The Classic Comedy thread

Peter Cook is one of the giants of postwar comedy, unfortunately little remembered today.

Peter Cook & Dudley Moore - "One Leg Too Few":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbnkY1tBvMU

Pete & Dud at the Art Gallery:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVvZTHCDm-s

"Down The Mine":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofUZNynYXzM

 

Richard Pryor meets Jerry Lewis, 1966

 

The Joe McDoakes short subjects from the 40s and 50s hold up really well. Some of them are laugh-out-loud hilarious.

The series starred George O'Hanlon (later the voice of George Jetson) and was written/directed by Richard Bare (who later directed pretty much every episode of Green Acres).



Bare died this year at the age of 101!

 

I love So You Want To Be A Detective (a spoof of film noir) and So You Want To Be In Pictures

Bare is credited wth discovering both Clint Walker and James Garner

 

In the early 70s, I watched the RKO Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy comedies every night.

 

The unfortunately little-remembered Guy Marks, doing his great "How The West Was Really Won" routine. His Gary Cooper impression is a masterpiece.

 

Something interesting about the last item (the front of the house falling on Buster) is that it wasn't a special effect. They had to build a real house front (which weighed about 2 tons) so that it wouldn't bend or flex when it fell.

 

Don Ameche and Francis Langford as the Bickersons. So far ahead of its time......

 

By the time television came around Ameche had left the show and was replaced by Lew Parker(Marlo Thomas dad on That Girl). He had none of the timing or character of Ameche.

 

I remember watching The Marx Brothers as a kid and always having trouble getting through the films because there was always some cheesy romantic subplot and/or schmaltzy musical numbers. I just wanted the funny stuff and The Three Stooges delivered on that.

I now understand the Stooges produced short subjects that did not need to be padded with the extra fluff that the Marx Brothers needed to run feature length, but it didn't matter to an 11 year old. So that stuck with me until I watched a few of The Marx Brothers films again in my 20s.

I now enjoy both equally.

 

As a certain witch once said, "What a world, what a world" ... where a team could make three of the greatest comedies of all time ("Monkey Business", "Horse Feathers" and "Duck Soup") and then be dropped by their studio, then picked up by a studio that insisted that musical numbers and romantic subplots were absolute necessities in their already perfect films.

 

I just watched a very funny movie that tends to fly under the radar these days- The Man Who Came to Dinner with Monty Woolly, Jimmy Durante and Betty Davis. A great movie that takes place as Christmas, but is not necessarily a Christmas movie.

 

Classic comedy? Nothing will ever beat this:

 

Just wanted to note the recent passing of Bob Elliott a age 92. You can hear several classic Bob & Ray bits in his obit thread:
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...ris-grandfather-of-abby.497431/#post-13742231

 

Don Rickles, Rodney Dangerfield, George Carlin, Steven Wright. Some of the most consistently funny ever.

 

New York Times appraisal of Bob & Ray:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/a...o-paved-the-way-for-todays-deadpan-humor.html

Together for more than 40 years (1946 to 1987), their slow-burn silliness drew explosive laughs not through jackhammer punch lines, but with long pauses, unorthodox word choices and a total commitment to characters.

On radio and television, their sly routines had none of the conventional show-business slickness, and they played to each other more than to the crowd. Stealth surrealists, they created deadpan exchanges that proved that comics could be hilarious without leaning heavily on jokes, making them the godfathers of a wide swath of alternative comedy.

-----

Compared with many comedy teams, Mr. Elliott and Mr. Goulding were not opposites. They shared a certain wry tone, yet Mr. Elliott was less demonstrative, an even-keeled stoic with none of the kinetic anxiety that was standard for many of the great comics of the 20th century. Whereas there is a temptation to spin an absurd situation into the realm of the grotesque, his characters remained rooted in a mundane realness that made you see the madness in everyday normality, not the other way around.​

 

I'm one of those who feels Sid Caesar's "This Is Your Story" is not only the funniest moment in
television history, it may be one of the funniest sketches in the history of comedy.
Here's a link to a column from 2014 that clearly makes the case....read it and then watch the
entire sketch: http://www.hollywood.com/celebrities/sid-caesar-dead-this-is-your-life-60233861/
Howard Morris WILL make you laugh out loud:

 

I'm one of those weirdos you hear about occasionally -- a Sid Caesar fan who thing "This Is Your Story" is somewhat overrated.

Here's a sketch I consider superior:



IIRC, this was written by Larry Gelbart, the man who made MASH a TV classic.

The Murderer's Row of comedy writing staffs, c. 1956; Front l-r: Gary Belkin, Sheldon Keller, Michael Stewart, Mel Brooks. Rear l-r: Neil Simon, Mel Tolkin (head writer), Larry Gelbart.

 

Its great these old Johnny Carson shows are now on TV

 

Classic comedy also came via classic cartoons! Especially the Warner Brothers cartoons from the 1940s and into the 1950s. I can watch them over and over and they still crack me up. Here is vintage Bugs Bunny and the 'older style' Elmer Fudd in this 1942 short...

 

They deserve a thread to themselves.

Would love to talk about Avery, Clampett, Tashlin, Michael Maltese, Tedd Pierce, et al...

 

This was posted in the Picture Show thread by smilin ed. It's too great not to be reposted here:

Danny Kaye, Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx. Photo taken when Chaplin returned to Hollywood after a 20 year "exile" to accept an honorary Oscar.

 

Harold Lloyd with Laurel and Hardy