While Memorial Day can be a somber occasion, paying tribute to those who lost their lives at the front, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog shall go the non-somber route and spotlight vintage film humor with a Memorial Day theme.
We remember and honor those who, whether parachuting into the most remote terrain, working as military medics and EMTs in far-flung lands, hitting the beaches at Normandy or fighting for civil rights on Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge or in Neshoba County, Mississippi, gave their lives in the service of this country.
Beginning the selection of vintage film humor for Memorial Day Weekend will be World War II themed cartoons.
Terrytoons cranked out many "V For Victory" WW2 cartoons. One, part of a short-lived series starring Ernie Bushmiller's comic strip characters Nancy and Sluggo, zeroed in on fundraising for the USO.
There was also a series of WW2 cartoons featuring Terrytoons regulars Gandy Goose and Sourpuss, most notably Scrap For Victory, a scrap metal drive opus in which our heroes briefly appear towards the end.
Military-themed cartoons starring Gandy Goose and Sourpuss invariably include the line from Sourpuss, "what are you trying to do, kill me?" and Gandy's inevitable propensity for somnambulism and dreams.
Some Terrytoons begin with Gandy and Sourpuss in uniform, but abandon the gritty wartime reality to go off on tangents involving dreamscapes and dancing ghosts - and stay there.
The comedy team of Abbott & Costello cornered the market on military-themed comedies with Buck Privates, In The Navy, Keep 'Em Flying and Buck Privates Come Home, all of which made big buck$$$$$$$$ for Universal.
Our favorite of these is In The Navy, due to the presence of Shemp Howard, an ace comedy supporting player when not enduring frequent and enthusiastic eye pokes from his brother Moe in The Three Stooges.
As a response by 20th Century Fox to the runaway box-office success of Buck Privates, the Laurel and Hardy vehicle Great Guns, released theatrically on October 10, 1941, stars The Boys as the oldest guys ever to join the army. The team's 1940's films have their moments and by no means are bereft of laughs, but none number among their better starring vehicles.
Great Guns, which could be considered the runner-up to Jitterbugs as the funniest of the L&H Fox features, was directed by Monty Banks, former silent film comedy headliner. Perhaps Monty's A.D. should have handled direction and Banks joined the cast as an annoying pipsqueak foil to Laurel & Hardy.
One of the earliest Laurel & Hardy films, With Love And Hisses (1927), is a military comedy featuring Stan as dimwitted recruit Cuthbert Hope and Babe as his ever-exasperated sergeant. The duo had not established their characters and the relationship between them at this point in their career, so the goofball Laurel plays in With Love And Hisses is not Stanley from the Laurel & Hardy pictures but closer to the more aggressive, weird, wacky and unpredictable character seen in Stan's solo films.
And on the topic of movie comedy teams, Bert Wheeler & Robert Woolsey star in Half Shot At Sunrise (1930) as frequently AWOL World War I soldiers in Paris. Wheeler & Woolsey's prime directive is, you guessed it, chasing women! Dorothy Lee and Leni Stengel add much to the proceedings as the team's winsome and funny co-stars. In another example of his very good but lesser-known work behind the camera, Roscoe Arbuckle wrote gags and acted as an assistant director, much to the delight of Bert & Bob.
In Boobs In Arms (1940), The Three Stooges "soytenly" take the cake as . . . inept greeting card salesmen who become the worst soldiers ever.
A fitting question for Memorial Day is what's the greatest comedy film with the temerity to take on the abject horror that was World War I. Since the Century Comedy with the one, the only Alice Howell pursued by German spies for her sauerkraut recipe, The Cabbage Queen, remains a lost film, Charlie Chaplin's classic Shoulder Arms would be the choice.
Believe it or not, there were Looney Tunes cartoons set in World War I. Always liked this one, Boom Boom (1936), directed by Jack King and co-starring Beans, the character that succeeded Buddy as Looney Tunes' Mr. Excitement, with the early pre-Mel Blanc version of Porky Pig, voiced by Joe Daugherty (who stuttered in real life as well as reel life).
