Thinking of Ernie Kovacs, who ranks, along with a few silent movie greats, atop my list of favorite comedians.
Am especially thinking of Kovacs' very catchy ditty Hot Cakes And Sausage, which is on the short list of my all-time favorite songs.
This great tune prompted the thought that today's post would actuallybe all about breakfast food. After all, wrote a pancake-packed post on National Flapjack Day last March!
Hot Cakes And Sausage was Ernie Kovacs' song. He used it as an intro to his way-out kiddie show spoof The Kapusta Kids In Outer Space.
The cartoonish quality of The Kapusta Kids In Outer Space brings to mind Eugene, Ernie's homage to silent era comedy. Kovacs was a fan of Jacques "Monsieur Hulot" Tati and one can see the Parisian comedian's influence.
First saw Eugene when the Best of Ernie Kovacs series aired on PBS way back in the 1970's.
The last part of the Kovacs universe this classic television fan became familiar with was his anti-game show, Take A Good Look.
Here, the sight gags, absurdist concepts and surreal sensibility of Ernie's comedy meet the TV game show.
Elements of What's My Line and You Bet Your Life go to the Kovacsian funhouse mirror.
On the game show's panel: Edie Adams, Cesar Romero, Jim Backus, Hans Conreid and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Take A Good Look features future Ernie Kovacs Show stock company members Jolene Brand and Bobby Lauher and makes no sense whatsoever - just the way we like it.
The lost episode of Take A Good Look was found and posted on the Comedy Kings YouTube channel.
Tough to determine how to finish a post on Ernie Kovacs. Invariably, just want to add more of Ernie's hilarious comedy sketches.
Could Ernie have been a great dramatic actor? Yes - definitely!
Shall wrap up today's post with a personal favorite sketch from Kovacs On Music (1959). The entire Ernie Kovacs Show crew, especially Edie Adams, is in rare form.
In closing, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write a Blog seek an expensive cigar for Ernie and thank the Comedy Kings (George Schlatter?) and Kovacs Corner YouTube channels big time!
For some reason, here, today, October 10, 2026, following another lulu of a bad, very bad, not good, no bueno, no fun week in which our favorite MLB team was 10,000 miles from a winning W-L record and the playoffs, we tip our hats to an all-time favorite performer, the one, the only Bert Lahr. . . yes, star of stage, screen and radio, known for his derring-do as The Cowardly Lion, in Lay's Potato Chips ads and Waiting For Godot - THAT GUY!
Wikipedia adds "Irving Lahrheim (August 13, 1895 – December 4, 1967), known professionally as Bert Lahr, was an American stage and screen actor and comedian."
"He was well known for his quick-witted humor and his work in burlesque and vaudeville and on Broadway."
The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog loves Bert Lahr!
Love his first appearances in movies, which featured the ultra-wacky version of Bert Lahr, not toned down in any way, as he is in FLYING HIGH!
In FLYING HIGH, he's part of an all-star cast with, among others, the brilliant comedienne Charlotte Greenwood.
He appeared in short subjects produced by Van Beuren for RKO Radio Pictures in 1933.
Bert headlined 2-reelers made in Astoria (western portion of Queens), New York for Educational Pictures, previously the producers of silents starring such great movie comedians as Lloyd "Ham" Hamilton, Lupino Lane and Al St. John.
NO MORE WEST (1934) in particular is a riot and presents that zany version of Bert.
In further Educational 2-reelers produced starring Bert, he's not anywhere near as "ngognogngognog" extreme and in this writer's opinion, not anywhere near as funny.
Still like Mr. Lahr and thank Ralph Celantano and Geno Cuddy for posting the following 1936 short subject. It's entertaining enough, but tones down Bert.
Bert rocks the house with none other than Bette Davis in the "Jealousy" sketch from the 1952 Broadway show, "Two's Company," telecast on The Hollywood Palace on February 20, 1965. Thanks, Bette and Bert!
Here's Bert on OMNIBUS.
And with Jimmy Durante on The Tyrone Power Show!
Remember seeing Bert's memorable guest appearance on The Red Skelton Show way back when.
Between appearances performing in musical theatre on prime time television (Cole Porter's Lets Face It) and such Broadway shows as The Fantasticks, Bert starred in numerous TV commercials.
