Rubber Legs Leon and Mel Brooks' 100th

On the comedy beat from Broadway to vaudeville to movies, thinking of two terrific icons of silver screen humor, both of whom crack us up, only every time. One is star of stage, screen, Ziegfeld Follies, etc. Leon Errol, born in Sydney, Australia on July 3, 1881. Here's Leon with Lou Costello in The Noose Hangs High (1948).



The other is Mel Brooks, because the gang here somehow missed the comedy maestro's 100th birthday last Sunday!

While Leon Errol is arguably best known for his later work - his appearance in W.C. Fields' hilarious 1941 opus Never Give A Sucker An Even Break, the Joe Palooka series and the eight Mexican Spitfire feature films co-starring comedienne, singer and dancer Lupe Vélez, he had a lengthy and illustrious show business career as comedian-singer-director-writer before 1930 and even appeared in several silent films (in the following co-starring with stalwart comedienne Dorothy Gish).



Mentioning how expertly the thorough Forgotten Australian Actors website chronicles Errol's five decade show business career, we note that the rubber-legged comedian began performing on stage, acting, singing and directing theatrical troupes as he worked in burlesque and vaudeville, starting at the turn of the 20th century.

He toured Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain and Ireland, worked extensively as a director and writer with Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. and co-starred in sketches with the legendary Bert Williams in the Ziegfeld Follies.



The talkie feature films Leon appeared in included a starring role in Only Saps Work (1930 Paramount) and a slot alongside several supporting comics (W.C. Fields, Ford Sterling and Chester Conklin) in Her Majesty, Love, a vehicle for Marilyn Miller, celebrated dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies and megastar of Broadway musicals.



Mr. Errol is also among a slew of comedians in the enjoyably eccentric and unrelentingly grotesque version of Alice In Wonderland directed by Norman Z. McLeod and produced by Paramount Pictures in 1933.

We are quite fond of the 2-reelers Leon starred in during the first year of Jules White's Columbia Shorts Department, consider the uninhibited group to be slapstick masterpieces.







ONE TOO MANY is quite the curio, directed by Our Gang series creator Robert McGowan (on a break from the Hal Roach Studio) and written by the insanely prolific Harry McCoy.



Also love the two Technicolor Vitaphone musical shorts from 1934, both directed by Roy Mack, later a producer of very enjoyable Soundies.



The wonderfully cheesy time-traveling Vitaphone musical GOOD MORNING EVE (1934), one of the last gasps of pre-Code naughtiness, in glorious 3-strip Technicolor, is a personal favorite Leon Errol flick.



Greg Hilbrich of the The Columbia Shorts Department wrote, "upon completing HONEYMOON BRIDGE for Columbia, and after an argument with studio executives who cited "creative differences", Errol left for Radio Pictures."



So, in 1934, Leon began starring for RKO in a series directed and written by legendary gagmeister Al Boasberg.





There are LOTS of RKO Leon Errol short subjects on YouTube. In one produced in 1936, none other than Lucille Ball (who has a cameo as Leon's secretary in the 1934 Columbia 2-reeler PERFECTLY MISMATED) plays a housekeeper. No doubt Lucy was taking notes when working at the Columbia Shorts Department in 3 Stooges and Leon Errol 2-reelers.



Errol's co-star in ONE TOO MANY, ONE LIVE GHOST and many other films is the always formidable former Ziegfeld Girl and Hal Roach Studios stock company player Vivien Oakland, who, along with the equally formidable Dorothy Granger, would be a frequent collaborator.

Our favorite of all the Leon Errol RKO short subjects is THE JITTERS (1938), an astounding version of his rubber-leg routine.


Leon starred in 2-reel comedies for RKO through the 1940's, long after Mack Sennett and Educational Pictures closed and Hal Roach Studios ceased making short subjects. He often played a lecherous philanderer who unsuccessfully attempts to conceal booze, broads and gambling from his wife. Would expect no less from a comedian who starred in the 1933 Paramount short subject Three Little Swigs!





Once in a blue moon, one of the Mexican Spitfire features Leon co-starred in with the extremely funny Lupe Vélez will turn up on Turner Classic Movies, invariably after 3:00 a.m.

As of July 2026, clips from this series are practically nonexistent online. Fortunately for comedy geeks, all eight Mexican Spitfire features are available as a 4-DVD box set.

Too bad Lupe wasn't around 30 years later to bring her wacky and unabashedly over-the-top sensibility to western deconstruction Blazing Saddles - which brings us to Mel Brooks.



We're thrilled and delighted that comedian-writer-director-producer Mel Brooks made it to his 100th birthday last Sunday!