The following 1931 cartoon produced by Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising as part of the Looney Tunes series does a surprisingly effective job conveying the gruesomeness, violence and chaos of the battlefield. This shouldn't be that much of a shock, as Harman, Ising and Friz Freleng, as animators for the Walt Disney Studio, worked a few years earlier, along with Ub Iwerks, on a memorable (albeit much less graphic and visceral) Oswald the Lucky Rabbit silent set in World War I, Great Guns (1927).
As far as how Memorial Day differs from Veterans' Day, here's how History Channel defines it; “Memorial Day is an American holiday, observed on the last Monday of May, honoring the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Memorial Day 2021 will occur on Monday, May 31. Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971."
Staying home for this holiday and watching old movies, as travel, since not everyone is vaccinated, remains a tad dicey.
It won't be this year, but we hope there will eventually be an opportunity to fire up the barbeque, drink Belgian ales and award-winning American microbrews and hang out with friends and family; it feels like 10 years since we last did this. We'll look forward to, knock on wood, having a Memorial Day gathering again in the not-too-distant future - and remember not just the many fallen heroes, but our friends and family members who served in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.
Perusing YouTube yet again while listening to swingin' Stubby Kaye's take on Sinatra, this blogmeister discovered an excerpt from a talk show hosted by Orson Welles. Had read that this was an unsold pilot, but it appears there are several episodes of Orson's talk show on YouTube.
Among the guests with Orson on this episode of his talk show is Andy Kaufman, making this a meeting between one of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog's all-time favorite movie directors and favorite comedians. Among many pleasant surprises here, the show reveals that Welles is a very good interviewer and manages to disarm Andy.
Welles, a magician and provocateur himself, understands and respects Kaufman's derring-do as an actor, comedian and performance artist, so this the only time this writer has ever seen a talk show which offers a glimpse of Andy the person as opposed to Andy the performer. Seeing this, I feel strongly that Carson Productions missed a good bet by not booking Orson to guest host The Tonight Show.
Would love to see the rest of this show, in which the third fellow on this stage, Ron Glass from the frequently hilarious Barney Miller TV show, is interviewed. No doubt Orson appreciated the cast of terrific comic actors on that show. The following clip is from an episode of Barney Miller which never fails to have me ROFL.
Speaking of interviews, here is an amazing bit of classic television from The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
While, unfortunately, Groucho had passed by the time Late Night With David Letterman began, the appearances of the uber-verbal Marx brother with Carson and Dick Cavett are the stuff of legend.
Don't know who snapped this wonderful photo back in the 1950's, but absolutely love how all of these outstanding comedians and kings of mid-20th century showbiz were actually assembled in one place. It's the next best thing to a live-action Hirschfeld cartoon.
Speaking of kings of mid-20th century showbiz, here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, it's always Time For Beany.
Seeing that photo gets me thinking of the incomparable Daws Butler's gazillion voices, Stan Freberg's 1957 radio show, and the very funny Beany & Cecil animated cartoons. Our favorite of that series, hands-down, is The Wildman Of Wildsville (1959), starring the one, the only Lord Buckley in the title role.
In closing, the ever-swingin' Stubby Kaye will take us out. We wish everyone a good weekend!
Starting the week with string swing by Robin Nolan and Jimmy Rosenberg, who presented a concert on YouTube yesterday.
As key exponents of Django's music, Robin and Jimmy have played together for years.
It's always great to hear Jimmy play and to even better see his re-emergence, at the top of his game, after an absence from the scene.
Jimmy burst upon the music world in the 1980's as a guitar prodigy who impressively mastered the entire Reinhardt/Grappelli/Hot Club of France songbook at a tender age.
We're enthusiastic swing guitar fans, so the Monday listening cue at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog will be filled with the best of the best gypsy jazz ambassadors, while also highly recommending the music of Django's friend, contemporary and fellow guitarist, Argentinian entertainer Oscar Alemán.
We also dearly love The Rosenberg Trio - lead guitarist Stochelo Rosenberg, rhythm guitarist Nous'che Rosenberg and bassist Nonnie Rosenberg - the cousins of Jimmy.
They are outstanding.
The incomparable Django Reinhardt passed on May 16, 1953 - and would very likely be tickled by how, over 90 years after he began his musical career, the sound of The Hot Club Of France would be not just celebrated around the world, but more popular than ever.
