Staggering through March 2026 and noting that this year continues painfully and unrelentingly resembling the following. . .
Asking if anything can get one's mind off the dumpster fire even momentarily, the answer to that question remains an emphatic NO, although the next best thing is to celebrate NATIONAL FLAPJACK DAY!
That means it's flapjack time, starting with Mickey Mouse pancakes.
Even better and enthusiastically in the National Flapjack Day spirit: Cuphead!
Do we love pancakes too much? Could this blogger's long-suffering partner be featured in the Women Who Love Men Who Love Pancakes Too Much book?
Yes, guilty as charged.
Would $5 for all you can eat pancakes appeal to the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog? Absolutely!
Not surprisingly, tons of expert advice on how to make flapjacks, from Epicurious to Bon Appétit to America's Test Kitchens to Michelin to New York Times can be found. We'll get it down to two videos: the ever-wisecracking Binging With Babish and Alton Brown's Good Eats.
Now we flip to flapjacks served by great movie comedians and animated cartoon characters. First and foremost: silent movie comedy queen Alice Howell, cavalierly flipping pancakes at 2:11 in the very funny 1920 opus Cinderella Cinders.
Next up: Los Tres Stupidos!
National Flapjack Day in Cartoonland commences with post-World War II Popeye serving green pancakes to his obnoxious nephews in Spinach Vs. Hamburgers. Noting the presence of an excerpt from the staggeringly racist Pop-Pie A La Mode in Spinach Vs Hamburgers, it remains flabbergasting that this cartoon was run constantly on TV in the 1960's. As far as National Flapjack Day goes, I personally would go to both Spinach Heaven and Wimpy's Hamburger Haven, with the sincere hope that Chef Popeye makes a spinach Spanish omelet to go with the green flapjacks!
The New Rochelle studio of Paul Terry produced several flapjack flippin' endeavors. Found the following two pancake-packed 1930's Terrytoons and it’s highly likely there are more.
While I like that in the following Terrytoon, the eatery Nick’s Coffee Pot is literally a coffee pot, it’s just a bit odd, even in the Cartoon Universe, that the clientele are insects.
Meanwhile, Chuck Jones, who, unlike Joe Barbera, would scoff at Terrytoons, starred one of his second-tier headliners, the ever-nonplussed Conrad Cat (from The Bird Came C.O.D. and Conrad The Sailor), as cheerful pancake-flipper in Porky’s Cafe.
This black & white Looney Tune is from 1942, the year when Chuck and crew produced such hilarious classic cartoons as My Favorite Duck and The Dover Boys. Note to readers: enjoy the following cartoon and pardon the inexplicable 1937 opening theme music.
Closing this National Flapjack Day post, we shall beckon back to the 1950's. It's astounding, especally to young people, that not all that long ago there actually was an Aunt Jemima's Kitchen restaurant at Disneyland and a national fast food chain named Sambo's. Yes, boomers who are still here (and eating) in 2026 actually dined at those restaurants. Some eateries were better than others and some were downright lousy! In particular, yellow pancakes were a bad sign of bad food to come.
As grotesque as these companies' product logos remain and as cringe-worthy as the chain resturants could be, they remind us who invented American cuisine and developed, among highly creative cookery in many U.S. cities, the amazing food of New Orleans, where no doubt spicy flapjacks can still be enjoyed.
We're about to watch today's much-awaited edition of the Silent Comedy Watch Party - and, not surprisingly, thinking about the great comediennes of silent pictures
One of the funniest extant Wanda comedies, A Thrilling Romance, was featured on episode 16 of The Silent Comedy Watch Party.
How Wanda did not attract the attention of Universal head Carl Laemmle and continue her career into talkies, we'll never know. Her 1925 Century Comedy The Queen Of Aces is a hoot!
This brings to mind the question of how many of the LOTS and LOTS of silent film comediennes starred for Universal and who produced these fast-paced, sight gag-filled 2-reelers.
The answer to the former includes the aforementioned Wanda Wiley, Alice Howell, Fay Tincher, Baby Peggy Montgomery and Edna Marion. The answer to the latter is the Stern Brothers, who produced over 900 comedy short subjects. The intrepid cinema detective, author and film historian Thomas Reeder has focused two books on the comedy that emerged from Universal in the teens and 1920's - and the second one, Time is Money! The Century, Rainbow, and Stern Brothers Comedies of Julius and Abe Stern, covers their lives and movie career in detail.
Preceding Baby Peggy and Wanda Wiley as Century Comedies headliner was Alice Howell, whose work with Sennett, Lehrman, Reelcraft and Universal demonstrates her formidable comedy mojo. The excellent writers Tony Slide and Lea Stans have covered Alice Howell at length.
We're big fans of Fay Tincher at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog.
