Last week's post on rubber-legged slapstick master Leon Errol and silver screen humor essential Mel Brooks, as well as the previous one on The Three Stooges, has profoundly immersed this blog in the pratfall-packed world of physical comedy.
We've been heavily into Slapstickland, both silents and talkies, for the past three months. And many moons ago, back in 2013 (which now feels like 1913), wrote an extended series of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write a Blog posts paying tribute to the Columbia Shorts Department and Jules White.
Lee Weinstein's 2023 article The Rivals Of The Three Stooges adeptly covers the comedy headliners from Columbia 2-reelers at length and gets us thinking of the guy who spent 20 years with The Shorts Department before going on to a successful career in television, former silent slapstick perennial and Mack Sennett stock company player Andy Clyde.
In I'M A FATHER, Andy plays the "cranky old stick in the mud" to perfection.
In such Columbia 2-reelers as OLD SAWBONES, a collaboration between prolific silent comedy creators Del Lord and Jack "Preston Black" White, Andy presents a down-home variant on the physical comedy formula of Moe, Larry and Curly.
Now it's on to character actor supreme, the guy who coached none other than Kate Hepburn in comedy chops during the making of Bringing Up Baby, the great Broadway and movie comedian Walter Catlett.
Here's Walter in Get Along Little Hubby (1934). (Note: the following transfer is very out of sync). He co-stars with Vivien Oakland, very much a key player in the first year of The Shorts Department (and a take-no-prisoners character actress here), as well as ubiquitous slapstick comedy stalwart, future Columbia 2-reelers headliner and Three Stooges co-star Monte Collins.
In case you're wondering why Walter Catlett seems more than vaguely familiar. . .
Indeed, that is a wonderful performance in Pinocchio as J. Worthington Foulfellow A.K.A."Honest John."
In between his numerous character roles in feature films, Catlett turns up periodically in Columbia shorts through the early 1940's; he even co-stars with the popular Guy In A Gorilla Suit, who torments Walt and Dudley Dickerson (the talented African-American comedian invariably cast in grotesque stereotyped parts) in YOU'RE NEXT.
BLONDES AND BLUNDERS has a pronounced Moe-Larry-Curley style knockabout approach throughout, in no small part due to the presence of irreplaceable Three Stooges supporting comics Bud Jamison and Vernon Dent.
Walter Catlett had prominent roles in comedy and musical short subjects long before working for Columbia. Here he is, teamed with none other than gravel-voiced Eugene Pallette.
One of the most memorable Walter Catlett performances is in Mark Sandrich's 1933 RKO opus SO THIS IS HARRIS (1933).
Have devoted many blog posts to the unorthodox and original comedian Harry Langdon over the years.
Like Buster Keaton and Charley Chase, Harry was among the former silent movie headliners making 2-reelers at Columbia. Langdon was one of two Harrys - the second was Harry von Zell in 1946-1950 - to headline short subjects for The Shorts Department.
The Columbia Langdon comedies remain a mixed bag; some - SHIVERS, HIS MARRIAGE MIX-UP (the 1935 predecessor to Saturday Night Live star Mike Myers' 1993 feature film So I Married An Axe Murderer) - are still lost films.
Langdon, an unique and idiosyncratic performer, was especially ill-suited to Jules White's tendency to make Three Stooges comedies with all Shorts Department headliners.
At that point Harry, who was pushing 40 when he debuted in movies, was in his fifties and no longer able to do strenuous physical slapstick. Nonetheless, the comedy-crazed gang here find Langdon's appearances in features and short subjects, more often than not, to be quite funny; check him out in Lewis Milestone's Hallelujah, I'm A Bum (1933).
The following, directed by frequent Langdon collaborator Arthur Ripley and written by the inventive and prolific Harry McCoy, is a sendup of Warner Brothers' Warren William vehicle and courtroom drama The Mouthpiece (1932). Harry sports a mustache!