Today's post spotlights animated cartoons that were released theatrically on May 15. We'll start with just one of 26 Terrytoons cranked out by the New Rochelle studio in 1932. It's not the aforementioned 2000 B.C. (produced in 1931) but the Mickey Rat and gangster cat-packed Romance, directed by "the fastest pencil in the East," animator Frank Moser.
Paul Terry’s Aesop’s Fables cartoons were, we kid you not, inspirations to Walt Disney and other young animators in the early 1920’s. Especially in the Alice In Cartoonland series, the Disney studio's character designs emulated Terrytoons. Since Disney was driven to improve the quality of animation with each film, his studio, featuring such animators as Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising and Friz Freleng, would ultimately leave the funny but crude Aesop's Fables in the dust with his 1927 Oswald The Lucky Rabbit series.
It was in conquering the challenges of synchronized sound and music and fitting soundtrack to image, as opposed to just slapping any old tune on a silent cartoon (as Paul Terry and Otto Messmer did), that Walt Disney Productions got the jump on everyone else in the industry in 1928 and soon became the studio to beat.
Here's the star of Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse, in The Cactus Kid, released on May 15, 1930.
Featuring ace voice artist Jack Mercer as a most diabolical spider, The Cobweb Hotel, directed by Dave Tendlar, is among the most memorable entries from the Max Fleischer Color Classics series.
The May 15 theatrical release of The Cobweb Hotel strikes this writer as ??????? since it is definitely more of a Halloween-themed cartoon and nothing along similarly macabre lines emerged from Fleischer's Popeye and Betty Boop series in the October releases of 1936. As a piece with a gruesome sensibility, it's right up there with the 1933 Max Fleischer Screen Song cartoon Boo, Boo Theme Song.
A more celebrated series from Fleischer than the Color Classics was the studio’s animated version of Superman. On May 15, 1942, the action-packed Man Of Steel opus Electrical Earthquake was released theatrically.
The plot features a Native American high-tech genius who wants Manhattan Island back for his people and plans to induce devastating natural disasters to get the job done. Can't imagine the reception this cartoon would get, then and now, from an Native American audience - handing cartons of eggs for the crowd to throw at the screen might be prudent - but at least the super-villain antagonist is a nattily dressed cutting edge scientist with an underwater lair, not a dummy, a doof or a dolt. Unfortunately, we don't hear the voice of Allen Jenkins as a Daily Planet reporter whose one line is "you sure you WANT Manhattan back?"
Less spectacular but enjoyable is the following Porky Pig cartoon, released on May 15, 1937. We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog have a soft spot for the cartoons produced by the Ub Iwerks Studio and this was one of four Looney Tunes, along with Porky's Super Service, Porky's Badtime Story and Get Rick Quick Porky, that Leon Schlesinger farmed out to Ub's studio. Since Porky Pig's co-star Gabby Goat is as irascible, grating and obnoxious as the Fleischer Studios' town crier character from Gulliver's Travels and a subsequent (rather un-memorable) short subject series, the star of Porky & Gabby is the peppy soundtrack music by Carl W. Stalling.
While Iwerks is credited as the director of Porky and Gabby, the Warner Brothers/Schlesinger animators Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones and Irv Spence were loaned out to the Iwerks studio to work on these cartoons. Clampett and Jones co-directed the last two.
Warner Brothers released two cartoons on May 15, 1943. One is Greetings Bait, a Friz Freleng opus starring a worm based on Jerry Collonna, the popular and wacky comedian from Bob Hope's radio show.
The second May 15, 1943 release is Tokio Jokio, a black & white Looney Tune which remains notorious as a particularly grotesque and excessive World War II propaganda cartoon. Frankly, it has lots of competition among WW2 cartoons, especially from Paramount Pictures (both Superman and Popeye the spinach-swilling sailor) and an equally notorious Bugs Bunny opus set in the Pacific.
This writer's opinion is that Mr. McCabe's directorial efforts have overall received a bit of a bad rap because of this one cartoon, so today's post will close with an episode of the excellent Anthony's Animation Talk YouTube series devoted to Norm's work as Looney Tunes director in the early 1940's.
For more info on Norm McCabe, who worked in animation for seven decades, check out Devon Baxter’s excellent profile, posted in May 2018 on Cartoon Research.com.
