 12 12:45AM THE NAVIGATOR (1924) 2AM THE SCARECROW (1920) 2:30AM THE CAMERAMAN (1928 ) 3:45AM BUSTER KEATON: SO FUNNY IT HURT! (2004) 4:30AM FREE AND EASY (1930)
Lum and Abner April 15 6:00 AM TWO WEEKS TO LIVE (1943) 7:30 AM SO THIS IS WASHINGTON (1943)
Brown and Carney April 15 9:00 AM SEVEN DAYS ASHORE (1944) 10:30 AM ADVENTURES OF A ROOKIE (1943) 11:45 AM ROOKIES IN BURMA (1944) 1:00 PM GIRL RUSH (1944)
Abbott & Costello April 15 2:15PM AFRICA SCREAMS (1949) 3:45PM ABBOTT AND COSTELLO IN HOLLYWOOD (1945) 5:15PM ABBOTT AND COSTELLO IN THE FOREIGN LEGION (1950) 6:45PM ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET CAPTAIN KIDD (1952) 8PM ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN (1951) 9:30PM ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY (1955) 11PM BUCK PRIVATES (1941) April 16 12:30AM THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES (1946) April 24 5AM HOLLYWOOD WITHOUT MAKE-UP (1966)
Eddie Cantor April 18 8:15 AM IF YOU KNEW SUSIE (1948 )
Jack Benny April 18 9:45AM GEORGE WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE (1942) 11:30AM THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT (1945)
Red Skelton April 18 1PM A SOUTHERN YANKEE (1948 ) 2:45PM EXCUSE MY DUST (1951) April 25 10:15AM DU BARRY WAS A LADY (1943)
W. C. Fields April 18 8PM THE BANK DICK (1940) 9:15PM NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK (1941) April 28 12PM DAVID COPPERFIELD (1935)
Jerry Lewis (and Dean Martin) April 18 10:30PM DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP (1959) April 19 12:15AM THE BELLBOY (1960) April 29 6:15 PM AT WAR WITH THE ARMY (1950) 8PM SAILOR BEWARE (1951) 10PM THE CADDY (1953) April 30 12AM LIVING IT UP (1954)
Edw G Robinson (gangster-comedies, and very funny!) April 20. 8:00 AM THE LITTLE GIANT (1933) 9:15 AM A SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER (1938) 10:45 AM LARCENY, INC. (1942)
Hope and Crosby April 22 5PM ROAD TO SINGAPORE (1940) 6:30PM ROAD TO MOROCCO (1942) 8PM ROAD TO ZANZIBAR (1941) 10PM THE ROAD TO UTOPIA (1946) April 23 12AM ROAD TO BALI (1953)
Wheeler & Woolsey April 22 6AM THE CUCKOOS (1930) 7:45AM CRACKED NUTS (1931) 9AM GIRL CRAZY (1932) 10:15AM HIPS, HIPS, HOORAY (1934) 11:30AM KENTUCKY KERNELS (1935) 12:45PM HIGH FLYERS (1938 )
The Ritz Brothers April 22 2PM THE GORILLA (1939) 3.30 PM STRAIGHT PLACE AND SHOW (1938)
The East Side Kids April 23 3:30AM EAST SIDE KIDS (1940) 4:45AM CLANCY STREET BOYS (1943)
Lucille Ball April 25 10:15AM DU BARRY WAS A LADY (1943) 12PM THE LONG, LONG TRAILER (1954) April 29 3:15PM LOOK WHO'S LAUGHING (1941)
Marie Dressler & Polly Moran April 29 7:45 AM POLITICS (1931) 9:00 AM REDUCING (1931) 10:30 AM PROSPERITY (1932)
George Burns & Gracie Allen April 29 12PM A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS (1937) 1:45PM HONOLULU (1939)
and a number of less-easily-categorized but still-great single titles: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), Apr 1 Love Crazy (1941), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), The Palm Beach Story (1942), Apr 6 His Girl Friday (1940), Apr 9, 10, 20 The Man Who Came To Dinner (1941), Apr 13 Blessed Event (1932), Apr 14 The Ladykillers (1955), Apr 15 The Lady Eve (1941), Apr 17 Show People (1928), Apr 25 The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), Apr 25 Four's A Crowd (1938), Apr 26 Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948); Ninotchka (1939); The Major and the Minor (1942), all Apr 27[/QUOTE]
Somebody bump this thread on March 31st as a reminder….
2005-03-17 01:47 | User Profile
IR,
Interesting. Pinned.