He made many terrific ads, quite a few for Lay's Potato Chips.
In the 1940's, Terry Toons created a Bert Lahr lion character, enhanced by the imaginative and super-rubbery animation of Jim Tyer.
How do we finish this tribute? With Bert Lahr bringing his comedy to radio on The Fred Allen Show?
No, we finish with a classic commercial featuring Bert as the Blatz Beer sphinx!
Today we celebrate the 20th anniversary of this blog - thrilled and delighted to still be here and eking out a post weekly - with the following contribution to the 2026 Silent Movie Day Blogathon, hosted by The Everyday Cinephile and Silentology. The spotlight's on favorite comedians who brought the laughs and no doubt would be most amused to know they are still doing so 100+ years after their heydey. We'll start with the toast of Great Britain, the most adept acrobatic comedian not named Buster Keaton or Al St. John, Lupino Lane.
Before becoming the king of London's musical theatre in Me & My Girl and swinging The Lambeth Walk, Mr. Lane tumbled, climbed and somersaulted his way through numerous classic comedy shorts in the teens and 1920's.
Silent comedy expert Steve Massa adds: Lupino Lane was an international stage star, and, along with Douglas Fairbanks and Buster Keaton, one of the great acrobats and comic action heroes of the movies. Born in London in 1892, he was part of the Lupino family—a famous theatrical clan that started its reign in the 1600s. Stanley and Barry Lupino, very popular in England, were cousins and Stanley’s daughter Ida Lupino became a big movie star in America.
Lane began his career as a child in pantomime, under the tutelage of his father Harry, and became known as “Little Nipper,” or just Nip for short. He had a thorough training in tumbling, juggling, mime and even shooting through “star traps” (trap doors in the stage floor that were connected to catapults that would allow a performer to suddenly pop into a scene).
Only Me is an especially stellar Lupino Lane comedy short.
He plays a slew of parts, a la Buster Keaton's The Playhouse.
Lupino Lane is the equivalent of a whirling dervish in many of his 1920's starring vehicles. The stunts in Sword Points must be seen to be believed.
Directors of the diminutive whirlwind's action-packed adventures included Roscoe Arbuckle and Jack "Preston Black" White.
He and his talented brother - and frequent co-star - Wallace Lupino make like Doug Fairbanks, poke fun at "the glory that was Rome" and tear up antiquity in Roaming Romeo (1928).
While Lane is outstanding and charming in such talkies as The Love Parade, the sheer physical comedy that fills the 2-reelers he starred in for Educational Pictures (a.k.a. The Spice Of The Program) is something to behold.
The nimble Lupino Lane brings us to another nimble comic who starred in movies both in the United States and Europe, Marcel Perez (1884-1929).
For those who haven't seen Marcel Perez, also known as Ferdinand Perez and Marcel Fabre, he was a pioneering, irreverent and dancer-like comedian who gleefully thumbed his nose at the pomposity and conventions of the early 20th century.
Between 1900 and 1923, he starred in 200+ films under a slew of different character names (Robinet, Bungles, Tweedy, Tweedledum, Twede-Dan), both in Europe and America. He also directed other comedians, notably "A Ton Of Fun," after his starring career ended. Talented leading ladies Nilde Barrachi and Dorothy Earle shine in supporting roles.
There's a sleight of hand recalling the graceful deftness of Max Linder while also a more cartoony sleight of hand that brings to mind both the earliest European screen clowns and a key contemporary, the popular American silent movie comedian who quite literally was the son of a professional magician, Larry Semon, known as Ridolini to those who saw his films on European television.
The Extraordinary Adventures Of Saturnino Farandola is a particularly amazing Marcel Perez opus.
When the aficionados of 1930's movies here ponder great character actors and actresses, Ruth Donnelly, Frank McHugh, Aline McMahon, Hugh Herbert, Marie Dressler, Glenda Farrell, Guy Kibbee, Margaret Dumont, Jobyna Howland, Nat Pendleton, Allen Jenkins and just about everyone caricatured in Frank Tashlin's 1937 Looney Tune Porky's Road Race come to mind.
That said, one who ranks atop our list of all-time favorite 20th century character actors is none other than the great, the sneezy, the hilarious Billy Gilbert (September 12, 1894 - September 23, 1971).