On Mother's Day, the gang here will be driving over hill and dale (but not, fortunately, on any dusty trails) and shall miss Sunday's Amazing Tales online presentation by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (it's at noon PST/ 3:00 p.m. EST - register here).
After catching up on Giants-Padres game highlights, we'll watch apropo Mother's Day entertainment, starting (of course) with a cartoon. Never mind that bit at 5:37 with the chick frying an egg - it's a quail egg, folks! This is what happens when the same ex-Fleischer animators responsible for the anarchic "Scrappy" cartoons try their hands at "Disney cute."
Have a hunch that George Stevens’ 1948 film I Remember Mama will be on the Turner Classic Movies schedule. It’s an enjoyable film, loaded with fine performances by the great Irene Dunne and the cast of excellent character actors, and would look spectacular in 35mm on the big screen. As one gets older and family members have passed, the sentimental period piece movies about eras far in the rear view mirror increasingly pack an emotional wallop.
One of the key characters in I Remember Mama is named Dagmar - and now all this correspondent can think of blonde bombshell comedienne and vocalist Dagmar singing "Mama Will Bark." She hated the song. So did Sinatra. Both were terrific, even with lousy material!
Here, from the now top-notch Cabin Fever Little Rascals DVD box set, is a very funny 1-reeler directed by Gordon Douglas, the same guy who made Robin & The Seven Hoods 26 years later. Every time cranky, fussy and persnickety character actor Johnny Arthur, portraying Darla Hood's beleaguered father, calls his wife "Mama," this Our Gang aficionado is ROFL.
One of the funniest Our Gang comedies in tne entire series, Beginner's Luck, is all about stage mothers. Spanky's stage mother is the worst - but funny!
As far as Mother's Day humor goes, love this classic bit by Jerry Stiller & Anne Meara.
At Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we regard Stiller & Meara as comedy royalty!
No Mother's Day post would be complete without this incendiary 1967 hit by Etta James, penned by Clarence Carter. The song isn't about mothers and their children, but "mama" as an all-powerful righter of wrongs.
She rocked the house with "Tell Mama" at many a concert.
Unfortunately, it looks like Etta is lip-synching "Tell Mama" in the following appearance on the TV show What's Happening '68, hosted by the pride of the Pacific Northwest, garage rockers turned popsters Paul Revere & The Raiders.
Tough to follow Etta James, but Janis Joplin's fire-breathing cover of Tell Mama from the Festival Express documentary (beginning at 2:17) does the job - and then some.
In more recent years, the mighty Tedeschi-Trucks Band has been opening and closing sets with a show-stopping cover of "Tell Mama." Love those vocal harmonies by Susan Tedeschi and Sharon Jones.
In need of laughs as April ends, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog today pays tribute to 20th century standup comedy.
Spotlighted the hilarious Billy Crystal in the Easter 2021 post. . . why stop there? Here's Billy's pal and frequent collaborator Robin Williams.
The following Robin Willians routine should be played in its entirety prior to The Masters every year without fail.
The historical record of mid-20th century standup comedy performances begins with The Ed Sullivan Show; fortunately for us comedy and pop culture vultures, a slew of Sullivan Show excerpts have been recently downloaded to YouTube.
Stand-up comediennes have received at best short shrift, but The Ed Sullivan Show often featured one who broke ground, combining elegance and élan with Rodney Dangerfield-style intensity and rapid fire precision, the very funny Jean Carroll.
Of the many comics who appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, I especially enjoyed "sad sack standup" Jackie Vernon.
While standup comedians and The Tonight Show tend to be associated with Johnny Carson, the previous incarnation of Tonight hosted by Jack Parr provided a showcase for comics as well.
Have seen few episodes of the first version of The Tonight Show, hosted by Steve Allen, but understand that he often featured stand-up comics - most famously a cleaned-up Lenny Bruce.
Mostly recall Steve Allen's Tonight for an episode in which Ernie Kovacs was the guest host and turned the show upside down, sometimes literally (note: it's on this DVD box set).
Parr's Tonight offered free rein to comedians. The one, the only Jonathan Winters was a regular.
Not to be outdone, Johnny Carson made a point of booking stand-up comedy legends on The Tonight Show.
