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The Mishaps of Musty Suffer
It has been announced that a collection of "Musty Suffer" comedies will be released on DVD in February, 2014. It seems to me that a primer on this inimitable comedy character is in order. The actor...
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More Facts Out of the Musty Archive
I discovered a curious new wrinkle in relation to the origins of the Musty Suffer series, which is a subject that I discussed in my last article. The George Kleine Company contracted the comedy team...
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Comedy Potpourri: Supplementary Film Clips and Other Content
It never fails. I post an article that I believe exhaustively explores a subject, but then I comes across additional information that I wish I could have included in the article. It is frustrating....
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"Some of the best lines in our act are being used by Moss and Frye"
It is great reading Variety's old Artists' Forum. This was a outlet for vaudeville performers to gripe about bad reviews and wish damnation upon those performers who had stolen parts of their act....
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Spotlight on The Butler's Tale (2013)
It's nice to see a modern filmmaker make use of classic gags. This is one of my favorite classic gags.Here that gag was used recently by René Riva in his short film The Butler's Tale.You can see the...
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A Couple of Laughs from Weber and Fields
Weber and Fields were, without a doubt, the forefathers of Abbott and Costello. I cannot help but think of Abbott and Costello whenever I read one of Weber and Fields' typical dialogue...
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Our Gang Does the Classics
I watched a few Our Gang comedies the other day and I could not help but notice the gang using a number of stock routines. These routines are no doubt familiar to fans of classic comedy.Farina...
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Funny Old Props and Costumes
Too few props from old comedy films are known to exist today. I cannot say that a comedy film has produced anything as legendary as Sam Spade's Maltese Falcon or Dorothy Gale's Ruby Slippers, but I...
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The Big Baby
The optical trick of surrounding an adult actor with oversized furniture and props to make him look like a small child was employed by Roscoe Arbuckle years before it was employed by either Harry...
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Take my Oyster. . . Please!
The oyster stew routine started out as a monologue joke. A version of the joke was printed in James Melville Janson's 1899 joke collection, Encyclopedia of Comedy: For Professional Entertainers,...
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Three Chairs for Captain Spaulding!
Sitting down on a chair is a simple process. A chair is specifically designed with a flat raised surface to allow a person to sit comfortably and take their weight off their feet. An animal can rest...
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Talking Bees, A Killer Moon Plant and Curvy Ladies: A Fun Day with The Outer...
I watched a dozen episodes of The Outer Limits in one day. It was a marathon with breaks only for snacks and squirts. I have to admire the series for its audaciousness. I mean, I couldn't do...
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The Reformed Leland Orser
Let's take a look at the most recent work of actor Leland Orser. First, we have a scene from Touch in which Orser gets shot in the leg. Ouch! Orser looks scared and his voice gets tremulous, but he...
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Strange Can Be Funny
One of the weirdest and funniest scenes in film history occurs within the first thirty minutes of Mulholland Drive (2001). The scene depicts a business conference at a film studio. Executives welcome...
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Oh!
While in the role of Lizzie MaGuire, Hilary Duff made a habit of squeaking, gasping, squealing or hiccupping the word "Oh!" to express surprise, delight, anger, disappointment, or any number of...
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Why I Don't Read Film Festivals Reviews
I refuse to read film festivals reviews, which provide overenthusiastic praise for films that won't be available to the general public for a year or more. A particularly long delay occurred with the...
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The Bloat of DVD Extras
I was once addicted to DVD extras, but that was a long time ago. I am no longer interested in the director commentaries and the "Making of" documentaries. It was the beginning of the end when I...
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Dead Wrong
At one time, Hollywood's artisans worked tirelessly to craft films that made audiences feel good. To that end, they sometimes made a point to sand down the hard edges in a story. The good guys won in...
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The Debut of World Cinema Paradise
Happy Holidays, my friends!I am getting ready to leave town to spend the holidays with my family, but I wanted to drop a quick note about an exciting new website, World Cinema Paradise. The...
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Those Funny Brits
Let me make a confession. I am a comedy Anglophile. But, then, that is an obvious statement coming from a person who loves film comedy from the 1920s, which was a golden age for Anglo comedy. After...
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