2005-03-17 06:37 | User Profile
Fatty Arbuckle April 4 1PM FATTY JOINS THE FORCE (1913) 1:15PM A FLIRT'S MISTAKE (1914) 1:30PM THE KNOCKOUT (1914) 2PM THE ROUNDERS (1914) 2:15PM LEADING LIZZIE ASTRAY (1914) 2:30PM MABEL AND FATTY'S WASH DAY (1915) 2:45PM FATTY AND MABEL AT THE SAN DIEGO EXPOSITION (1915) 3PM WISHED ON MABEL (1915) 3:15PM FATTY'S TINTYPE TANGLE (1915) 3:45PM HE DID AND HE DIDN'T (1916) 4:15PM THE WAITERS' BALL (1916) 4:45PM CONEY ISLAND (1917) 5:15PM LOVE (1919) 5:45PM LEAP YEAR (1921)
Poor Fatty...the highest-paid and most popular guy in Hollywood for many seasons--'til that bum rappe...
2005-03-17 07:45 | User Profile
(in the army barracks, sound of whistling is heard)
(Edmund sighs)
George: You're a bit cheezed off, sir?
Edmund: George, the day this war began I was cheezed off. Within ten minutes of you turning up, I finished the cheeze and moved on to the coffee and cigars. And at this late stage, I'm in a cab with two lady com- panions on my way to the Pink Pussycat in Lower Regency.
George: Oh well, because if you are cheezed off, you know what would cheer you up, alot of Charlie Chaplin films. Oh, I love Old Chappers, don't you, Cap?
Edmund: Unfortuately no I don't. I find his films about as funny as getting an arrow through the neck and discovering there's a gas bill tied to it.
George: Ah, beg pardon, sir, but come off! His films are ball-bouncingly funny.
Edmund: Rubbish!
George: Alright, why let's consult the men for a casting vote, shall we? Bal- drick?
Baldrick: (entering) Sir!
George: Charlie Chaplin, Baldrick. What do you make of him?
Baldrick: Oh sir, he's as funny as a vegetable that's grown into a rude and amusing shape, sir.
Edmund: So you agree with me. Not at all funny?
George: Oh come on, skipper, it ain't fair. I haven't asked for all of this. When he kicked that fellow in the backside, I thought I'd die!
Edmund: Well, if that's your idea of comedy, we can provide our own without paying for the priviledge. (kicks Baldrick) There, you find that funny?
George: Well, no of course not, sir, but you see, Chaplin is a genius.
Edmund: He certainly is a genuis, George. He invented a way of getting a million dollars a year by wearing stupid trousers. Did you find that funny, Baldrick?
Baldrick: What funny, sir?
Edmund: (kicks Baldrick again) That funny.
Baldrick: No sir, you mustn't do that to me sir, because that is a bourgois act of repression, sir.
Edmund: What?
Baldrick: I think I smelt it sir, there's something afoot in the wind. The huddled masses yearning to be free.
Edmund: Baldrick, have you been through the diesel oil again?
Baldrick: No sir, I've been sopping the milk of freedom. Already our Russian comrades are poised on the brink of Revolution. And here too, sir, the huddled what's-names such as myself, sir, are ready to throw off the hated oppressors like you and the Lieutenant. Present com pany accepted, sir.
Edmund: Go and clean out the latrines.
Baldrick: Yes sir, right away, sir.
George: Now the reason why Chaplin is so funny, because he's part of a great British music hall tradition.
Edmund: Oh yes, the Great British Music Hall Tradition. Two men, with incred- ibly unconvincing Cockney accents going, "what's up with you then? What's up with me then? Yeah, what's up with you then? I dunno, what's up with you?" GET ON WITH IT!!!
George: Now sir, that was funny! You should have gotten a part yourself!
Edmund: Thank you, George, but if you don't mind, I'd rather have my tongue beaten wafer-thin by a steak tenderiser and then stapled to the floor with a croquet hoop.
2005-03-17 17:26 | User Profile
Thanks again, Spider--my nephew has been bribed with a new pellet gun to catch the entire festival fo me... :thumbsup:
Though I regard myself as well-read and well-viewed in film history, I've never seen this other Linder's work: [url]http://www.cyranos.ch/linder-e.htm[/url]
2005-03-18 17:00 | User Profile
Charlie Chaplin April 11 6AM CHAPLIN AT KEYSTONE STUDIOS 7AM THE IDLE CLASS (1921) 7:45AM THE KID (1921) 8:45AM PAY DAY (1922) 9:15AM THE PILGRIM (1923) 10AM A WOMAN OF PARIS (1923) 11:30AM THE CIRCUS (1928 ) 12:45PM CITY LIGHTS (1931) 2:15PM CHARLIE: THE LIFE AND ART OF CHARLES CHAPLIN (2003) 4:30PM MODERN TIMES (1936) 6PM THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940)
None of Charlie's later "talkie" stuff...wonder why? Turner's run it before.
I think Chaplin's single most hilarious scene is that tight-rope sequence with the monkeys in The Circus...
2005-03-18 19:46 | User Profile
Thanks, IR. Enjoyed the recent Python reference. Full skit here: [URL=http://people.csail.mit.edu/people/paulfitz/spanish/script.html]The Spanish Inquisition[/URL]
2005-03-31 17:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]IR,
Interesting. Pinned.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for pinning this thread, Sarge!