Fay, a super-talented actress of stage and screen, passed at age 99 in Brooklyn, NY in 1983. It appears she successfully eluded any efforts to be interviewed about her career making movies and kept a low profile after her retirement from show business at the age of 46.
Fay had a 15 year movie career that spanned stints with The American Eclair Company, Komic Komedies, Triangle, Christie, and Universal.
After beginning in movies as a big time vamp in D.W. Griffith's feature The Battle Of The Sexes, Fay's screen popularity took off in 1914 with her scene-stealing antics as Ethel, the outrageous stenographer in Komic Komedies' Bill The Office Boy series.
Alas, Fay wanted more than anything to produce, direct and write and have creative control over her own films, preferably dramas. Although she did have her own production company in 1918 and made several Fay Tincher comedies for World Pictures, for the most part, that scenario was not to be, with the shift from the wild and wooly days of early motion pictures to the studio system already well underway when she began working for Al Christie in 1919.
A few entries from Fay's Christie Comedies series survive, and, as much as she wanted to be a dramatic actress, these films - very likely much to her chagrin - are hilarious. One film that has made it to DVD and is especially memorable stars the indefatigable Fay as as the badass "Christie cowgirl," the personification of a "pistol packin' mama."
Fay was on record as finding the Christie Comedies too slapstick-oriented for her taste. This may be due to various injuries suffered doing stunts as rugged, take-no-prisoners Rowdy Ann in the western comedies series, as well as an impression on Fay's part that she would get to star in 5-reel featurettes at Christie Comedies and pursue storylines more along the lines of the genteel and sophisticated farces exemplified by Mr. And Mrs. Sidney Drew.
For the remainder of the silent era, Fay starred in various Universal comedies, most notably as Min Gump in "The Gumps" series. Her last silver screen appearance (and only talkie) was a supporting part in a Universal Syd Saylor 2-reeler released theatrically in March 1930.
In addition to the Topeka-born actress' talents in front of and behind the camera, she was an athlete and accomplished craftswoman/seamstress, devoted to needlework and creating artwork using vitreous enamel.
L to R, surrounding the star of Time For Beany: Daws Butler, Stan Freberg, Bob Clampett, Jack Benny
After enjoying last weekend's Harry Langdon tribute (redux: Harry's silent features, Mack Sennett and Educational Pictures talkie short subjects are absolutely wonderful classic comedies, the Hal Roach series very odd and less wonderful, the Columbia 2-reelers frequently not-so-wonderful) we shall - yet again - pay tribute to the many classic comedy heroes who made us laugh out loud.
L to R: Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Milton Berle, Joe Penner, Victor Moore, Benny Rubin
A plethora of the very best lithographs portraying classic comedy heroes were created by the one, the only Al Hirschfeld. . . the great artist and chronicler of 20th century show business. Dearly love the Al Hirschfeld Foundation website, and, among other pieces, his lithographs of the Algonquin Round Table. How many classic comedy heroes and NINAs can you find in this one illustration?
The multi-talented and prolific comics artist, writer, illustrator, author of graphic novels and designer Kit Seaton is one serious silent comedy fan - and digs Charlie Chaplin as much as we do at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog.
We love the following ilustration she created featuring some formidable classic comedy heroes: Roscoe Arbuckle, Al St. John, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Stan & Babe, Harold Lloyd, Charley Chase and Max Linder.
We are aficionados of Kit's work across many fields and particularly love her Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd illustrations - and love knowing that somebody who's a lot younger than the baby boomers who comprise the majority of film buff-dom loves classic movies! Perusing Ms. Seaton's illustrations and seeing young people at such events as the San Francisco Silent Film Festival gives this 20th century art, music, literature and filmmaking enthusiast hope for the future.
Another silent movie comedian who was highly regarded by his peers - no less than Chaplin and Keaton paid tribute - was Lloyd "Ham" Hamilton.
Most of his starring vehicles, unfortunately, burned up in the infamous Fox film vault fire at Little Ferry, NJ on July 9, 1937. Ham's surviving films reveal a very funny, original, subtle and rather rakish persona within his overgrown boy/shameless slacker characterization. The more subtle and rakish he is, the funnier Hamilton is.
Thankfully, some Hamilton Comedies are available on DVD, thanks to efforts by silent comedy specialists Looser Than Loose Publishing and film historians Dave Glass and David Wyatt.
Those intrepid comediennes of silent movies deserve their due as well.
The films of Century Comedies headliner Alice Howell, now lovingly restored and brought back from The Nitrate Twilight Zone by Undercrank Productions, demonstrate her wacky albeit endearing personality, fearless nature and pronounced flair for physical comedy.
In many of the films on the aforementioned Alice Howell DVD collection, including her appearances with Keystone and L-Ko comedies (featuring Billie Ritchie and other comics), it is not uncommon for Alice to steal the show as a supporting player.