Carson would revel both in his role of King Of Late Night and in bringing combinations of comedy stalwarts on his shows, sometimes simultaneously (note - a longer clip from the following show can be found here).
A few years before the episode featuring Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters, arguably the very best ever to hit The Comedy Store stage were on The Tonight Show together.
Johnny was no fool. Richard Pryor, a one of a kind talent, was on often.
As a comedian who manages to be a storyteller, satirist, actor and social commentator simultaneously, Richard Pryor is still unsurpassed, 15 years after his passing.
David Letterman offered a showcase through his runs on both NBC and CBS. Dave's love of and respect for comedy and comedians is clear.
Of the comics who first appeared on Letterman, this blogger is particularly fond of the late, lamented, highly original and wildly imaginative Mitch Hedberg.
Saturday Night Live has had a complex and at times unfathomable relationship with stand-up comedians and comediennes, partly due to the show's genesis in Second City/Groundlings style improv.
Many Saturday Night Live cast members first made their name as stand-ups, with some enjoying breakthrough success and others having their difficulties withstanding the brutal backstage politics and unrelenting pressure cooker of live television.
Standup comics from Richard Belzer to Robert Klein to Stephen Wright to Sam Kinison appeared on the show. George Carlin hosted the premiere episode and Richard Pryor hosted the seventh one in 1975.
After the first five SNL seasons, quite a few luminaries from the world of stand-up comedy would become cast members, with varying results. The fearless, unorthodox and delightfully brutal Gilbert Gottfried, the most surreal of stand-up comedians and to this day the only comic to do a dead-on impersonation of Jackie Vernon, was mis-cast and mis-used on the infamous (but not entirelyterrible - the musical guests are consistently top-notch) season 6, which also featured an inexplicably under-utilized Eddie Murphy.
There was a stretch, mostly during the early 1980's years when Dick Ebersol produced the show, in which Saturday Night Live frequently booked stand-up comics as guest performers and gave them the spotlight. Some, such as Stephen Wright, were several steps and universes ahead of the (by comparison) earthbound comedy sketches.
The show also featured such wonderful vaudeville-style acts as magicians Harry Anderson, Michael Davis and Penn & Teller back in those days. These creative performers were a welcome addition and it's too bad this practice ended as the 1980's did.
There are cases where things don't work out for even the most talented comedy performers, actors and actresses in the unrelenting grinder that is television, when the cast blends like oil and water. When it comes to live TV, this sort of thing happens, even with a terrific cast, imaginative writers and the best of intentions. It's never due to lack of talent, creativity or enthusiasm; even the incomparable Your Show Of Shows cast and writers periodically produced sketches that were clunkers.
For reasons unknown to all who were not in the SNL writers' room in 1994-1995, season 20 was arguably the worst in the series' history, or at least tied with the infamous seasons 6 and 11, as well as the less infamous but equally lackluster season 30.
Lots went wrong, very wrong in the 1994-1995 season, even given the blazing talent and incredible standup comics working on the show, in front of and behind the cameras. Season 20 would be a prolonged last gasp for stalwart SNL cast members Kevin Nealon and Mike Myers, both affected by departures from the cast (Phil Hartman especially) in a profound way. These departures also shifted the comedy load emphatically to Adam Sandler, David Spade and larger-than-life physical comedian and Second City Chicago star Chris Farley. This limited opportunities for new additions to the cast; only Molly Shannon and standup comedian Norm Macdonald returned for subsequent seasons.
As had been emphatically the case with the entire doomed Saturday Night Live '80 troupe, the 20th season had difficulty figuring out way to do with new cast members. British actress and animation voice artist Morewenna Banks was a featured player for four episodes, but only appeared in a couple of sketches and then was unceremoniously fired by NBC. In her one-year stint as a cast member, filmmaker and comedienne Laura Kightlinger, later a writer and performer on Will & Grace, was seen less than The Invisible Man. Spinal Tap's Michael McKean and Mark McKinney of The Kids In The Hall joined the cast in season 20, but would be under-utilized in their time as cast members.