Billy Gilbert is, among his numerous roles on stage, screen, radio and animation, well remembered for his memorable performance in Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday.
Character actors who also excel doing voice work in animated cartoons we love even more!
The Disney Wiki elaborates: Billy Gilbert was an American radio comedian, famous for his comical sneezing gags. For Disney, he provided the voice of Sneezy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Willie the Giant in the Fun and Fancy Free segment Mickey and the Beanstalk.
It is believed by historian John Canemaker that Gilbert got the role of Sneezy by walking into Walt’s office for the audition. He sneezed 5 times and Walt said “Billy, you’ve got the job.”
We endorse the following video by Jim Hill Media - nice work, Jim!
At least two years before Walt Disney started production on Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs, Billy sneezes in Million Dollar Legs!
By the time he co-starred with a bunch of comics (including W.C. Fields) and the great Lyda Roberti in Million Dollar Legs, Billy was nailing role after role after role for Hal Roach Studios a.k.a. The Lot Of Fun, as a key supporting player for Laurel & Hardy, Charley Chase and Our Gang.
Arguably, the greatest showcase for Billy Gilbert at Hal Roach Studios, besides his starring musical short subject Apples To You (1934), would be as the salty sea captain in the Our Gang SHIVER MY TIMBERS. His exchanges with pint-sized comedian Matthew "Stymie" Beard are priceless.
He starred in the Roach Studio's TAXI BOYS series in 1932-1933.
My favorite Taxi Boys adventures co-star Australian comedian Clyde Cook.
Mr. Gilbert transitioned seamlessly from Hal Roach Studios to the Columbia Shorts Department.
Billy reprises the wacko he portrayed in the Three Stooges opus Men In Black with panache.
Stan Laurel was in the audience at Gilbert’s stage show Sensations of 1929 and hired Billy as a gag writer, actor and director.
After and during amazing turns in comedy short subjects, Mr. Gilbert played character roles in many feature films, including Seven Sinners, Captain Courageous, and Tin Pan Alley.
Billy is fantastic in Chaplin's The Great Dictator. Unfortunately, none of the clips from that terrific movie on the official Charlie Chaplin channel on YouTube happen to co-star Billy (although there are terrific scenes between Charlie and Jack Oakie).
Would love to have a Billy Gilbert & Charlie Chaplin GREAT DICTATOR clip from Chaplin's estate, but. . . the following will have to do.
In the 1950’s, Gilbert worked frequently in television on numerous shows, including The Red Skelton Hour.
Andy’s Gang
On Broadway, Billy worked in several productions as an actor, writer and director. These included acting roles in Fanny, The Chocolate Soldier, and Gypsy Lady. His offstage work included The Red Mill, Sally and Buttrio Square. So we applaud and extend multiple hat tips to the star of stage screen cartoons and radio, the one, the only Billy Gilbert!
In closing, the Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog crew want to mention that, if you simply can't get enough Hal Roach Studios content - and we can't - check out the following Lot Of Fun playlist. If one gets unlucky, sadly ends up ill, injured and bedridden but in good enough condition to be awake and watch video, there's at least 2600 hours of comedy goodness with healing powers in said playlist. Hail, Billy Gilbert and all the comedy greats!
How the blog somehow missed the centenary of the birth of wacky, imaginative and marvelously goofy comedian Milton Supman, known professionally as Soupy Sales, back on January 8, we'll never know!
Oh well, at least Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog remembered our pals Dick Van Dyke and Mel Brooks, both of whom lived to see that 100th birthday.
Let's rectify that grevious error of overlooking the fabulous Soupy Sales RIGHT NOW, shall we!
Soupy was an avid jazz and blues fan, so the guest on the following show is virtuoso guitarist, master of the Gibson ES-335 and king of vibrato B.B. King.
Soupy Sales is responsible for the ONLY television appearance of trumpet genius Clifford Brown!
Entertainer Trini Lopez and Rat Packers Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. co-star in the following Soupy Sales Show! Where's Dino?
Even Alice "Welcome To My Nightmare" Cooper was a guest on The Soupy Sales Show!
Must buy the following DVDs from RHINO VIDEO!