Harry works quite well with the marvelously and unabashedly over-the-top Hal Roach Studios comedian and cartoon voice artist Billy Gilbert in this 1935 2-reeler. Langdon's the straight man here! Billy reprises the raving loony he portrayed with relish in the Three Stooges opus Men In Black.
For more on this great movie comedian, check out Chicago historian Nicole Arciola's terrific Harry Langdon Archive YouTube channel, a classic comedy treasure trove.
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.
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!
This weekend we celebrate movie comedian Harry Langdon's birthday (June 15), as well as the natal anniversary of fellow silver screen laugh-getter Stan Laurel (June 16).
Shall pay tribute to these iconic comics after noting two excellent classic cartoon and comedy screenings this weekend, including a Saturday matinee at the Metrograph in Manhattan.
The press release elaborates: Down on the Farm is a selection of vintage animated shorts exploring country life among funny barnyard animals. Come enjoy a live action little human girl's adventure among the cows and chickens; a famous cartoon rabbit's follies with a mechanical cow; an unnaturally large and clumsy duckling's unlikely heroism; a beloved wise-cracking sailor visiting his girlfriend's new farm; and more.
Spanning the 1920s through to the ’50s, this assortment showcases classic characters such as Alice in Cartoonland, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Popeye, Baby Huey, Farmer Alfalfa, and others. 60 min. film program plus Q&A.
That Slapstick Show: The Animated Marx Brothers
Q.E.D. Astoria; 27-16 23rd Avenue, Queens
Sunday 6/16/24 at 4:30pm
The next entry in this screening series offers a rare glimpse of classic cartoons featuring New York City's favorite sons, Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo—a.k.a. the Marx Brothers!
Space is very limited at QED—it can only accommodate approx. 40 guests. Guarantee entry by purchasing advance tickets:
https://qedastoria.com/products/that-slapstick-show?event=2024-06-16T16:30:00
We're wild about a few Harrys, past (Harry Ruby, Harry Barris, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Harry "The Hipster" Gibson, Harry Caray, Harry Nilsson, Harry Dean Stanton, Harry Chapin) and present (Harry Connick, Jr. and favorite legal eagle podcaster and former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman of Talking Feds). Paramount among those Harrys - and he made movies for Paramount at one point - was the brilliant comedian and character actor Harry Langdon (June 15, 1884 – December 22, 1944).
Mr. Langdon, not even the only silent movie comedian named Harry we go for in a big way - there's also director-writer-comic Harry Sweet (1901-1933) - starred in vaudeville, silent films (1923-1928) and talkies (1929-1944). The comedy-crazed crew here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog count him among the funniest, most daring and most original performers to ever make movies. He also remains to this day the most controversial of all the silent and early sound era comedians, right up there with such unabashed grotesques as Larry Semon, Jimmy Aubrey and the Kalem Studio's scuzzy and deliberately excessive "Ham & Bud" (played with truly rancid relish by Lloyd Hamilton and Bud Duncan).
As the words unorthodox & unconventional describe Harry Langdon's modus operandi, and that means his essential characterization, acting and comic timing are unusual, ultra-quirky, idiosyncratic and at times really bizarre, he remains #1 on the list of "love 'em or can't stand 'em" movie comedians. There's no middle ground - classic movie and comedy fans either find Harry irritating and unbearable or fall-down hilarious, unbelievably funny. This silver screen comedy aficionado is emphatically in the latter group.
Rule of thumb #1 for appreciating the Langdon cinematic universe: accept that Harry's mind does not work in anything remotely resembling a conventional way - and just roll with it! Am very much not a fan of the phrases "little elf" and "baby dope fiend" as descriptions of the Langdon character, but do concur with "space cadet."
After starring in vaudeville presenting the famous and very elaborate "Johnny's New Car" sketch, Harry Langdon began his silver screen career, first with Sol Lesser then starring in short subjects for Mack Sennett Productions.
