Photo by Christopher Walters Tomorrow is Halloween - YAY! Today's post begins with coming attractions, starting with Vincent Price in The House On Haunted Hill!
Then with psychotronic trailers. . . Tarantula!
And THE CRAWLING HAND (1963)!
And the extra cheesy THE CREEPING TERROR!
The Creature Of The Walking Dead trailer is so cheap, it actually shows the ending of the film!
Now for some spooky gothic comedy, starting with THE LAUREL & HARDY MURDER CASE (1930).
The boys dig up dead bodies in HABEAS CORPUS (1928)!
A Bluebeard storyline is the cornerstone of the Laurel & Hardy short subject OLIVER THE EIGHTH.
In closing, it's Halloween cartoon time!
After all, Halloween monsters live such interesting lives!
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.
The silent movie-crazed (and movie crazy) gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog shall be posting mass quantities of our personal favorite classic comedy short subjects and cartoons for the occasion!
Very talented scribes, terrific silent film experts and ridiculously knowledgeable cinephiles will be celebrating National Silent Movie Day 2026 with cool writings. A few of the posters have been on our blogroll for quite a few years now - and with good reason - and the gang here is thrilled that Silentology, Silver Screenings, CrÃtica Retrô and nitrate glow in particular are still at it, consistently creating great content.
We'll close today's post by whetting the appetite for silents with some excellent 1920's cartoons, beginning with pre-Mickey Mouse Disneys. These were produced back in the days when the likes of Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising and Friz Freleng were, rather amazingly, working for Walt.
And. . . can't finish without following those with some Otto Messmer cartoons!
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!
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
Needing laughs big time today, along with guffaws, chortles, chuckles, giggles and howls, so slapstick scenarios involving funny fat guys falling down sound FANTASTIC! Thankfully, film historians, authors and silent movie experts have posted a bunch of pratfall-packed Ton Of Fun 2-reelers from the late 1920's on YouTube.
These slapstick flicks star the rousing and rotund trio of Kewpie Ross, Frank Alexander and Hilliard Carr, a.k.a. Ton Of Fun, and were produced by former Vitagraph star Joe Rock (from the comedy team of Earl Montgomery and Joe Rock) for Standard Film Corporation/F.B.O.
Do the cheerful yet corpulent stars of the Ton Of Fun comedies remind this always too-enthusiastic slapstick fan of any funmakers from more recent memory? YES - this guy!
While Mr. Farley loathed and detested being typecast as a “fat comic”, he was an inspired slapstick performer who, like fellow comedians Roscoe Arbuckle and John Candy, left us way too soon.
We're thrilled and delighted that the exploits of A Ton Of Fun still survive 100 years after they were first produced.
Film historian Dave Glass has posted a bunch of the trio's absurdist adventures on his silent movie-filled YouTube channel.
As remains the case with the "slapstick ballets" by Comique Productions co-starring Roscoe Arbuckle, Buster Keaton and Al St. John, these comedies deliver numerous sight gag-filled belly laughs.
Along with the slapstick series he and Earl Montgomery co-starred in for Brooklyn's Vitagraph Studios, Joe Rock is best known for the twelve Stan Laurel solo comedies he produced in the mid-1920's. He would go on to produce documentaries in the sound era.
These Stan Laurel solo comedies featured talent both behind and in front of the camera who would subsequently be key contributors to the Hal Roach Studio's Laurel & Hardy series.
Hopefully, these vintage comedies shall be enough to tide us over until National Silent Movie Day this fall.
