Laughter Wax

The Technology of Twisted Ankles: Slapstick The Destroyer – Part 2

2011-08-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

In the early days, film's ability to capture a choice performance through trial and repetition, naturally made it slapstick's fiefdom. The cinema's first comic superstar, France's Max Linder, is who determined that the dancing gymnastics of the Music Hall were too trite and predictable for film. Repeated viewings of a practiced tumbler simply grew stale. A new body language was needed, directed past the camera's eye to the audience, but yet un-telegraphed.

A movie camera, unable to redirect its own attention, had to be esoterically drawn into the action by the performer in front of the lens. Linder deduced – astutely – that audiences watched stage-shows with acquired expectations; acrobats were present to be acrobatic, jugglers to juggle, dancers to dance. But action on film, audiences witnessed viscerally, as if driving cautiously down an unfamiliar street.

The motion picture's power lay in its connectedness to the viewer's emotions, not his expectations. He so began to augment gags with a "raison de vivre," rather than merely include them ad hoc, for their own sake. Every varied bumble, pratfall and exaggeration suddenly each played a role toward advancing a plot. It was the spawn of cinematic comic-pathos.

Linder's experimentation came to full artistic fruition in the hands of Chaplin, who only much later acknowledged the influence of his French predecessor.

Buster Keaton, despite growing up as part of the most violent attraction in Vaudeville – The Three Keatons – also had a mentor he'd credit copiously throughout his life: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Though Buster had achieved leading-role stardom on Broadway – which he abandoned for the call of fledgling Hollywood – he began his film career as Fatty's protégé.

Arbuckle, despite a rotund physique that undoubtably increased his risk of injury, had a commanding confidence, and a remarkable awareness of his own body. Pain-promising trips like a 15-foot drop through a flimsy rooftop, onto a bare metal spring bed frame, did not intimidate him. His unique size and shape made him near-impossible to find stunt-doubles for, anyway. He took in passing the potentially gory aspect of screen comedy... and passed that fearless enthusiasm on to Buster.

A typical Arbuckle stunt might be a "casual" leap onto a moving boxcar, then lighting a cigar by striking his match against another boxcar on a parallel track, going the opposite direction – all in one fluid motion, with no regard upon his cherubic face for the peril. A mere inch of miscalculation might result in a ragged, bloody stump on the end of Fatty's wrist; sure death out in a desolate railroad yard, miles from medical help. When Arbuckle faced a gag that gave even him pause, he'd suit up Buster in a padded shirt and trousers, and film it in longshot!

Buster absorbed everything taught him, and then got from Fatty a favor that was transformational. Arbuckle – his own producer and contractual "owner" of his films – gifted one of his movie cameras to Keaton, to be dissected, studied, and demystified to satisfaction. Keaton would merge his mastery of physical comedy with his acquired expertise of the camera's inner workings, and create comedies that were artistic revelations.

Chaplin too played with the camera's unique ability to misrepresent reality, but in ways more theatrical.

LET'S SEE THAT AGAIN...

One particular film, "Behind The Screen" (1916), stands out as a remarkable piece of discretely executed magic.

For a running-gag, Charlie repeatedly passes through an open door to be a hair's width from a falling axe – which sticks into the wooden floor at his feet, in disturbing proof of its realness. Further, in one instance he stops in his tracks upon what appears the doom-spot, so that the axe all but shaves off a microscopic layer of skin. The axe is wielded by a huge man waiting in ambush beyond the doorframe, who cannot possibly see Charlie's approach in order to gauge the swing.

This work fascinated film buffs for decades with its apparent painstaking composition and – no pun intended – execution. Did Charlie have someone offscreen, stage-directing him within a whisker-width of death's embrace? Was the huge ruffian possessed of preternatural timing in tune with Charlie's? Was Chaplin himself merely super-imposed into the scene with a surgeon's precision in the editing room?

There were over a dozen takes. In each, the axe misses Chaplin by a maiden's sigh. He doesn't so much as flinch. The first usable take would have been quite enough for any other actor, yet Charlie apparently needed several do-overs to "perfect" the gag, as if with a deathwish. And then made it a running-gag yet, with building nuance.

Found in Chaplin's archives, one specific outtake from this film revealed the secret. In the discarded shot, Charlie spies a hat on the floor, and flips it with the toe of his shoe, neatly up onto his head – a Vaudeville-101 stage trick. Only the hat comes to rest at the exact moment the axe misses Charlie's skull. Something seems odd.

The shot was keenly analyzed for the 1983 British television documentary "Unknown Chaplin," which sought what might be revealed about the master comedian by a study of his unused footage. Chaplin famously hoarded his mistakes, untrusting of even the studio incinerator after the completion of a production.