The 1895-1927 silent film era was essential, importantant and gorgeous because its purely *visual[i/] form knew NO boundries based on language or other narrow forms of communication.
Great visual humor is timeless, shameless and universal!!
Tape it for your great-grandkids, brothers and sisters...in these vulgar corporate time this will probably be the last most generous feast...
2005-04-02 15:08 | User Profile
[img]http://members.aol.com/sons2222/mbox.JPG[/img]
2005-04-02 15:14 | User Profile
[img]http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/995000/images/_999973_hlloyd150.jpg[/img]
2005-04-02 15:26 | User Profile
[img]http://216.97.50.144/WWW/TopFilms/Chaplin/chaplinCircus.jpg[/img]
2005-04-02 15:32 | User Profile
[img]http://www.talkingpix.co.uk/Kind%20Hearts.jpg[/img]
2005-04-02 15:42 | User Profile
[img]http://espn.go.com/i/magazine/new/adam_sandler.jpg[/img]
This is a Class joint...
2005-04-03 03:44 | User Profile
A few random notes on these movies. First, let’s get the ones I already know for a [I]fact [/I] suck wrapped in butcher’s paper, and put in the dumpster.
[B]Olsen and Johnson [/B] don’t do a damn thing for me. [B]Jerry Lewis[/B], with or without Dino, is a shameless and intolerable spaz. (Ironically, the popular disdain for the French began with their championing of this guy…hmm. Maybe it’s not so ‘ironic’ at that.) [B]Wheeler & Woolsey [/B] were, I believe, struck down by the Supreme Court for violating the Constitutional amendment barring cruel and unusual punishment. [B]Red Skelton [/B] is the gentile counterpart to Danny Kaye, someone whose desperate, frantic mugging sets my teeth on edge from the first reel on. [B]The East Side Kids [/B] were a helluva lot more entertaining after they became ‘The Bowery Boys’ and were clearly 40-year-old men trying to pass for 17. Try as I might, I can’t warm up to [B]Lucille Ball [/B] the way most everyone else does.
There are a few “later & lesser” titles here by top comics/teams as well. Most of the great comedy talent of the 20s and 30s needed a particular atmosphere to thrive in; they did far and away their best stuff when guided (but more often just protected) by a sympathetic producer or executive who allowed them the freedom to develop the comedy themselves, while running interference on their behalf with meddling or outright-hostile studio executives. Hal Roach was foremost among these ‘guiding angels’, but often the others – Joe Schenk, William LeBaron, Paul Jones - remain unknown to this day. Suffice it to say that once these relationships ended, disaster usually befell the comic’s career. So [I]beware [/I] 40s Laurel and Hardy and Marx Bros movies, or ANY Buster Keaton talkie (like FREE & EASY, an unbridled horror). Harold Lloyd walked away from Roach in 1923, but – like Chaplin after leaving Mack Sennett – he was focused, and strong-willed, enough to thrive under his own power far better than he would’ve under anybody else’s supervision; so Chaplin and Lloyd are the exceptions to the above rule.
[B]Lum & Abner[/B], [B]The Great Gildersleeve [/B] and (I’m guessing) [B]Brown & Carney [/B] all came out of radio comedy, which is analogous to the sitcom in that they are self-contained little universes complete with a supporting cast as important as the nominal star(s), and well-established relationships between all the characters; the kind of thing where the audience expects whatever they see to fit a particular continuity that was second nature to [B]them[/B], but mostly lost or irrelevant to us 50 and 60 years later. In other words, your guess is as good as mine.
Now on to the good stuff, starting of course with the silents. I’ll admit that my one quibble with silent movies is the wearying and unending musical accompaniment; they’re not nearly as “silent” as they ought to be. (The one exception is Chaplin, who, beginning with his First National period in 1918, scored his own movies: some of the greatest scores I’ve ever heard regardless of genre.) But generally, I find that lowering the audo to just-barely-audible does wonders for my enjoying the films. That caveat aside, silent comedy is a revelation in how far more taxing, creatively demanding, and nobler a calling ‘comedian’ was in the days before sound. First, of course, you had to [I]be [/I] funny. Then you had to [I]think [/I] funny. You had to be able, through visual shorthand and the physical agility of a circus acrobat, to create a character, a situation, a gag and be able to [I]sell [/I] all three to an audience. You had to have perfect timing, you had to be able to think on your feet and adjust on the fly and you had to be fearless. Part of the joy of ‘stunt’ or ‘thrill’ comedy is how fair the movie plays with the audience: nearly every major sequence is photographed in medium-shot, without constant cutting to close-ups, often in unbroken continuous takes. There is very little 'cheating', and even the sequences that cheat do it homnorably, through ingenuity and clever camera placement, rather than relying upon longshots of a stuntman.
