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The Tilting House Routine
A house tilting, and its occupants being tossed from one side of the house to the other, was first attributed to ghostly mischief in The Haunted House (1908). It later lost its supernatural trappings...
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Hide in Plain Sight
Charlie Chaplin in The Idle Class (1921) W. C. Fields in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939)Mike Myers in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)Chaplin's version of this routine was elegantly...
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Abbott and Costello Meet the Vamps
The most oft-used comedy routine in film history was the man-child falling into the grasp of the femme fatale. Harry Langdon took ownership of this routine in the 1920s, but a comedian who came to...
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The Further Legacy of Buster Keaton's Falling Wall Gag
Recreations of Buster Keaton's famous falling wall gag have found their way into music videos and cartoons.Weird Al Yankovic, "Amish Paradise" (1996)The Chemical Brothers, "The Test" (2002)Popeye, "For...
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Another Fine Manes
In the short story "Another Fine Mess," Ray Bradbury imagined Laurel & Hardy's ghosts haunting the staircase where The Music Box was filmed. Bradbury described the haunting as follows:There was a...
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The Wet Paint Routine
In Habeas Corpus (1928), Oliver Hardy shinnies up a post to read a street sign at the top. He reaches the top only to find a sign that reads, "Wet Paint." He can see now that the post has been...
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Buster Keaton Wrestles a Maid
The other day, I happened to watch The Taming of the Snood, a two-reel comedy that Buster Keaton made for Columbia Pictures in 1940. Keaton's Columbia shorts should, by all reason, be a treat for a...
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French Farce Sparks Debate
The French comedy The Intouchables (2011) has broken box office records throughout Europe and has won multiple awards, including three Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix awards and a César Award for Best Actor....
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Video Problems Corrected
Technical issues prevented site visitors from playing video clips on recent articles. The problem has been corrected. I apologize for the inconvenience.
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"My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean"
The following routine from Abbott & Costello's The Naughty Nineties (1945) is one of my all-time favorites. The routine was performed eight years earlier by Louise Fazenda in the Warner Brothers...
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More Gorilla Fun
This still is from The Gorilla (1927), the film which started all that nonsense about gorillas rooming in haunted houses. The gorilla's friends are Fred Kelsey and Charles Murray.Murray returned to a...
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The Dark Road from Transylvania to Texas
Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966) was released shortly before a new wave of horror was to be ushered in by films like Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Texas...
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The Toe Stuck in the Bathtub Spout Routine
The great British comedian Eric Sykes died this month. Early in his career, Sykes developed a reputation for taking a simple idea and building it up into an uproarious routine. A popular routine...
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Book Release Announcement: Eighteen Comedians of Silent Film
It may not be as epic as The Hunger Games trilogy or the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, but I am proud to announce that my silent film comedy trilogy is complete with my latest book, Eighteen Comedians...
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Happy Art
I am grateful to Henly Sukandra for designing and illustrating the cover of Eighteen Comedians of Silent Film. Henly is a talented artist who believes in the power of a smile. He calls his artwork...
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Stan Without Ollie: Stan Laurel Solo Films, 1917-1927
Stan Laurel starred in nearly five dozen films before teaming with Oliver Hardy in 1927. Ted Okuda and James L. Neibaur examine these films in depth in a new book, Stan Without Ollie: Stan Laurel Solo...
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A Review of "Eighteen Comedians of Silent Film"
I have a good deal of respect for Jordan Young, an entertainment historian whose books include "Spike Jones Off the Record," "Reel Characters" and "The Laugh Crafters," and I could not be more pleased...
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The "Pellet with the Poison" Routine
The famous "pellet with the poison" routine from The Court Jester (1956) actually comes from an old vaudeville routine. Variations of the routine turned up in films years before The Court Jester....
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Classic Comedy Routines that Live On
I have commented in the past about the creative efforts of Cartoon Network's Adventure Time to introduce classic comedy routines to a younger audience. A recent episode of Adventure Time, "Ignition...
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Book Release Announcement: Slaughterhouse Frome
My latest book (and second novel) is Slaughterhouse Frome, a seriocomic science fiction story about a stressed expectant father who suddenly suffers a break from reality and imagines himself to be a...
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