Today we tip a battered top hat worn by a boisterous and three sheets to the wind Ted Healy to the great Moe Howard, ace of slapstick!
After a decade performing in vaudeville and stage and films as part of the popular knockabout act Ted Healy & His Stooges, Moe succeeded Ted as "the head stooge" when the team and Healy parted ways and The Three Stooges began starring in short subjects for Columbia Pictures in 1934.
Still hear the comedy team's various theme songs whenever I see the "A Screen Gems Film Presentation: Television Subsidiary" logo.
And now for some choice slapstick snippets. . .
As we continue having a rough go through 2026, a bit of "laughter is the best medicine" from Moe Howard, born on this day in 1897, and the Three Stooges, starting with the following excellent documentary by his son Paul, proves a most worthy Rx.
Love this interview with Moe.
Moe's daughter, Joan Howard Maurer, appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in February 1983. The early 1980's NBC incarnation of Letterman's freewheeling program frequently booked guests representing the golden age of classic comedy from movies, TV and radio.
Now it's time, on Moe's natal anniversary, for some big time Stoogery! This comedy fan is especially fond of the first 2-reelers they made for Columbia in 1934-1935.
The blonde in the following opus looks vaguely familiar. . .
Thinking, as we do often, of movie comedians who successfully transitioned from silents to talkies.
Some studios and funmakers did better than others. Mack Sennett had his problems adapting to the new medium but did employ the likes of Harry Gribbon, Vernon Dent and Andy Clyde - and a couple of years later, the brilliant W.C. Fields.
Next: comediennes in early talkies, led by the following bravura performance of Marie Dressler in Hollywood Revue Of 1929. She must have been devastatingly great on stage!
Marie & Polly Moran both made Mack Sennett comedies back in the WW1 era and actually worked as a comedy team in 1927-1931 MGM features. Here they are in the Al Christie talkie DANGEROUS FEMALES.
Another actress who got big laughs in both silents and talkies was "baggy pants comedienne" Louise Fazenda, former star of Universal Joker, Mack Sennett and Educational (Jack White) Comedies - and later a key supporting player in Warner Bros. musicals. She plays a Calamity Jane gunslinger type in the following "when men were men and sheep were nervous" scenario.
While the spotlight on silent movie comediennes who successfully transitioned to sound should definitely include Marion Davies, there are no short excerpts from her early talkies available via YouTube, Daily Motion and Internet Archive, just complete features. Alas, Mabel Normand, Wanda Wiley and Alice Howell did not make any sound movies. Have read that Fay Tincher's last film, All Wet (1930), was a Universal Pictures talkie 2-reeler starring Syd Saylor, but have never seen it.
Then there's Educational Pictures, which featured the often inspired and memorable comic Lloyd "Ham" Hamilton, then in his second run with the prolific comedy films distributor, in 1929.
Lloyd Hamilton's sound pictures from 1929-1931 represent a comeback after a stretch in which personal problems including multiple injuries, homelessness, unfortunate presence at drunken brawls and hard partying in general got him banned from the screen for a year.
In Toot Sweet, Hamilton does a good job of bringing his unrelentingly snakebit, shabby sad sack character from silents to sound.
Don't Be Nervous, featuring Ham in a dual role, would be my favorite of the Lloyd Hamilton Talking Comedies, along with the extremely funny Prize Puppies from 1930.
Hamilton continued starring in very funny talkie 2-reelers through the early 1931 Educational releases.
Before his decades as a megastar of British movies and stage shows (Me & My Girl), Lupino Lane starred in short comedies through the teens and twenties.
A favorite of the musical comedy aficionados at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog remains this very wacky number co-starring the ever-charming Lillian Roth with the ever-tumbling Lupino from the Ernst Lubitsch feature The Love Parade.
Now it's on to the Hal Roach Studio. A bunch of the Lot Of Fun stars and stock company members, including Max Davidson, Thelma Todd and Eddie Dunn appear together in this Edgar Kennedy 2-reeler.
100 years after his heydey, Harry Langdon remains both among the funniest and most polarizing of all movie comedians.
The gang here are among the few who are not only okay with Langdon's utter oddity and consider it his m.o. as a performer, but actually find his much maligned Hal Roach talkies quite funny in a very unorthodox way.
Devoted an entire post to these films - here's one of them!
Robert McGowan created the Our Gang series and helmed the films in silents by speaking the directions to the child actors, so these first talkies, in which he absolutely could not do that, are fascinating.
They are also interesting in blending the series' silent era stars, a.k.a. Hal Roach's Rascals, with the group that would increasingly carry the first season of sound Our Gang comedies.
Can't omit Laurel & Hardy from this mix. Berth Marks is notable for establishing something of a Guinness World Record for the amount of screen time devoted to one bit. The unrelentingly claustrophobic scene in the Pullman car features rather amazing extended physical comedy by Stan & Babe.