These effects can only be accomplished by either painstaking rehearsal and repetition (Chaplin), or by actually doing the stunt yourself with no shortcuts (Keaton), or by a combination of both approaches (Lloyd). (Lloyd would doubtless have taken [I]more[/I] crazy chances than he did, except before he even became a star, he’d blown off three fingers of his hand, and part of his face, when what he thought was a prop bomb blew up in his hand during a gag-photo shoot. Yes, honestly. All the Lloyd films being shown feature him wearing a flesh-colored prosthetic glove with false finger attachments.) Even the ‘fat’ comics – Arbuckle & Hardy – had tremendous physical grace and agility. (Fields, too.) And, at least among the silent comics still celebrated today, they self-generated their comedy, and the vehicles they appeared in. They weren’t being assigned work by the front office; the front office was dependent on [I]their[/I] decisions.
And there’s one other thing; a small detail but – to me – of major importance. There is precious little ‘studio’ shooting in silent comedy. The Mack Sennett ethos of [I]gather your troops, grab a camera, go out into the real world and wing it for two reels [/I] was adhered to in some form by every silent clown throughout the era. Even if it’s mostly California you’re seeing, it’s the real everyday world being shot, and it’s always fascinating to see how much (and also how little) America and the world have changed in the intervening century. (And, sure, there’s a little longing involved in this fascination, too.) So, f’rinstance, FATTY AND MABEL AT THE SAN DIEGO EXPOSITION (1915) was actually shot there, and CONEY ISLAND (1917) was shot [I]there[/I]; SPEEDY (1928), was shot in 1928 New York – the famous thrill-climax down Broadway is really Broadway…or it was, anyway. But even when it’s just La Cienega Blvd, it’s always the real thing, unadorned by cosmetic fakery and unblighted by the urban sprawl that was already on its way.
That we still have silent comedy to enjoy today is mostly due to two people: James Agee, whose cover story “Comedy’s Greatest Era” in a 1949 issue of LIFE not only rekindled interest in the films but asserted, to a mass audience, that silent comedy was an art and a discipline completely separate from silent movies or sound comedy and deserving of rediscovery and reappraisal; and Robert Youngson, who feature-length collections of silent comedy clips like WHEN COMEDY WAS KING and DAYS OF THRILLS AND LAUGHTER reintroduced the national audience to these great comedians in the late 50s, long before the revival houses and college campuises took over, which most of the audience would not have access to anyway. During an era when most silent pictures were beginning to rot into the ether, Agee and Youngson kept the silent comedy alive and – thankfully – preserved for future generations.
As for what’s scheduled, each portion has its own special appeal for me. The Arbuckles nicely show his rapid development: the 1913-16 [B]Fatty Arbuckle[/B]s show him on the come with Sennett; the titles following display his growth and confidence as a solo. Note that THE ROUNDERS is the only teaming of Chaplin & Arbuckle; CONEY ISLAND is one of his ‘Comique’ series that teamed him with a very young Buster Keaton; and LEAP YEAR remained untouched and unseen in Paramount’s vault for decades, never released (it was the last feature he’d completed before the Virginia Rappe frame-up occurred, killing his career dead).
[B]Max Linder [/B] & [B]Charley Chase [/B] are the most underrated comics of the silent era. Linder starred indozens of groundbreaking French silents, and was viewed by Chaplin as a genius and a mentor (Chaplin was instrumental in bringing Linder to America to make SEVEN YEARS BAD LUCK). The US audience never really took a shine to him, though, and he tragically killed himself in 1925, despondent over his ‘failure’. It's a shame, because SEVEN YEARS, at least, is terrific. (He made two more in America that I haven't seen.) I’ve only seen a few Chase silents, but they’re some of the funniest things I’ve ever seen and I’m drooling at the chance to see the titles TCM has lined up, all from his peak period. Chase was more character/situation/farce-based than the other great clowns, but he was, and is, a master. He went on to a brief, disappointing career in sound shorts before a heart attack killed him at age 46; by then he'd appeared in 250 pictures and directed half that many. I've sampled both silent and sound Chase, though, and there is no comparison. His work in the mid-twenties, however, can stand comparison to anybody's.
Without question, the most immaculately-preserved silents are the Lloyds and Chaplins. These prints are pristine; they look as if they were shot yesterday. Both men were fanatics about retaining control of their work, even after they’d called it a day, whis is why the films are in such phenomenal shape. As opposed to Howard, I think the [B]Charlie Chaplin [/B] selections are ideal, a wonderful cross-section of his best work. Charlie’s First National period (1918-23) is paradoxically his best and his least-seen (until very recently). The creativity, the energy and the precision (via endless retake and rehearsal) of even the throwaway bits in FNs like THE KID, THE PILGRIM and THE IDLE CLASS are palpable to the viewer: this is Chaplin's all time peak era (although there are pleasures to be had in all of his silent work right up to MODERN TIMES). Unfortunately, he finally made the decision to speak - and thereupon refused to shut up (even though you were begging him to, ten minutes after he'd begun). By the way, Chaplin never appears in A WOMAN OF PARIS beyond one fleeting, unrecognizable cameo as a waiter; it was his directorial debut. It was not a hit, nor even a comedy per se, but it’s nevertheless one of the great silent films. And, like all Charlie's films, it has a moving, lush, truly beautiful Chaplin score.