The powers that were at SNL, still reeling from the aforementioned departures of two of the greatest cast members in the show's history, the irreplaceable Jan Hooks and Phil Hartman, as well as key writers who left to join the Late Night with Conan O'Brien staff, could not figure out how to incorporate the new additions to the show into the mix. Established comedians were added instead of young unknowns from Second City and The Groundlings. Actress/stand-up comedienne Janeane Garofolo and frequently hilarious Late Night With David Letterman comic Chris Elliott were among the new additions, but repeatedly mis-cast and mis-used on SNL season 20. Go figure!
The unsuccessful efforts to incorporate Late Night with David Letterman's distinctive style of comedy into the Saturday Night Live mix brings to mind that Janeane Garapolo hosted Late Show with David Letterman when Dave was recovering from heart surgery in March 2000; in contrast to her extremely unhappy experience in a half season as an SNL cast member, she excelled and had fun in the process. Had she wanted the job, Janeane could have shined as a new kind of late-night host.
As the 1980s and early 1990s progressed, the Saturday Night Live cast increasingly would be chock full of standup comedians, including Adam Sandler, David Spade and Rob Schneider. Eddie Murphy, Dana Carvey, Chris Rock and Norm Macdonald - brilliant stand-up comedians all - were indeed SNL cast members.
Other outstanding comedy performers auditioned but didn't make the cut; as the old saying goes, that's show business. The list includes some formidable talents: Kevin Hart, Marc Maron, Jim Carrey, Lisa Kudrow, John Goodman, Zach Galifianakis, Kathy Griffin and Michael McDonald (of The Groundlings and Mad TV - not the pop singer/songwriter). Lorne Michaels approached Jennifer Aniston with an offer to join the SNL cast, but she declined and soon afterwards made the big bucks as one of the stars of the successful sitcom Friends.
It has been extended tough sledding at this blogger's household, as we have lost two beloved pets in a short time, but after much quality time spent with the iconic comedians of silent movies (a.k.a. The Old Masters - Chaplin, Keaton, Chase, Langdon, Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy) and a deep dive into both favorite stand-up philosophers and the mid and late 20th century television programs that spotlighted them (many of which can now been seen on YouTube, Archive.org and Vimeo), hints of sunlight are visible on the horizon.
In closing, we extend big thank yous and several respectful tips of top hats worn by John Belushi, Bill Murray and Elliott Gould in the infamous (but funny) "Castration Rag" sketch to websites that have been reviewing Saturday Night Live in detail. These would include the One SNL A Day Project, the SNL Review index on Existentialist Weightlifting and My Saturday Night Life. Dove into both websites for research and screen caps in this post. In addition, there are now numerous Saturday Night Live shows of past decades on Archive.org - and many interviews with Saturday Night Live cast and writers conducted by Marc Maron for his podcast.
Today, we spotlight the great Harold Lloyd, born on April 20, 1893. Mr. Lloyd is considered one of silent film comedy's Big Three (along with Chaplin and Keaton - and, if it's a Big Four, Harry Langdon) and the Harold Lloyd films are still unequaled in their blend of comedy and thrills with the action hero ethos exemplified by Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
Turns out Harold Lloyd is among several stalwarts from silver screen comedy with birthdays at this time of year.
That guy responsible for the first 20th century British Invasion and the international popularity of both going out to the movies and buying home movies (on 8mm, 9.5mm, 16mm, 28mm, etc.), Charles Spencer Chaplin, was born on April 16, 1889.
The lesser-known but wonderful Fay Tincher, a very reluctant but inspired comedienne - she aspired to move behind the camera and make dramas as a director/writer - but easily one of the funniest of her day, was born on April 17, 1884.
We respectfully tip a battered top hat Chaplin got from his friend Max Linder and wore in One A.M. to his colleague and fellow comedy great Harold Lloyd. All three were responsible for a million laughs.
A preeminent silver screen presence through much of his career, Harold Lloyd is best known for his ascent up a very tall building in Safety Last.
The plucky comedian with the horn-rimmed glasses dangling from the clock remains one of the images most frequently selected to represent silent movies and the 1920's. If my viewing of it before an enthusiastic capacity crowd at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival a few years ago is any indication, Safety Last still kills with 21st century audiences! This is because Harold worked to became an unsurpassed master of comedy construction, especially in his 1923-1928 feature films.