Our favorite of this bunch of early talkie comedies by far is Charley Chase and Thelma Todd in CRAZY FEET!
Are Charley and Thelma irreverent, extremely goofy and hilarious? Yes.
Acknowledgments: Weirdo Video, Geno Cuddy, Ralph Celentano, The Library of Congress, Dave Glass and all those involved at Sprocket Vault (Kit Parker, Richard M. Roberts especially) in making the 1929 Hal Roach talkies available on Blu-ray and DVD.
We're not kidding - June 8 indeed is National Name Your Poison Day.
Charlie Chaplin kicks off Name Your Poison Day with this boozy bit from PAY DAY.
Here, a bon vivant version of Charlie celebrates with fellow inebriate Roscoe Arbuckle in the 1914 Keystone comedy THE ROUNDERS.
Charlie plays both a bamboozled bon vivant and a rowdy ruffian in a filmed version of the Fred Karno troupe "Mumming Birds" sketch that brought him to prominence.
Following Keystone and Essanay, Charlie fights a losing battle with the DTs in one of his Mutual masterpieces, One A.M.
In another Mutual masterpiece, THE CURE, Charlie attempts to get un-inebriated, 20 years before 12 step programs and over 60 years before the Betty Ford Center.
This scene from MODERN TIMES gets one wondering if by happenstance The Little Tramp knew Errol Flynn!
That noxious powder will, before it takes a person out entirely, inevitably prompt one to sing a song like this for no apparent reason.
We continue reeling in no uncertain terms from bad news from last week. Our friend Dorothy Bradley, President Emeritus of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, always friendly and always on hand at Niles' Edison Theater, passed at 80.
Missed writing a post last weekend due to grief over Dorothy's passing. This is an incalculable loss to the historian and film preservation communities, Niles, CA - and to an increasingly doltish nation struggling to remember anything for more than 5 minutes.
The gang here are still - and with much difficulty - processing the passing of Silent Locations author John Bengston, the guy who knew where EVERYTHING was filmed, earlier this year.
While the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog have not yet visited the British Institute or the George Eastman House, we had the tremendous good fortune to see the reels roll at Niles on numerous occasions.
The museum website adds: We are sad to announce the passing of Dorothy Bradley, Museum President Emeritus on Tuesday, May 26th, 2026.
Dorothy was born, raised and lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for her entire life. She graduated from UC Davis with a degree in chemistry, and worked in that field until retirement. Dorothy moved to the historic district of Niles, located in Fremont, in 1996.
Wanting to learn more about the community, she became a member of the Niles Main Street Association, where some members were interested in focusing on the film history of the district. The Niles Essanay Preservation Committee was formed, and the first Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival took place in 1998.
Dorothy's dedication to history, the sciences and the arts cannot be overstated. We will miss her dearly. She had turned 80 this past December. A memorial will be planned in the near future. Those wishing to send condolences can do so to the museum via email, or via our Facebook page.
For the silent movie lovin' gang here, it is a fond and premature farewell to Dorothy.
We wish her a peaceful journey and send all at NESFM our condolences.
The Edison Theater was a home away from home for the guy who writes Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, whose Infiniti G20 sedan can be seen here in 2012 parked in front of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum and ready for big screen fun.
Was it more than we could stand to say goodbye to the wonderful Dorothy Bradley and also bid adieu to an all-time favorite from the world of music, Sonny Rollins, on the same day? Yes! So today, the Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog movie and music mavens raise a respectful toast to Dorothy Bradley, followed by a second one for Sonny - and a third in which we hoist one for Broncho Billy!
Since vintage silent films and maestro Sonny Rollins' melodic, mellifluous and marvelous sounds have been reliable go-tos for the gang here, it's time to enjoy tunes from Rollins' 1957 classic Way Out West album, followed by splendid G.M. Anderson films photographed in Niles Canyon back before World War I (and screened frequently at the museum as part of the Broncho Billy Film Festival).
Memorial Day Weekend is here. 2026 still looks like this.
So that means it's time to cheer up by watching lots of vintage WW2-era cartoons on Memorial Day Weekend.
A good way to celebrate Memorial Day a few days early is with the World War II version of Popeye. In particular, we're big fans of the early Famous Studios Popeyes and Noveltoons directed by Dan Gordon!
And Private Snafu. . .
Snafu's close cousin was Mr. Hook.
In addition to all-time favorite World War II propaganda cartoon Der Fuehrer's Face, Walt Disney Productions made numerous wartime flicks, some as theatricals, others as training films.
The best closer for Memorial Day Weekend after all those service comedies starring Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Martin & Lewis, etc. is Bugs Bunny.
Spoiler alert and best line from the following Chuck Jones cartoon: "so they're inducting rabbits".
These cartoons cheer the crew up here as we wish we could have trekked out to Ohio for big screen fun at this weekend's Columbus Moving Picture Show film festival and also bid farewell to The Late Show, one of our favorite TV programs going back to the 1990's David Letterman years.