The [B]Harold Lloyd [/B] silents are four of his very best features and one typically great Hal Roach short. Harold's 'glasses' character is the most conventionally heroic of the Big Three - he is modest, honest, true-blue and hard-working, determined to find success for himself and, as virtue is expected to [I]overcome [/I] obstacles rather than avoid them, so must he - except in Lloyd's universe, 'obstacles' are always comically impending disasters, one after another, standing in his way and preventing him from winning/saving the girl (who is usually titled "The Girl" in the credits....Lloyd is "The Boy". How pure is [I]that[/I]?) Probably more than any one else, Harold Lloyd was the exemplar of the Hal Roach technique of layering a gag: setting the situation, introducing a subgag to build the next upon, and the one after that, and so on, climaxing in the topper, which both refers back to, and outdoes, the gags preceding it. WELCOME DANGER is Lloyd’s first (disastrous) talkie – a horrible step backward for him – and the narrated documentary that follows is ok, sort of, but a distant second to the films themselves.
As for [B]Buster Keaton[/B], what can you say? It’s ludicrous that he’s so often compared with Jackie Chan, because the daredevil stunts are just one part of his talent. Once you tune into his wavelength and ‘get’ the philosophy behind his emotionless, stone-faced approach, he’s among the greatest talents ever to work in movies, and I envy anyone who’s about to watch SHERLOCK JR or THE NAVIGATOR for the first time. It’s his deadpan response to the most immediate peril that makes Keaton funny; it’s not that he’s oblivious to the train heading for him or the house falling down on his head, it’s that he’s mildly annoyed by their breaking his train of thought! And this calm-amid-the-storm persona informs everything in the picture, so that even the smallest, subtlest touches become funny in the context of that. This is just as evident in his shorts as his features. It’s just a shame they’e not running THE GOAT, his greatest-ever two-reeler. Give that FREE AND EASY a wide berth, though. (The doc, SO FUNNY IT HURT, has its moments but be warned: it mostly concerns his godawful career in talkies.)
Watching these, you will undoubtedly be struck by how often you will see a bit of business you normally associate with another, later, comedian. In the days before television...let alone home video...a movie came out, played the big houses, toured the nabes, and then was retired to the vault: thus silent comedy proved an endless storehouse of gags and flourishes that others could borrow and outright steal from for decades afterwards, safe from accusations of theft by younger audiences in no position to go back and check. So if you happen to notice a bit so familiar to you that you groan involuntarily, bear in mind you're probably watching its very first application: it's the [I]thieves [/I] who've run it into the ground for you.
I’ll weigh in with a few thoughts on the talkie comics another time.
2005-04-03 09:46 | User Profile
[img]http://www.vintagephoto.com/reference/postardcollectionimages/images/Fatty%20Arbuckle,%20Mex%20War2.jpg[/img]
Back when America took both Comedy and Border Control seriously...
2005-04-03 09:52 | User Profile
[img]http://images.greencine.com/images/movies/140216.jpg[/img]
2005-04-03 09:57 | User Profile
[img]http://www.comedystars.com/Bios/_pics/chase_charley.jpg[/img]
Best known today as Ollie's brother-in-law in "Sons of the Desert"...
2005-04-03 10:04 | User Profile
[img]http://www.flocom-world.com/Chaplin/1pics/c_with_max_linder01.jpg[/img]
2005-04-03 10:24 | User Profile
[img]http://www.art-posters.net/posters/newart/hc4992.jpg[/img]
Leo Gorcey was always an aquired taste...
[img]http://www.terminalvideo.it/images/articoli/img_160871_med.jpg[/img]
2005-04-03 10:40 | User Profile
The pix of Arbuckle and Linder [I]rule[/I]. Nice going, Howard.
2005-04-03 20:49 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]The pix of Arbuckle and Linder [I]rule[/I]. Nice going, Howard.[/QUOTE]
Cead Mille Thanks, Brother 'Rach!
As Billy Wilder's finest heroine observed, "(They) had FACES, then!"
2005-04-04 08:25 | User Profile
Too bad they're not showing My Little Chickadee. Ah, but at least they're running The Bank Dick.
Another thing I'd love to see is Amos 'n' Andy - only seen snippets. And I'd also love to hear the radio broadcasts. I once saw a film of the White actors as they were on the air: tears were running down their faces as they spoke the lines in hilarious nigger di-leck.... :clown:
2005-04-04 08:39 | User Profile
[img]http://www.tvparty.com/amosandypics/amosandyheader1.jpg[/img]
In their prime, these boys had a nightly radio audience of 60 Million (!). FDR would break off cabinet meetings to catch the show...