Shifting gears entirely and indelicately, we'll finish today's comedy-obsessed post with a trip decades after the end of the silent era to the world of standup. Asking who the first woman to succeed in the cutthroat and competitive world of standup comedy was immediately brings to mind Jackie "Moms" Mabley, who reputedly was doing standup comedy laced with satire and social commentary as early as 1933. Author Kliph Nesteroff wrote about her in Moms Mabley - Agitation in Moderation. As far as this writer knows, there are few films or recordings of Ms. Mabley's act from back in her 1930's and 1940's heydey, although she did appear frequently on TV in the latter 1960's. Here is one glimpse of her act; she even busts a move at the end.
The second female standup comedienne (we know of) and the one who blazed trails for women in the field was Jean Carroll. Have not watched the very popular current TV series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but hear that one of the comedy pioneers the main character was based on, indeed, was Ms. Carroll. The following clips reveal that Jean Carroll was a one-liner machine, in that rat-a-tat-tat tradition first associated with Henny Youngman, later associated with Phyllis Diller and Totie Fields - and especially with the king of the one-liner, the great Rodney Dangerfield.
The Marvelous Ms. Carroll lived to be 98 and hopefully received her fair share of kudos, bravos and huzzahs by later generations of comediennes. Jean Carroll, no doubt, as Moms Mabley did, provided inspiration to quite the group of classic and current comedy heroes.
Cinephiles can console themselves in these frequently upsetting times by marveling at the sheer quantity of wonderful movies and silent film rarities that are becoming available - some, a century after their original theatrical release - on Blu-ray and DVD.
First and foremost, Undercrank Productions has announced that the Alice Howell Collection, 12 movies on 2 DVDs featuring the great silent movie comedienne, the wacky redhead 30 years before Lucille Ball, will be released on March 5th.
This blogmeister and classic comedy buff was proud to have contributed to the Kickstarter fundraiser last year that got the ball rolling on this release.
Star of her own series of ridiculously fast-paced slapstick 2-reelers after a stint as a supporting player at Mack Sennett's Keystone during the rough-and-ready days of silents, Alice was considered by no less than Stan Laurel among the top comediennes in motion pictures.
Even this briefest of clips from one of her many L-Ko (a.k.a. Lehrman Knock-Out) short subjects produced in 1916 demonstrates a flair for physical comedy.
The official press release elaborates:
The twelve slapstick shorts in this 2-disc collection star the largely forgotten silent-era comedy star Alice Howell, are newly restored, and have not been seen by or available to the public in nearly 100 years.
Alice Howell starred in her own very popular series of comedy shorts from 1915-1925 for studios like L-KO Komedies, Century Comedies, Reelcraft and Universal. Billed as the “Scream of the Screen” and “the Female Chaplin”, Howell’s screen persona was a working-class “scrub-woman” who expertly combined charm and personality with knockabout physical comedy, and was sort of a frizzy-haired silent movie forerunner of Lucille Ball.
Although she starred in over a hundred films, her comedy shorts and career are largely unknown as a majority of the one- and two-reelers she made are lost.
Fortunately, a dozen of them have been rounded up for this two-disc DVD set; most have been preserved by the Library of Congress, and a number of titles have been sourced from film archives in England, France, the Netherlands and Denmark.
Howell is also part of a Hollywood legacy. Her son-in-law was George Stevens, the Academy-Award-winning director of Giant, Shane, Gunga Din and Swing Time – he met Howell’s daughter Yvonne at a dinner at Oliver Hardy’s house. Alice’s grandson is George Stevens, Jr., Founding Director of the American Film Institute and creator of the Kennedy Center Honors, and himself an Oscar recipient for Lifetime Achievement.
“Alice Howell was the first slapstick queen – slapstick with a pretty face,” says Steve Massa, author of Slapstick Divas: The Women of Silent Comedy. “More than even Mabel Normand, Howell gave her all and risked life and limb in the pursuit of screen laughter. Unafraid to take the bumps and bruises that the boys did, she could match tumbles and falls with Al St. John or Billie Ritchie – but at the same time had comic timing and movements that were as clean and precise as Keaton and Chaplin’s.”
The films on the The Alice Howell Collection were digitally remastered in 2K from original film materials preserved by the Library of Congress, the BFI National Archive for the British Film Institute, the EYE Filmmuseum (Netherlands), the Danish Film Institute, Lobster Films (Paris) and the Blackhawk Films Collection. Each of the films feature new musical scores on piano and theatre organ by renowned silent film accompanist Ben Model.
Shifting gears from silents just a tad, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are big fans of the iconic Humphrey Bogart. While Bogie made his name as a screen tough guy in The Petrified Forest and later would be a marvelous Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, among the many movies he appeared in - surprise - are rather witty comedies.
Among the best and funniest from the lesser-known of his films, Stand-In, now out on Blu-ray, co-stars Bogie with stalwarts Joan Blondell and Leslie Howard.