As the gang here in the Hudson Valley wishes we could take a Star Trek teleportation device - used or new - directly to the San Francisco Bay Area to enjoy the annual Charlie Chaplin Days event presented by the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum this weekend, we doff our Max Linder top hat to a lesser known but marvelous silent movie comedian, the great Poodles Hanneford (1891-1967).
We'll start with the following presentation by the Chapman Museum (pride of Glens Falls, NY) on the bareback ridin' movie comedian.
Edwin "Poodles" Hanneford, king of the circus bareback riders, entertained audiences for 4+ decades; his last onscreen appearance was in Charles Walters' 1962 film Billy Rose's Jumbo. Grizzled baby boomers may recognize Poodles as one of the circus performers from the 1935 Shirley Temple - Joel McCrea flick Our Little Girl.
The bio posted by the Chapman Museum adds: Originally from Ireland, Poodles was described by Life Magazine as “the world’s greatest equestrian clown.” He began working for Ringling Brothers in 1917, and appeared in films and on many popular U.S. television shows. He lived on Ridge Road and Kattskill Bay.
Wikipedia adds, "Praised by Buster Keaton as "the only trained acrobat I ever saw who could take a fall and make it look funny," Poodles is considered among the greatest trick riders in history. He was the first to perform a somersault from one running horse to another. He held a Guinness Book of World Records record for performing a running jump onto a horse and stepping off 26 times in a row."
Notably, in the following excerpt from Ain't It The Truth (1928), Poodles is wearing a Buster Keaton style porkpie hat.
Poodles did somersaults, handsprings and other acrobatics thought to be impossible (on or off of a horse) and even worked with slapstick king Roscoe Arbuckle when the big fella was directing 2-reelers as "William Goodrich." Here's Poodles with frequent Buster Keaton co-star "Big Joe" Roberts.
His astonishing skills as a bareback rider are the core of several classic comedy shorts Hanneford starred in, such as Circus Daze.
In the opinion of the silent comedy fans here, the very best 2-reelers produced by the Weiss Brothers/Artclass Productions are those starring Poodles Hanneford. With apologies to the frequently hilarious Ben Turpin and Snub Pollard, as well as the Hairbreadth Harry melodrama spoofs, the Poodles Hanneford comedies are the reason we recommend VCI Entertainment's Weiss-O-Rama 2-DVD set.
And, yes, it's true - Poodles Hanneford, acrobat, rider and comedian supreme, met Charlie Chaplin back in 1917. Happily, the beat goes on in 2026 with Tommy Chapay Hanneford, the latest generation of the Royal Hanneford Circus tradition.
In closing, and with another Max Linder top hat tip to physical comic and bareback rider supreme Poodles Hanneford, by all means, San Francisco Bay Area residents, do head over to the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum and the Edison Theatre at 37417 Niles Boulevard in Fremont this weekend for the 2026 version of Charlie Chaplin Days.
Obscure or lesser known movie comedians, anyone? Here's one of our favorites: Harry Sweet (1901-1933).
Harry Sweet was an uber-goofball slapstick artiste and writer-director-star in the 1920s and early 1930's.
Harry Sweet, gifted physical comedian and acrobat, starred in zany short subjects for Mack Sennett, Joe Rock, Century Comedies and most memorably RKO Radio Pictures.
Here he is with comedy queen (and prototype for cartoondom's Olive Oyl) Gale Henry in WHAT, NO SPINACH?
Why are we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog wild about Harry? Because his starring vehicles, especially the early 1930's talkies, are wacky beyond belief! His uninhibited style is akin to comics from many decades later, from Jerry Lewis to the Pythons to Rik Mayall to Chris Farley to Melissa McCarthy.
Readers will note quite a few familiar faces from Hal Roach Studios and the Columbia Shorts Department in the supporting cast of the following opus from Sweet's starring series for RKO.
Am taken aback by how few Harry Sweet starring vehicles, both silents and talkies, have been posted on YouTube, Daily Motion, Vimeo, Internet Archive, even given that he passed over 90 years ago.
While he didn't, as Harold Lloyd did, headline a gazillion films, those Harry Sweet starring vehicles the gang here have seen (most via prolific YouTube poster Joseph Blough and San Francisco Bay Area filmmaker and vintage comedy expert Lory-Michael Ringuette) are riotously funny.
Sweet was most adept in the pratfalling art of physical comedy.
Invariably, Ed Kennedy 2-reelers written and directed by Harry Sweet are a hoot!
Shortly after writing and directing the hilarious Next Door Neighbors, Harry launched the "Mr. Average Man" series starring slow-burnin' Edgar Kennedy in 1931.
For more info, read the following Harry Sweet bio from the long gone but insanely informative Hollywood Oblivion website.
Meanwhile, we hope more long lost films Harry Sweet directed and/or starred in will miraculously turn up, as a Fox short subject starring wiseguys Bobby Clark & Paul McCullough did.
