How do we celebrate Happy Boxing Day in 2025? With the celebrated Runty Duck, star of the Van Beuren Studio's Aesop's Fables cartoons, in THE BULLY'S END (1933)!
The exceptionally goofy WB cartoon star Egghead, created by Tex Avery, got his chance to emulate radio star Joe Penner's voice (thanks to voice artist Danny Webb) while also making his debut as a pugilist in COUNT ME OUT (1938), directed by Ben "Bugs" Hardaway and Cal Dalton.
The one, the only Charlie Chaplin turns pugilist in a bunch of movies, the most famous being his 1931 classic CITY LIGHTS. Love how Charlie's opponent is none other than fellow Keystone comic Hank Mann!
This hilarious sequence from CITY LIGHTS is not the first time Chaplin boxed onscreen. Here he is in the 1915 Essanay 2-reeler THE CHAMPION.
Chaplin plays the referee in the 1914 Keystone Comedy, THE KNOCKOUT, starring Roscoe Arbuckle, whose opponent in the boxing match is none other than comedian, character actor, director and actual pugilist Edgar "Slow Burn" Kennedy. . . WITH HAIR!!!
It's no secret that the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog consider Harry Langdon (1884-1944) one of the greatest, funniest, most imaginative and most unorthodox comedians of all time. It's also no secret that many knowledgeable film historians find Harry's perpetually out-to-lunch space cadet character inexplicably weird and incredibly unfunny. Indeed, many silent era comedy aficionados who love Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd don't find Harry Langdon funny at all.
We even enjoy Harry's much maligned 1929-1930 series for Hal Roach Studios.
Arguably, the best of Harry Langdon's Lot Of Fun 2-reelers is THE FIGHTING PARSON (1929), in which Harry's singing and dancing precedes a very clever and hilarious boxing sequence. Throughout and as usual, Harry's seriously addled brain appears to be flying around in the cosmos.
Count this dyed-in-the-wool film buff among the very few who love Langdon's marvelously bizarre Hal Roach Studios comedy shorts, the notable absence of Vernon Dent (Harry's pal offscreen and favorite foil onscreen) notwithstanding.
This is our last post for 2025. We hope for better times ahead in 2026 - see you then!
First and foremost, we wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, starting with this great song by The Wildwoods!
We are also well aware of how many people go through an extremely difficult time during the holidays.
Now MUST watch Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol.
It is by far my favorite Christmas special, even more than the Pee-Wee's Playhouse one and a Charlie Brown Christmas.
We're also big fans of the Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol soundtrack.
Next up: this MGM short subject from 1931, THE CHRISTMAS PARTY, which crams a slew of the studio's stars, including the great Marion Davies, into a brief running time. Alas, there's no Lee Tracy. . .
The question on the addled mind of the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog remains what would Christmas be without the McKenzie brothers?
While it won't, unfortunately, be possible to flee the lower 48, head for Toronto, stay there, hang out at Second City and reinvent myself as an expatriate notable for a rather prominent San Francisco Bay Area accent, it is possible to enjoy Bob & Doug's 12 Days of Christmas, which goes great with W.C. Fields style eggnog, once again.
As we toast our tumblers to Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Cool Kwanzaa and a Happy New Year, will close this post with our all-time favorite 12 Days Of Christmas piece.
That would be On The Twelfth Day (1955), directed by Wendy Toye and designed by Ronald Searle. Enjoy!
To celebrate the holidays, both the eggnog and Yule log guzzle a Tom & Jerry - and watch Tom & Jerry!
After all, we eagerly look forward to watching the new Tom & Jerry Blu-ray set - and note that the Bill Hanna worked on the following Christmas season cartoon for Rudy Ising back in 1936.
In 1938-1939, MGM, with high hopes to replicate the box-office success of the Fleischer Studio's epic Popeye cartoons, produced a series based on The Katzenjammer Kids comic strip. While The Captain & The Kids cartoons, unlike Popeye, were far short of a smash hit, they're actually pretty decent, especially when directed by Friz Freleng. Here's The Captain's Christmas.
Believe it or not, Ralph Bakshi Productions made a holiday special, Christmas in Tattertown (1988), a pilot for a series that ultimately didn't sell.
In 1944, a bunch of American animators from Walt Disney Productions, led by director David Hand were offered the opportunity to set up their own studio in Great Britain by J. Arthur Rank. David Hand Productions made the Animaland and Musical Paintbox series. The following, Ginger Nutt's Christmas Circus, is Animaland's Yule offering and pretty darn entertaining.
Several of the talented crew of artists who produced the Animaland cartoons also worked on the excellent 1933 Walt Disney Silly Symphony version of The Night Before Christmas, the studio's followup to Santa's Workshop (1932)
Stop-motion animation, entymologists and bugs absolutely MUST be represented in the holiday entertainment mix, so here's The Insects' Christmas (1913) by Ladislaw Starewicz.
We finish today's Christmas Eve offering featuring a bunch of festive cartoons, including the ever-cheerful Grampy in Christmas Comes But Once A Year (1936), posted by Steve Stanchfield on Cartoon Research couple of years ago. Love how the stalwart patriarch in the first of the cartoons owns a 16mm projector and runs 1930's Terrytoons for the family on Christmas.
Laughs for the Christmas holidays - and buddy, we'll be needing laughs big time - work for this blog.
Having concluded that the best of the best sketch comedy as the 20th century wound down was Late Night With Conan O'Brien, a show with a creative staff of writer/performers, here's Brian McCann as MINTY THE CANDY CANE!