Don't buy the conventional wisdom regarding Harry Langdon's career in both silent and sound films and take the unpopular view that he was both better in talkies than Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton (thanks a lot, MGM), but also generally very good overall, right up to his last appearances in features for Hal Roach Studios, PRC and Monogram. An exception to this would be many of Harry Langdon's later Columbia short subjects, which reflect Jules White's unending attempts to produce Three Stooges comedies with every performer starring in 2-reelers for The Shorts Department.
To suggest that there is much disagreement among comedy geeks and silent film buffs regarding Langdon's silent features remains quite the understatement! Watching the Harry Langdon silent features, this writer finds Long Pants to be the one that (in his opinion) is an utter misfire and just doesn't work on any level. There's confusion over whether his character is a boy or a man and the scene with him attempting to bump off his girlfriend (and failing miserably, as Harry has difficulty completing any action) elicits stunned silence even from the select few among modern audiences who love Langdon, oddball humor and silent screen comedy at its most surreal.
This scene takes that "just roll with it" viewpoint regarding Harry's utter weirdness - and that same "not of this universe" quality seen seven decades later with Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean - a step too far. Thought this might have been a response to a similar plot point in Murnau's SUNRISE, but that film didn't get released theatrically until September 1927. Buster Keaton's take was that this was intended as a sendup of Theodore Drieser's best-selling 1925 novel An American Tragedy. That makes sense but was lost on audiences then and now. Thus, Long Pants was Langdon's first box-office bomb; the "OMG - the little fellow's a psychopath" response sent his box-office appeal plummeting and began his rapid downfall as a feature film star. One imagines this was also the cause of the enduring and acrimonious break between Langdon and director/writer/collaborator Frank Capra.
The feature which was Langdon's directorial debut, Three's A Crowd, offers glimmers of his potential abilities as a unique filmmaker alternating with first-time director mistakes, remains one of those "love 'em or hate 'em" titles.
As is The Chaser, which stars a particularly randy version of Harry.
Most controversial would be the aforementioned series Harry starred in for Hal Roach Studios in 1929-1930.
Here is Harry's first talkie short subject, a promotional piece for the Roach series co-starring Thelma Todd and Eddie Dunn. It attempts to reassure audiences that Harry's on the comeback trail - and also confirms that his characterization is really out there, even more so with sound.
Said Hal Roach Studio series still remains quite the Rorschach Test for classic comedy buffs. Have seen them referred to as "ghastly" and "among the worst two-reelers ever made," but remain among the few who strongly disagree with that assessment. Reviewed the Harry Langdon At Hal Roach: The Talkies 1929-30 at length in a post, New on DVD: Langdon vs. Microphones at The Lot Of Fun, back on April 17, 2020.
The Langdon and Charley Chase talkies produced in 1929 by Hal Roach Studios present an overlooked but essential chapter of silver screen comedy history - and of the transition from silents to talkies. Harry Langdon At Hal Roach: The Talkies 1929-1930 is a followup to previous DVD releases by The Sprocket Vault of Hal Roach studio films featuring director-writer-comedian Charley Chase and the series co-starring Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts.
In these films, the Harry Langdon seen onstage in vaudeville (and his circular dialogues with himself) are actually featured in a talkie. While Harry can be seen babbling onscreen in many of his silent starring vehicles for Mack Sennett Productions, the Hal Roach series presents the rare instance in which Langdon's stream-of-consciousness patter is seen and heard onscreen.
Said loopy patter, which for many in itself is an absolute deal-breaker, would not be seen in Harry Langdon films after The King (1930), his last short subject for Hal Roach.
The Harry Langdon Hal Roach talkies, invariably, elicit two diametrically opposed responses (even from diehard classic comedy buffs): "this is A SCREAM!" or "this is the worst thing I've ever seen!"
We tip our battered top hats associated with Max Linder to all involved at Sprocket Vault in making the Harry Langdon At Hal Roach: The Talkies 1929-30 DVD release a reality: Kit Parker Films, Richard M. Roberts, VCI Entertainment and the late Ron Hutchinson of The Vitaphone Project.