Rewinding the shot suddenly gave it a "natural" quality. In fact, it appeared a degree more fluid when spooled in reverse. That was Chaplin's "special effect." He'd rehearsed himself and his fellow actors to perform their actions backward, while the camera cranked forward... he then reversed the footage onto the moviola (the device with which film was edited in that very pre-digital era). When played forward, the scene projected in true reverse, which made the backward pantomime appear as – slightly awkward – forward motion.

The axeman wasn't clairvoyantly clocking Chaplin's entrance. The axe was swung upward, just before Charlie passed, backing through the door, to disappear beyond.

The hat trick had clued the documentarians. Played forward, to show the actors intentionally backward-reeling their movements, the axeman knocks the hat from Charlie's head. It tumbles to the floor. Charlie, thinking literally on his feet mid-take, catches the hat's rim with his toe – trusting that it would appear as a kick upward instead of a downward follow-through.

It still didn't look right in the editing room to Chaplin, so he shelved it, to be rediscovered 73 years later.

It only added to Chaplin's legend – for it also revealed the extent of his perfectionism. He'd worked out how to double-take, to react in his established Chaplinesque fashion, and time the comedy's perfect pay-off moment... backward.

While lessers, like Sennett's Fun Factory stunt comedians, merely pushed their athleticism to its limits for "bigger" laughs, Charlie Chaplin was applying scientific method to slapstick. It was a level above even "Keatonesque," for it was that, and "Chaplinesque" as well.

THE FRENCHMAN

Two world wars would pass before another comedian would have the artistic leverage to take even Chaplin's methods to a new level, by seemingly pulling them back to their roots.

Jacques Tati was France's greatest gift to comedy cinema, surpassing even Linder. His approach to slapstick – but one element in the repertoire of his iconic character Mr. Hulot – was to use it only when most poetically relevant. And even then, he served it like a thin, demure slice of pastry upon a lace doily.

Tati had experimented with broad slapstick in his earliest short films, but found it dissatisfying. He commenced to reinvent it, to in effect, send it to Charm School.

Tati's thin-brimmed hats and willowy long smoking pipe made him a funhouse mirror image of Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb – and never was there a more strange yet apt metaphor. Not before or since, was there an equal of Jacques Tati; a lanky, childlike prince of innocence, on the order of Stan Laurel fed a diet of Wheaties and protein shakes – who also just happened to be a blithely oblivious Destroyer of Worlds.

Remarkable is Tati's perch in the cinema clown pantheon, considering his rather lean filmography. Only a cool half-dozen films represent Tati's presence in movie history – compared to the respective hundreds of works left by each of his predecessors and contemporaries.

Film critics have long held his 1953 outing "Mr. Hulot's Holiday" as his definitive work. Perhaps, but his 1958 film "Mon Onclé" has survived as his most comedically satisfying. A subtle response to Chaplin's "Modern Times" (1936), it is a literal tour de force of everything magical, endearing and hilarious about Tati's genius.

"Mon Onclé" ("My Uncle") is the film that both Chaplin and Keaton witnessed, and proclaimed Tati their muse's heir. Tati spends most of the film channeling both ascended masters simultaneously.

Mr. Hulot, all but mute, is a gentle soul who accepts the world as he finds it (Chaplin), and whose comedic adventure derives from his well-meaning misinterpretation of life's machinations (Keaton).

Tati's "polite" slapstick often straddles the line into sight-gag.

In "Holiday," aboard a swiveling chair in a hotel cardroom, embroiled in a game and concentrating on the hand dealt him, Hulot is unaware that he has spun around to face an opposing table. Focused laser-like on his cards, he plays one in the wrong pot with such conviction that his flinging arm spins him back around to the proper table.

He looks up to discover the card he just cast has disappeared into the ether... meanwhile behind him, the other game has gone to hell, tempers flaring, at the appearance of a sudden mystery bet.

"Holiday's" signature sight-gag finds Hulot canoeing on the bay, and in a longshot, his canoe breaks in half – the two ends bend upward to devour him like the jaws of a prehistoric leviathan.

In "Onclé" Hulot stands motionless at the curb, waiting to walk his nephew home from school. He holds his umbrella unnaturally pointed outward. A slowly passing motorist sees the umbrella and assumes he is being alerted to a problem with his tire. Craning to get a better look, he slams into the car ahead of him. Hulot strolls blissfully away to greet the nephew, the motorist is left with jaw hanging.

Hulot was every bit the schlemiel as Jerry Lewis's kid, only a universe away from Yankee buffoonery. Tati's power was his effortless ability to inject complete innocence into a scene – like a heat-seeking missile that destroys its target utterly yet without awareness. Tati's target was usually life's absurdity and self-importance. "Mon Onclé," a young boy's adventures in the company of a lovably eccentric relative, is Tati's well-camouflaged manifesto against society's dehumanized addiction to progress. Much of its humor spawns from the disconnected antics of the boy's parents; their world handed over completely to "futuristic" time-saving gadgetry, they are in fact comically enslaved to their hi-tech toys.