As we extend more love, admiration and resoect for the incredible Dick Van Dyke, now 100 years old, we shall follow Minty with a bit from the Van Dyke and Co 1976 Christmas special, featuring Andy Kaufman.
Speaking of unique comedians, we miss Andy Kaufman and even more, miss Paul Reubens a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman - and, lo and behold, are thrilled and delighted to watch a Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas special.
And yes, Virginia O'Brien, there are DAVID LETTERMAN Xmas shows!
Mad TV was the very, very VERY broad alternative to Saturday Night Live (which at that time featured Will Ferrell, Molly Shannon, Cheri Oteri, Ana Gasteyer, Tim Meadows, Darrell Hammond, Tracy Morgan and Chris Kattan) in the latter 1990's. SNL and Mad TV competed to sign members of The Groundlings. This blogger prefers SNL, but concedes that MadTV had its moments. As far as sketch comedy fans go, there are no half-measures regarding this series. IMHO, the periodic good sketches get interspersed with too many loud skits that go big-big-big and beat the viewer over the head repeatedly in case one didn't get the joke the first time.
The extremely broad Mad TV was stylistically somewhere between The Ben Stiller Show and In Living Color - and reminiscent of the also extremely broad "Fridays" ABC sketch comedy series of the early 1980's (featuring Larry David and Michael Richards, among others), so we're not expecting Noël Coward. The cast featured such talented improv comedians as Phil LaMarr, Debra Wilson, Alex Borstein, Will Sasso, Mary Scheer, Nicole Sullivan, Michael McDonald, Mo Collins, Stephanie Weir and, towards the end of the sketch comedy show's 14 season run, Keegan Michael Key & Jordan Peele.
Particularly enjoy madTV's sendup of Rankin-Bass.
After madTV, Key & Peele moved on to their own very funny series.
Find the Key & Peele series in many respects comparable to Tim Robinson transitioning from SNL to his incredibly absurdist I Think You Should Leave.
As we soon finish dreadful, godawful 2025, by far the worst year of the nearly 20 years of this blog, it seems weirdly appropriate that the last topic of today's post is a fundraiser for one of the friends of this blog.
In closing, the gang here is happy to be among the supporters of the following Go Fund Me. If one can help a friend or a community in need at this time of year, do so.
One of our all-time favorites, the great Dick Van Dyke, has beat all the odds and lived to celebrate his 100th birthday today.
Can a person still dance well into his/her nineties? Yes.
Loved seeing Mr. Van Dyke with Chris Martin of Coldplay on The Jimmy Kimmel Show last year.
Dick Van Dyke's appearance on the Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson was a hoot!
Many of us 1950's kids enjoyed a thrilling experience of big screen fun back in 1964 when Disney's Mary Poppins, featuring Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke (in multiple roles) and painterly special effects/animation and live-action combos by the super-talented likes of Ub Iwerks and Peter Ellenshaw, hit movie theatres.
Before Mary Poppins, Dick Van Dyke made his silver screen debut in the Bye-Bye Birdie, the movie version of the 1960 Broadway hit he starred in (and won a Tony for).
While Ann-Margret is nothing less than amazing and Paul Lynde is, as usual, hilarious in the 1963 Bye Bye Birdie movie, can't say this writer likes it anywhere near as much as Dick Van Dyke's other films, starring TV shows (including the 1976 variety program Van Dyke & Company), and appearances on such programs as The Carol Burnett Show.
After Mary Poppins, Dick went on to star in a series of enjoyable movies.
There's something about his physical comedy that gets this slapstick fan thinking of Charley Parrott Chase.
Dick starred in Carl Reiner's The Comic, a tragicomedy about an egocentric silent screen comedian. While the mannerisms appear to be based on Stan Laurel, who Dick knew quite well, this silent movie buff is convinced that it's all about Larry Semon (1889-1928), the otherworldly little comic whose frequent co-stars included Babe Hardy . . . and sometimes Stan Laurel.
After these movies, there was a second Dick Van Dyke show, co-starring Hope Lange from TV's take on The Ghost & Mrs. Muir and Broadway musical star Nancy Dussault, in the early 1970's.
Produced by Carl Reiner, The New Dick Van Dyke Show has its moments, but does not feature as deep and exceptional a supporting cast as Mary Tyler Moore, Morey Amsterdam, Rose Marie, Richard Deacon, Jerry Paris and Ann Morgan Guilbert in the 1961-1966 show.
Dick first made his name on TV hosting CBS Cartoon Theatre. That's right - Dick Van Dyke, who could resemble a super-rubbery cartoon character animated by Jim Tyer, introduced Terrytoons. Thanks, Barry Siegel Film Archives, for the following!
The Dick Van Dyke Show remains my favorite of all sitcoms, along with The Addams Family, Bob Newhart's first show and the first season or two of Get Smart!
The Dick Van Dyke Show episode in which Rob Petrie the deejay does a 100 hour marathon cracks me up.
Decades later, in the 1990's, Dick Van Dyke would co-star with his son Barry in a medical whodunit show, Diagnosis: Murder. My father, an avid fan of mysteries and whodunits, loved it.
Strikes this writer as appropriate that tonight, the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum will be screening Buster Keaton's THE GENERAL on Dick's 100th birthday. Mr. Van Dyke knew Buster and Stan Laurel; all three brought countless laughs to a weary, hurting, troubled world.