The TV show--featuring real negroes--was never as popular.
2005-04-04 08:47 | User Profile
When I used to get TRIO, they ran, pretty regularly, the original A'n'A's only movie, CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK (1930), usually preceding a 1-hr documentary on the A'n'A phenomenon. (The doc was made now, so you can imagine how schoolmarmish the narration is.) There's footage of the blackface Amos and Andy in a motorcade through Los Angeles to promote the movie. Had to be 100,000 fans lining the streets, going nuts.
2005-04-06 03:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]When I used to get TRIO, they ran, pretty regularly, the original A'n'A's only movie, CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK (1930), usually preceding a 1-hr documentary on the A'n'A phenomenon. (The doc was made now, so you can imagine how schoolmarmish the narration is.) There's footage of the blackface Amos and Andy in a motorcade through Los Angeles to promote the movie. Had to be 100,000 fans lining the streets, going nuts.[/QUOTE]
So those fellas made a movie! Must try to find that. I bet it's a howler.
2005-04-06 04:54 | User Profile
[img]http://www.8mm16mmfilmscollectibles.com/_borders/ckdckAmosAndy.jpg[/img]
CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK
Amos and Andy played in blackface by their creators, Freeman Gosden, and Charles Correll, who created the characters on radio. They play a couple of handy men who are not quite as handy as they should be. The film is of interest as it showcases the original duo and allowed their millions of listeners to see them "live" and associate faces with their famous voices.
From Television the First Fifty Years by Jeff Greenfield.
From the first days of network radio, situation comedy touched a nerve in the audience. In March of 1928, the National Broadcasting Company began broadcasting Amos 'n' Andy, a fifteen-minute show created by Freeman Gosden and Charles Corell. The show dealt with the comic adventures of a pair of South Side Chicago Negros who ran the Fresh Air Taxi Cab Company of America. "Incorpulated," and whose social life revolved around the Mystic Knights of the Sea lodge, presided over by the Kingfish.
Most current observers who look back on Amos 'n' Andy see it as a mean-spirited exploitation of racial stereotypes. And, indeed, the mocking approach to black upward mobility , the mangling of the english language ( "I'se re-gusted," "splain dat to me"), and the fact that two white men played the Negro characters were all strong elements of racism. ( The show was moved to television in 1951, with a black cast-- Tim Moore as the Kingfish displayed a brilliant comedic hand--but the growing anger over the black stereotyping drove the show off the air and ultimately out of syndication by 1966.) More significant is the fact that this first broadcasting sit-com hit contained many of the ingredients that remain a part of the form almost fifty years latter.
The characters are in a situation which is in essence unchanging. The taxicab company will always be a laughably small enterprise, with a tiny office and a single chair. The grand dreams of Amos will always be laughably impossible to realize. Kingfish will always be the operater, looking for the quick deal, and Andy will always be his victim. The supporting characters--the awesomely stupid Lightnin', the pompous Lawyer Calhoun--will be exactly the same, day in and day out. Even the vocabulary, the phrases used by the characters will remain unvarying. These elements remain intact no matter which situation comedy is examined.
Check and Double Check
Freeman Gosden as
Amos Jones....
[img]http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/2587/amoso1x.jpg[/img]
Charles Correll as
Andrew Hogg Brown (Andy)..
[img]http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/2587/andyo2x.jpg[/img]
George "The Kingfish" Stevens
[img]http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/2587/kingo3ax.jpg[/img]
2005-04-06 05:08 | User Profile
[img]http://www.lewrockwell.com/wall/huey-radio.jpg[/img]
Huey's nickname was inspired by the A&A lodge boss...
2005-04-06 05:14 | User Profile
[img]http://www.classictvhits.com/showcards/amosnandy/cast.jpg[/img]
2005-04-07 05:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Howard Campbell, Jr.][img]http://www.lewrockwell.com/wall/huey-radio.jpg[/img]
Huey's nickname was inspired by the A&A lodge boss...[/QUOTE]
In the Turner Huey biopic, there was a hilarious scene in which Huey (John Goodman) and his cronies were sitting around drinking whiskey, listening to A & A on the radio and howling with laughter until the tears ran down their faces. Between spasms, Goodman says "God, them niggers're are funny!" - then one of his boys points at him and roars "YOU'RE THE KINGFISH!!" :clap:
2005-04-07 05:31 | User Profile
[QUOTE=N.B. Forrest]In the Turner Huey biopic, there was a hilarious scene in which Huey (John Goodman) and his cronies were sitting around drinking whiskey, listening to A & A on the radio and howling with laughter until the tears ran down their faces. Between spasms, Goodman says "God, them niggers're are funny!" - then one of his boys points at him and roars "YOU'RE THE KINGFISH!!" :clap:[/QUOTE]
Missed the biopic, but Goodman's got a great grasp of that era--he nailed "Ruth" and "Barton Fink" as well.