Undoubtedly, music mavens, jazz and blues fans, and the comedy-centric love him! The splendid Detroit Historical Society website adds:
Soupy Sales was a lifelong jazz fan who used his late-night Detroit program, Soupy's On, to champion legendary jazz artists. Hosted a late-night adult-oriented talk show in Detroit during the 1950s. Partnered with local venues like Baker's Keyboard Lounge to feature touring acts. Used Charlie Parker's "Yardbird Suite" as his theme song. Featured heavyweights like Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, and Louis Armstrong.
The gang here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog love jazz, blues, rock n'roll, comedy, Soupy and his talented rocker sons Hunt and Tony.
The Sales brothers:
Formed the teen band Tony and the Tigers as children and secured a record deal by age 11
Todd Rundgren: Played on Todd Rundgren's early 1970s albums, backing the hit "We Gotta Get You a Woman".
Provided the iconic, driving rhythm section and famous drum groove on Iggy Pop's 1977 album Lust for Life.
Tin Machine: Reunited as the rhythmic backbone for David Bowie’s hard rock project alongside guitarist Reeves Gabrels from 1988 to 1992.
Today's hat tip goes to one of a favorite comedian and wordsmiths from my misspent youth, a TV producer who was also a lyricist, musician, satirist and prolific recording artist, the great Allan Sherman (1924-1973).
Here, Allan Sherman is the guest on The Mike Douglas Show, a very popular 1960's - early 1970s daytime TV variety program.
Allan goes international with British pop group Herman's Hermits.
Mr. Sherman was a frequent guest on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Dean Martin Show in 1965-1968.
Well, whatdaya know - found The Allan Sherman Show (1968) on Internet Archive - yippee kai-yoh kai-yay!
Love seeing Allan Sherman meet Hans Conreid in a Jay Ward Production! Allan enters at 13:52, after Fractured Flickers has thoroughly spoofed cowboy William S. Hart.
The latest Allan Sherman material this scribe has seen is the following 1970 appearance at UCLA.
We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog respectfully tip our hats to Allan Sherman - and an old friend who gave us a splendid 120 minute cassette of the song parody king in concert way back when. Miss you!
Finishing this extended plunge into the slapstick of The Shorts Department, the spotlight shines on the guy who cranked out numerous Three Stooges shorts in the latter 1940's and early 1950's, longtime Columbia Studio soundman Edward Bernds.
Chicago-born Edward Bernds was a pioneering soundman who, after working with Frank Capra and Howard Hawks, would become a prolific director of silver screen comedies, television series and psychotronic B-films. He lived to be 95 and thus gave numerous interviews.
Mr. Bernds had the unenviable task of directing Three Stooges comedies when Curly Howard's health was rapidly declining in the mid-1940's.
He did a remarkable job working around the NYUK NYUK NYUK king's health issues and getting Curly's last great comedy performances on film.
He also did a stellar job handling the comedy team's transition from Curly to Shemp.
Greg Hilbrich's historical overview of The Shorts Department adds: "In 1944, Edward Bernds, a sound mixer at Columbia since the shorts department's beginnings, began writing scripts for the shorts, only later to find himself in the director's chair. Bernds is responsible for some of the finest two-reel comedies Columbia made."
His Columbia comedy short subjects featured unusual choices of headliners. For example, Billie Burke, ubiquitous character actress known for, among numerous parts, Glinda The Good Witch from The Wizard Of Oz, starred in Columbia 2-reelers. While Billie remains the least likely to headline a Three Stooges style knockabout comedy, it happened!
Ex-pugilists Max Baer and "Slapsie Maxie" Rosenbloom swapped taking punches in the ring for Moe Howard style mega-slaps in the movies!
Edward Bernds directed several short subjects starring character actor and cartoon voice artist Sterling Holloway.
The slapstick team of Gus Schilling & Richard Lane made a series of very funny and very over-the-top comedy shorts in the Three Stooges knockabout school.
Future "3rd Stooges" Joe De Rita and Joe Besser also starred in 2-reelers directed by Edward Bernds at Columbia.
After leaving the Columbia Shorts Department in 1952, Edward Bernds directed films for Allied Artists, including The Bowery Boys Meet The Monsters, starring Huntz Hall, Leo Gorcey and Guy In A Gorilla Suit.
Edward Bernds' extended career in movies and TV included psychotronic B-films.
Including the classic SPACE X-7!
Hard not to love a guy who directed Queen Of Outer Space!
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.