Here, Mel celebrates his 100th with TV producer-writer (Everyone Loves Raymond), documentary host (Somebody Feed Phil), actor and enthusiastic gastronome Phil Rosenthal.







Noting our June 28, 2021 post celebrating Mr. Brooks' 95th birthday and Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog's February 21, 2026 tribute to the mighty and ridiculously talented comedy writers and performers who created Admiral Broadway Revue, Your Show Of Shows and Caesar's Hour, in closing, here's one of our favorite Mel contributions to a movie, approved enthusiastically by the Psychotronix Film Festival!



Thanks for the laughs, Leon and Mel! Now it's time to re-watch the four Columbia 2-reelers, then watch those Video Yesteryear compilations of Leon Errol comedies, starting with volume 1. Then on to The Flustered Comedy Of Leon Errol volumes 2, 3 and 4.

Remembering The Incomparable "Whoopie Lupe"

"The first time you buy a house you think how pretty it is and sign the check. The second time you look to see if the basement has termites. It`s the same with men." Lupe Vélez (1908-1944)

Yes, this blogger knows she's remembered - and erroneously - for her place in the Ignominous Showbiz Deaths pantheon, instead of her legacy as kick-ass comedienne, actress, singer and big screen presence: the one and only Lupe Vélez.

In a new biography, Lupe Vélez: The Life And Career Of Hollywood's Mexican Spitfire, Australian author, prolific blogger and film historian Michelle Vogel has delved into - and debunked - various urban legends surrounding the fiesty, hard-partying actress who conquered Hollywood movies and took no prisoners at any point along the way.

As those who attended the San Francisco Silent Film Festival a few years back well know, Ms. Vélez first made a name for herself in silent movies. Here she is, tango-ing up a storm with swashbuckling Doug Fairbanks in The Gaucho, a box office hit so popular that it would soon be lampooned by a Mickey Mouse cartoon.



Lupe followed that success up by co-starring with Lon Chaney, Sr. in Where East Is East, heretofore a lost film.

She also sang in one of D.W. Griffith's last silver screen hurrahs, the 1929 "part-talkie" Lady Of The Pavements. Only silent prints exist of the Griffith film, but at least Lupe's rendition of Irving Berlin's Where Is The Song Of Songs For Me, recorded in March 1929, can still be heard.



RKO Radio Pictures, no doubt in search of the next big thing and the first Latina movie star, signed Lupe and diva Dolores Del Rio. This directly led to Lupe co-starring with fast talkin' wiseacre and pre-Code icon Lee Tracy in what could be considered the first "screwball comedy", director Gregory LaCava's snappy and repartee-packed The Half Naked Truth.





On loan-out to MGM, Lupe would appear among the cast of thousands in the 1934 review film Hollywood Party.



Arguably, her best known scene in the film is the following sketch with Laurel & Hardy, with whom Lupe made one of her first film appearances in 1927.



While the enforcement of the hated Production Code, beginning in July 1934, did not help her career any more than it did Mae West's, Lupe kept on making films and eventually shared the spotlight with RKO's own randy and cheerfully lecherous pre-Code comedy stars, the team of Bert Wheeler & Robert Woolsey. One wonders if she was added to the cast of High Flyers due to Woolsey's failing health at the time.



Although there were serious doubts as to whether he could complete the picture, Robert and Lupe collaborate splendidly on the following "I'm A Gaucho" number. It turned out to be the last scene Robert Woolsey - a trouper to the end - ever filmed.



Lupe's impersonations in the same film are a riot, arguably only equalled by a screen comedienne by Marion Davies in The Patsy.



Perhaps noting how well she worked with Bert and Bob, the studio cast Lupe in The Girl From Mexico, an unassuming B-movie co-starring Ziegfeld Follies comedian Leon Errol. Its success launched what would become the Mexican Spitfire series, a fine showcase for the co-stars' considerable comedy chops - and a cash cow for RKO.

These films, in this blogger's estimation, get a bad rap today primarily because they are B-films with a politically incorrect series title.

On Level 1, the character she plays, Carmelita Fuentes, could be seen strictly as a Latina stereotype and example of racism in pre-WW2 Hollywood. On Levels 3 and beyond, it becomes apparent that Lupe is subverting those stereotypes every step of the way, while getting laughs in the process.

Lupe and Leon bring a certain gusto, fun and outrageousness to the eight films in the series. When they improvise scenes together, bringing spontaneity to what were undoubtedly tight shooting schedules, the results are glorious.





In life and in the decades since her suicide in 1944, Lupe Vélez deserved better. Hopefully, Ms. Vogel's book will dispel at least some of the many myths about her life and redirect the spotlight where it belongs, on her groundbreaking stage and screen career.

I personally think Lupe would have been great in Mel Brooks movies.