Long's own "Share the Wealth" broadcasts were works of art. Had not Dr. Weiss murdered him, Huey would probably have made it to the White House.
2005-04-07 08:18 | User Profile
"The Babe" w/ John Goodman is one of the most hateful depictions of a genuine sports hero ever shit out of Jewish Hollywood. Its contempt for Ruth, baseball and our once-white America is disgustingly obvious. Even casting Goodman in the part was insulting....the Babe was stocky, sure, but he was [I]never [/I] an obese bag of shit like Goodman. The screenplay and direction passed up no opportunities to portray Ruth as a boor, moron and gourmand of grotesque proportions. They passed off a 350-lb lox as the greatest player in baseball history, who never played above 220 and had fielded two positions gracefully... as well as run, hit, pitch and throw at a Hall of Fame level.
Meanwhile, in the [I]real [/I] world, Ruth hit .342 lifetime, knocked in and scored over 2000 runs, hit (natch) 714 dingers, all of it in just 8400 at-bats......and...[I]oh [/I] yeah...went 94-46 as a pitcher with a 2.28 ERA - going 3-0 as a starter in the World Series with an ERA of 0.87. His record - 29 2/3 scoreless World Series innings - stood for over 40 years. (He still holds the record for longest complete game in the WS...an amazing 14-inning gem in 1916.)
And he accomplished all this after being farmed out by his no-account parents to a Catholic orphanage/redormatory while he was only 7 years old. They never visited in the 12 years he spent there. If not for the mentoring of a big strapping priest who pushed him towards baseball and athletics, he'd have been cast adrift without a single caring adult in his life.
When Barry *ing Bonds or Mark *ing McGwire can brandish resumes even [I]half [/I] as awesome and inspiring, beep me.
PS: I like Goodman, generally. Thought he was great in BARTON FINK and MOTHER NIGHT. But I can't forgive him for THE BABE, a Jewography of the worst kind. Maybe we ought to be grateful they never got around to 'doing' Lou Gehrig next.
2005-04-07 15:24 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]"The Babe" w/ John Goodman is one of the most hateful depictions of a genuine sports hero ever shit out of Jewish Hollywood. Its contempt for Ruth, baseball and our once-white America is disgustingly obvious. Even casting Goodman in the part was insulting....the Babe was stocky, sure, but he was [I]never [/I] an obese bag of shit like Goodman. The screenplay and direction passed up no opportunities to portray Ruth as a boor, moron and gourmand of grotesque proportions. They passed off a 350-lb lox as the greatest player in baseball history, who never played above 220 and had fielded two positions gracefully... as well as run, hit, pitch and throw at a Hall of Fame level.
Meanwhile, in the [I]real [/I] world, Ruth hit .342 lifetime, knocked in and scored over 2000 runs, hit (natch) 714 dingers, all of it in just 8400 at-bats......and...[I]oh [/I] yeah...went 94-46 as a pitcher with a 2.28 ERA - going 3-0 as a starter in the World Series with an ERA of 0.87. His record - 29 2/3 scoreless World Series innings - stood for over 40 years. (He still holds the record for longest complete game in the WS...an amazing 14-inning gem in 1916.)
And he accomplished all this after being farmed out by his no-account parents to a Catholic orphanage/redormatory while he was only 7 years old. They never visited in the 12 years he spent there. If not for the mentoring of a big strapping priest who pushed him towards baseball and athletics, he'd have been cast adrift without a single caring adult in his life.
When Barry *ing Bonds or Mark *ing McGwire can brandish resumes even [I]half [/I] as awesome and inspiring, beep me.
PS: I like Goodman, generally. Thought he was great in BARTON FINK and MOTHER NIGHT. But I can't forgive him for THE BABE, a Jewography of the worst kind. Maybe we ought to be grateful they never got around to 'doing' Lou Gehrig next.[/QUOTE]
That gustibus thing again, Spider. My point was that Goodman has a superb sense of that critical (1925-45) historical period as an actor.
Mother Night? Never heard of it... :D
2005-04-08 04:45 | User Profile
[img]http://www.finelinefeatures.com/mnight/images/cstcrw.jpg[/img]
2005-04-08 06:02 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Howard Campbell, Jr.]Long's own "Share the Wealth" broadcasts were works of art. Had not Dr. Weiss murdered him, Huey would probably have made it to the White House.[/QUOTE]
Wish I had those recordings too. I saw an old PBS bio of him (don't think Bowlcut Burns did it), and Huey's speeches were magnificent: dramatic, funny, powerful in their impact. Compared to him, that jew-beatified crip fartbag FDR had all the charisma of Calvin Coolidge.