Safety Last had been preceded by several daredevil Harold Lloyd pictures which got big laughs from scenarios involving imminent danger on tall buildings.
Harold's college football epic The Freshman may be his second best known feature after Safety Last. It influenced all football comedies - live-action and animated - that followed. Have a difficult time imagining the football sequences in Horse Feathers, Three Little Pigskins, Pigskin Palooka and Disney's How To Play Football without the precedent established by this classic Harold Lloyd comedy.
It's the epitome of big screen fun at the movies to see one of Harold's best features - Why Worry, Girl Shy, Hot Water, For Heaven's Sake, The Kid Brother, Speedy - with a packed audience and stirring orchestral accompaniment. While lots of Harold Lloyd flicks are up on YouTube, they were not designed to be seen on cell phones in 2021 - and yes, we're well aware that's exactly how people watch movies these days.
As is also the case with the Fairbanks swashbucklers (Robin Hood, Thief Of Bagdad, The Black Pirate) and Keaton's The General, the films are designed to be seen on the big screen, with orchestral accompaniment and an SRO theatrical audience. Harold differs from the others in the Big 3 or 4 in that his characterization evolved in movies, while Chaplin (as a member of Fred Karno's troupe), Keaton and Langdon honed their comic personas in stage and vaudeville.
After a brief stint working as a supporting player in Mack Sennett's Keystone Comedies, Harold began his career as a silver screen headliner as the first star of producer Hal Roach's new Rolin Studio in 1915. He starred in 67 comedy short subjects as an ever-obstreperous guy in too-tight clothes known as Lonesome Luke.
The Lonesome Luke comedies are much more in the Keystone Comedies and L-Ko (Lehrman Knock-out) slapstick school than in the later, more sophisticated signature style of Harold and Hal Roach Studios, but do feature a fine stock company of star-to-be Bebe Daniels, goofball supporting comedian Snub Pollard and all-purpose heavy Bud Jamison.
While Luke was definitely in the thick of what at least one film historian termed "the mustache brigade," his surviving early films show glimpses of the far less over-the-top and more naturalistic "glasses" character Lloyd would subsequently develop.
In 1917, Harold retired the less-than-memorable Luke and replaced him with the "glasses" character. While the supporting casts, scenarios, comedy routines and slapstick gags at first stayed much the same, this change did wonders for Harold Lloyd's comedy.
Harold rode the handsome, likable and energetic "glasses" character to great success, first in featurettes, then in full-length features. From these fairly humble beginnings, Harold made himself an expert on feature film comedy, story and screenplay structure.
Lloyd carefully studied what works or doesn't work with theatrical audiences and determined exactly where the laughs come.
The can-do sensibility of WW1 era light comedian turned 1920's action hero Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. is clearly a strong influence even in such early Harold Lloyd featurettes as Grandma's Boy, Dr. Jack and A Sailor-Made Man. Throughout these Hal Roach Studio featurettes, Harold remains the most swashbuckling and dashing of movie comedians. Harold very likely talked shop with Doug!
The transition to sound appears to have thrown Harold off his game. Lloyd had shot half of his 1928 vehicle Welcome Danger as a silent feature, then, noting the popularity of the new sound films, re-tooled it as a talkie. Artistically, the sound version of Welcome Danger represents the first misfire by Lloyd in a decade, but, due to the public's fascination with the new talkies, it was a box-office hit. Difficult to say what is weirder, seeing the patented Harold Lloyd routines slowed down for a sound movie or hearing perennial bad guy Noah Young's voice sound like Walt Disney's Goofy.
Harold's 1930 feature Feet First attempts to bring the daredevil thrill comedy seen in High & Dizzy, Ask Father and Safety Last into the sound era.
Notably, hearing a scenario in which sound emphatically emphasizes the extent to which Harold's life is in danger, as seen in these clips from Feet First, alters the comedy dramatically.
Harold's struggles, screams and cries make the high and dizzy sequence in Feet First more than a tad too real - and a lot less funny than similar hair-raising sequences in the Lloyd silents. There are also spectacularly unfunny bits involving an unrelentingly unfunny black stereotype character played by Willie Best.