All eight Harry Langdon Hal Roach 2-reelers, including the heretofore lost films Hotter Than Hot and
Sky Boy, which still only exist as silents - the sound discs have yet to be found - are included in the 2-DVD collection.
Especially enjoyed the hilarious The Big Kick, much of which plays essentially as a silent and includes both way-out concepts and several scenes of astonishing pantomime by Harry.
In the famous/infamous THE HEAD GUY, Harry joins the ranks of such funny but polarizing latter-day comedy performers as Pinky Lee, Pee-Wee Herman, Andy Kaufman, Emo Phillips, Martin Short and Kristen Wiig. The short presents the Harry Langdon stream-of-consciousness dialogue at its most extreme. While the "sandwich and apple" sequence is the line of demarcation for many film buffs, count this blogmeister among those who laugh out loud throughout this scene in THE HEAD GUY, even though it is longer than the long version of Light My Fire by The Doors. Harry's m.o. is to build the tension in a scene by extending it - and this elicits quite the cathartic belly laugh when that tension is finally burst.
Harry worked as a supporting player in a couple of features for Warner Brothers in 1930-1931, with "The Oui Oui Song" from A Soldier’s Plaything being his most memorable scene - at least until his part in the 1933 Al Jolson vehicle Hallelujah I'm A Bum.
Beginning in 1932,
Langdon co-starred with his buddy Vernon Dent in a bunch of excellent comedy short subjects for Educational Pictures and Paramount.
This series, produced in 1932-1934 by Arvid E. Gillstrom, successfully recaptures the spirit and tone of the mid-1920's Mack Sennett comedies. The Educational Pictures comedy shorts are much more relaxed than the Hal Roach films or the subsequent Columbias. In The Hitch Hiker and Knight Duty, this works beautifully.
Harry essentially plays his character silent and lets his perennial onscreen foil and offscreen best friend Vernon Dent do the talking in this series.
Unfortunately, the 1934 Paramount short subjects co-starring Harry Langdon and Vernon Dent produced by the same crew as the Educational series at this juncture are lost films.
The Columbia series is much much more hit-or-miss - prefer both the Hal Roach and Educational 2-reelers - but there are occasional good ones. HIS BRIDAL SWEET (1935) teams Harry with Billy Gilbert, who does a terrific job playing a raving lunatic. That's right, no kidding, BILLY is the crazy one in this scenario.
Harry returned to Hal Roach Studios to work as a gagman/scenarist with Laurel & Hardy and occasionally contribute character roles to Lot Of Fun features. Block-heads (1938) is the L&H feature with the most pronounced blending of the unique Harry Langdon and Stan Laurel comedy sensibilities. The links between Block-heads (1938) and Harry's 1926 Sennett film Soldier Man are numerous.
Due to the Columbia Shorts Department's penchant for casting everyone on the lot in Three Stooges style knockabout, this blogger is not a fan of Langdon's films from the 1940's, after his last work for L&H (Saps At Sea), so we will stop here. Must extend big thanks to the splendid Harry Langdon Archive YouTube channel (which, among many films, features the 1933 Lewis Milestone flick Hallelujah I'm A Bum, in which Harry has a prominent character role) curated by Nicole Arciola, as well as Archive.org.
As far as Mr. Laurel goes, back during those not-fun days of lockdown, posted a Happy Birthday tribute here on the blog, including wacky Larry Semon Vitagraph films Stan appeared in as a supporting player, as well as several of the pre-teaming solo comedies he starred in for Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson, Joe Rock Productions and Hal Roach Studios.
In 2024, we'll celebrate Stan's birthday by watching hilarious Laurel & Hardy films!
A good place to start with appreciation of The Boys is by purchasing this Blu-ray of L&H silents from 1927.
This Blu-ray traces their early development as a comedy team and the restorations look fabulous.