As for dirty yid Weiss, may someone deposit a choco log of giant redwood proportions on his headstone soon. :caiphas: :dung:
2005-04-08 07:12 | User Profile
Here's a belated thanks for the note about this, Il Ragno. I did manage to catch some of those shorts, including most of the Fatty Arbuckle stuff. (His female costar, Mabel Normand, was kind of cute.) I had never really watched any silent comedy films of this type before apart from some very short excerpts used for TV commercials and so forth, so it was quite a novelty for me.
What really stood out as I watched those films was the amazing physical agility and daring of the actors. Even that fat boy Arbuckle seemed to be made of rubber -- I can't imagine how those people did some of those stunts without breaking bones left and right.
As an aside, I also noticed the high frequency of people kicking each other in the ass in those films. I wonder if the figure of speech "to kick someone's ass" comes from those old comedy films. LOL
2005-04-08 08:18 | User Profile
[QUOTE]I can't imagine how those people did some of those stunts without breaking bones left and right.[/QUOTE]
Then you'll want to keep an eye out for the Buster Keaton tribute coming up. In SHERLOCK JR you can see the stunt that broke his neck, in real-time and medium-shot: he hops off a moving train onto the spigot of a water tower, which dumps thousands of gallons of water on his head while he hangs by his thumbs. There are at least two or three other 'howdy-dooit?' moments like that in the picture; stunts so crazy that the scene of him coming thisclose to being totalled by a moving train [also in the movie] is almost a throwaway.
Thus far, the only disappointment has been the inferior quality of the Laurel & Hardy prints. The rights are owned by Hallmark (yeh - the greeting card co.) who have notoriously mistreated the L&H films. TCM programmers complained that - even though the deal to show the team's comedies was made months ago - Hallmark did not deliver the actual prints till the day before their airdate, too late to find a better alternative to the chopped-up, unrestored, decades-old and often-colorized tv-prints they'd delivered. (Naturally, you can go to France or Germany and see beautifully restored, complete new masters of the entire L&H body of work.) TCM has promised that they will not reshow the L&H titles (their agreement entitles them to rebroadcast the films at least once more) until they can replace what they have with upgraded new prints, so it's not a dead loss. Certainly, anybody who saw the Harold Lloyd comedies the other night viewed a perfect example of what proper restoration can do for a silent comedy. They looked utterly [I]flawless[/I].
Coming up this morning [Friday] is an all-day Marx Bros fest - yeah, including the lousy ones like GO WEST and THE BIG STORE. Chaplin and Keaton follow on Monday.
2005-04-10 05:43 | User Profile
I watched Duck Soup and Horse Feathers: mildly amusing, but you can see the punchlines coming up Fifth Avenue. The latter was funnier, in my opinion.
As for Harold Lloyd, I watched Speedy, and it was a howl from start to finish. I always enjoy his films, and those of the great Keaton.
2005-04-10 10:10 | User Profile
SPEEDY is fantastic, not least for its location shooting of a long-gone (and white) New York. Great to actually see the Babe instead of a 350-lb characaterization of him, too.
SPEEDY required some partial restoration, but like all the Lloyd pictures he made as an independant, the images look as crisp and sharp as they do because Lloyd retained full control, and kept pristine masters tucked away in his vault (now controlled by his granddaughter Suzanne) foe decades. Very astutely, she continued to keep them out of wide circulation (and the greasy hands of zhid middlemen) for many years - we're still waiting for the dvds - if for no other reason to ensure that what has happened to Keaton's, and Stan Laurel's, pictures doesn't happen to her grandfather's.
The only other comic to maintain that kind of quality-control over his work was Charlie Chaplin; for years, it was next to impossible to see his First National titles like A DOG'S LIFE and THE PILGRIM because they were locked away in Switzerland with him. When they [I]did [/I] emerge again a few years ago, they looked brand new, flawless.
I can't recommend the Keaton titles scheduled for Monday strongly enough to y'all. Buster being famously screwed throughout most of his career he did not own his movies and so some of them have been very shabbily treated (although the restorative work done on them means they're greatly improved from what they [I]used [/I] to look like, 20 years ago); but if you want an opportunity to see something truly astonishing that not all the CGI on Earth could duplicate, throw a blank tape into your VCR, set it to start at 8pm EST, and let it run right through to the end. Three great shorts and at least three great features (I've never seen OUR HOSPITALITY, so I can't vouch for it) and - for once - they leave the lousy talkie to pad the [I]back [/I] end at 4am, when normal folks are already asleep, instead of wasting everyone's time shoving it into the middle of the lineup. My single highest recommendation of this whole comedy-festival.
2005-04-11 09:00 | User Profile
**SPEEDY is fantastic, not least for its location shooting of a long-gone (and white) New York. **
By God, truer words were never spoken, brother: as we watched the scene at the amusement park, I exclaimed "Not a nigger or mexishit in sight!"