Of Harold's 1930's films, Movie Crazy is by far the most successful at bringing 1920's style Harold Lloyd comedy into sound. Writer Clyde Bruckman, who had a penchant for reusing gags from his previous work, remade parts of the following "magician's coat" sequence with The Three Stooges - and Columbia Pictures was sued for it (author, journalist and Bruckman biographer Matthew Dessem elaborates further here).
His last silver screen transformation, which produced The Cat's Paw, The Milky Way (directed by Leo McCarey) and Professor Beware, all significant departures from his earlier work, did not lead to a subsequent series of original story-driven Harold Lloyd comedies with dramatic overtones. This transformation might have been successful, but would have required Harold to abandon everything that had made him a box-office sensation and also cast himself in character parts as a middle-aged gentleman well into his forties. The Cat's Paw in particular points the way to how he could have adapted his characterization from the 1920's to the different requirements of the 1930's-1940's.
The Cat's Paw, directed by Sam Taylor, constitutes a worthy attempt to modernize a Harold Lloyd comedy with a storyline more like a LaCava or Capra film and ends up closer to Gabriel Over The White House than The Bitter Tea Of General Yen.
Present-day viewers will find the Asian stereotypes throughout The Cat's Paw very problematic, especially as none are portrayed by top Asian screen actors of the day (such as Anna May Wong), but in a twist counter to 1930's movies in general, they act as the mentors, teachers and inspirations to Harold's protagonist and are by far the most sympathetic characters in the movie.
On one hand, perhaps deferring to the directors - Hawks, Lubitsch, LaCava, Capra, Wilder, Cukor etc. - who would have brought the Harold Lloyd persona into the late 1930's and 1940's simply would not have suited Harold. On the other hand, Harold did collaborate quite successfully with former Hal Roach Studios director Leo McCarey on the 1936 film The Milky Way.
It's also quite possible that by the time he made Professor Beware, Harold concluded he'd worked his tail off long enough and was ready to call it a day in showbiz.
After leaving movies in 1938, he did emerge from retirement to star in one more movie and collaborate with one of those directors: legendary stage and screen wunderkind Preston Sturges: The Sin Of Harold Diddlebock.
The last Harold Lloyd feature has its share of excellent comedy, but is a tug-of-war between the visions of Lloyd and Sturges - and the central premise that the indefatigable go-getter Harold Lamb from The Freshman would give up, fold and become a dreary office nebbish strikes this writer as 100% counter to the essential Harold Lloyd characterization. Although the Harold Diddlebock character lost his savings in the Great Depression, his complete and utter defeat still rings false from the git-go. There are, however, many very funny scenes featuring the perennial and hilarious Sturges stock company players (Jimmy Conlin, Edgar Kennedy), as well as the irrepressible Jackie the lion.
Unfortunately, it would be an understatement that Lloyd and Sturges were not on the same page; as brilliant, inventive and original as Preston Sturges was, the very specific parameters of 1925 style silver screen comedy definitely did not number among his strong suits. The guy who Harold Diddlebock becomes in the movie, as he transitions from doormat to flashy dresser, high-rollin' high stakes gambler and overall wild and crazy guy, could be seen as the flamboyant Sturges himself.
A severely truncated version of The Sin Of Harold Diddlebock that circulated under the title Mad Wednesday was released in 1950.
In closing, we suggest that if one is not well-versed in the films of Harold Lloyd, a fine way to become familiar with the dapper and clever comedian is to go to the Harold Lloyd YouTube channel and binge-watch 28 of his classic movies on the Harold Lloyd - Short Films (HD 1080) playlist. In addition, many of his silent and sound feature films are up on the Harold Lloyd YouTube channel in their entirety.
Even better: follow those comedy gems with the terrific documentary by ace filmmakers and historians Kevin Brownlow and (the late) David Gill, who gave Harold Lloyd a long overdue spotlight in one of their outstanding Photoplay Pictures films. Have wanted to buy this on Blu-ray or DVD (region-free or otherwise) for eons. As the other Brownlow-Gill films are, it's among the best of the best.
As the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog catch up on last weekend's online presentations by the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, we reflect upon the stellar contributions to comedy and cinema made by Harold Lloyd, the still unsurpassed master of the action comedy and originator of best practices in feature film story construction.