The genre Bogie is generally associated with, film noir, will be represented in upcoming Blu-ray releases by Desert Fury, a delirious "crazy with the heat" opus shot in glorious Technicolor (but not breathtaking CinemaScope and stereophonic sound) in Ventura County, CA, and in Clarkdale, AZ.
A rather indescribable tale of casinos, racketeers and unabashed back-stabbers worthy of The O-Jays - and starring a fine cast including Lizabeth Scott, John Hodiak, Burt Lancaster and Mary Astor - Desert Fury must be seen to be believed. Author James L. Neibaur reviews the 1947 drama here. At the 2016 Seattle Noir City fest, Czar Of Noir Eddie Muller introduces Desert Fury for a not unsuspecting audience thusly. . .
For the many devotees of B-movies and psychotronic cinema, there are new Blu-ray releases that will make the winter torrential rains, sub-zero temperatures and snowstorms a lot more bearable.
Fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Cinematic Titanic, Cinema Insomnia, Rifftrax and Creature Features will get a big kick out of the creative yet unintentionally humorous sci-fi monster movie The Mole People, now out on Blu-ray. It is tough not to love a flick that both uses such phrases as "from the bowels of the earth," and features both John Agar and Hugh Beaumont in the cast!
Easily one of the best and most entertaining "giant bugs on the rampage" movies is The Deadly Mantis. Many of us who collected films on 8mm and 16mm bought the Castle Films excerpt from this Universal-International opus, which also featured Craig Stevens, star of Peter Gunn, as well as William Hopper, who played Paul Drake in Perry Mason.
With a murderous insect loose among the populace, the question is "do we drop an H-bomb on The Deadly Mantis or just use a lot of Raid?"
Last weekend's post on Ron Hutchinson and The Vitaphone Project referred to The Jazz Singer Deluxe Edition. While the 3-DVD set, including Vitaphone Varieties, has been available since 2007, the latest version is a combination Blu-ray and DVD.
The Jazz Singer is also available as a single Blu-ray.
Good news (for a change) - the Kickstarter noted here last Saturday, raising funds for The Alice Howell DVD project - 6 rare silent comedies not only made its initial goal in 8 hours but more than doubled it, passing the $10,000 benchmark and surpassing the stretch goals.
That said, the fundraiser by Ben Model and Steve Massa is on through Tuesday, May 8 and one can contribute to said Kickstarter here.
The more money raised, the more hilarious Alice Howell comedies will be available for viewing on DVD!
New stretch goal is 340 contributors.
Thanks to the enthusiastic response thus far, now there will be eleven rare films starring Alice Howell on a 2-DVD set instead of six on one DVD. The following titles have been added to The Alice Howell DVD project:
Shot In The Excitement (1914) Keystone Comedy, co-starring Alice with the equally wacky (and triple-jointed) Al St. John and gonzo circus clown Rube Miller, termed "a triple threat of the uninhibited" by writer Lea Stans in her review from the
Silent-ology website which describes the film's utter mayhem: over-the-top performances, cartoony gags, slow-flying cannon balls, you name it.
Under New Management (1915) Henry Lehrman Productions a.k.a. L-Ko, co-starring Gene Rogers and Alice's fellow L-Ko Studio comedienne Gertrude Selby. Ms. Howell started at L-Ko (short for "Lehrman Knock-out") as a supporting player in the films of Billie Ritchie, formerly (like Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel) of the Fred Karno company, before headlining her own series.
Her Lucky Day (1920) Reelcraft, co-starring Dick Smith, Alice's husband and frequent collaborator (in front of and behind the cameras) in her films for Reelcraft and Universal. Smith also directed the Marx Brothers' first film, a 1921 silent, Humor Risk.
Father Was a Loafer (1915), L-Ko comedy, co-starring the lowdown, ever-misanthropic Billie Ritchie as "the loafer" and Gertrude Selby as the heiress the loafer is wooing.
The producer of the DVD collection, Ben Model of Undercrank Productions, is targeting the end of November 2018 for completion of the project and a February 2019 release.
Logistics for the film transfers are lined up and ready to go with the Library of Congress. One additional short is being scanned for the project from 35mm nitrate by EYE Filmmusueum in the Netherlands.
Since none of her starring vehicles for L-KO, Century Comedies, Emerald Motion Picture Company and Bulls-Eye/Reelcraft were available when Robert Youngson produced his influential series of silent comedy compilation features - The Golden Age Of Comedy, When Comedy Was King, Days Of Thrills & Laughter, 30 Years Of Fun - in the 1950's and 1960's, recognition for The Queen Of Slapstick has been a long time coming.
Mr. Massa, the aforementioned author and co-curator of The Alice Howell DVD Project, elaborates further on Ms. Howell and silent film comedians in this interview on the Vaudevisuals website.