This was 1958... a half-century before the my-phone-is-my-god generation.

It's nearly impossible to describe Tati's slapstick without discussing its cerebral – possibly even spiritual – implications. He may possibly have been the next evolutionary step past Chaplin, but history never officially bestowed the title upon him.

Like Chaplin and Keaton before, and concurrently Jerry Lewis, Tati's perfectionism was the true star. One of his later – lesser regarded – films, "Playtime" (1967), may represent one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of France, despite itself.

Twenty years past World War II, France was still shaking itself free of the social and emotional debris of Nazi occupation. Paris was hardly yet the sparkling metropolis that is shown onscreen in "Playtime." The gleaming silvery cityscape was entirely a gigantic film set, constructed specifically for Tati's motion picture. After production wrapped, the "highrises" were not demolished, but left in place, converted into actual offices and business fronts.

Not constructed for permanence, they deteriorated quickly, but as they did, were replaced with more solid structures that maintained a similar ambiance.

Jacques Tati, in filming "Playtime" with an auteur's obsession, tangentially helped spawn modern Paris.

FROM TRAMPS TO BEANS

But even Tati has a post-modern successor, who demonstrated and proved it in a film so Tatian, it is an indirect remake. "Mr. Bean's Holiday," (2007) starring Rowan Atkinson as the character he perfected on British television, echoes Mr. Hulot so perfectly that he mirrors the Chaplin/Keaton remix while even adding an indirect tribute to "Mon Onclé."

"Mr. Bean" is the current face of slapstick in the tradition of the classic cinema clowns. He is a walking rotoscope containing flashes of Chaplin, Keaton, Stan Laurel, Jerry Lewis, and Tati. The gelling agent is Atkinson himself – his own aura also distantly routes the journey through territory owned by the Goons, and the Monty Python troupe.

Like Larry Semon and Don Knotts, his natural features lend themselves to a comic persona. Atkinson looks like Dr. Suess drew him.

If Atkinson never makes another Mr. Bean film, "Bean's Holiday" is a magnificent stopping point; the character's crescendo appearance. The most blatant homages in the film seem a nod to Tati – such as Bean hitching a ride on a passing vehicle to launch his bicycle past a power-peddling cadre of racers, jing-jingling his bell at them as he wistfully leaves them in the dust.

Like Hulot, Bean's WMD is toxic innocence. Though occasionally giving in to bratty mischief, his heart is plagued by the need to correct the chaos wrought by his miscalculations. His comically over-thought solutions – the classic method of the great clowns – are a joy to watch, and rewatch.

Mr. Bean – and Rowan Atkinson – are material enough for a separate blog, and that's where we'll conclude this one.

Slapstick was the original screen comedy. It birthed the classic icons, who evolved the art at the cost of their bodies. The sound era pulled movie comedy into calmer waters, but a century later slapstick can still draw a belly laugh, or punctuate verbal humor in ways unexpected. Men seem to still possess a gene of unabashed love for this old art. Women roll their eyes like frustrated mothers at its childish pointlessness – while turning aside to sneak giggly snorts.

It was a language. Comedians who, in some cases, could not deliver punchlines onstage particularly well – like Keaton – somehow were beyond fluent with the erudition of precisely when to double-take, pause, slow-burn or time a fall.

Because the sublime antics of the Old Guard are ancient upon gray celluloid, many modern comedians consider themselves masters as well, but many of them have yet to display proof – though it's not for a lack of trying.

Fractured Hips & Frontal Lobes: Slapstick The Destroyer – Part 1

2011-07-17T13:02:00.000-07:00

As they sacrificed their bodies, the great film comedians naturally shifted their comedy upwards – to the brain – and got philosophical. Many wisely traded in their knee pads for heavier make-up, voice coaches and gag writers. Radio comedians needed only a good sound effects man to maintain a "physical" component to the show. Television comics who insisted on keeping slapstick alive were referred to as throw-backs.

When Buster Keaton starred on local Los Angeles television in the 1950s, he got away with slapstick by his certified status as its sole surviving Ph.D.

At network level, Dick Van Dyke skipped labeling simply because his prowess at both mimicking the antics of the silent clowns, and delivering the goods verbally with the best of his own mic-bound contemporaries, was unparalleled on the small screen. Only Jerry Lewis, the cinema's last exclusive funnyman, equaled him.

Don Knotts came as close as anyone in the sound era, to the methodology of the silent comics, achieving a style and caricature with a shelf life. His twerpish appearance, somewhat echoing Larry Semon, and gifted timing honed by his television work, were fodder enough for a brief but immensely successful run of films. Ongoing favorites "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" (1964), "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (1966), "The Shakiest Gun in the West" (1968) and the vastly underrated "The Love God?" (1969) among others, attested to what a physical comic could still accomplish on film, given competently tailored scripts that showcased, and capitalized on, his strengths – rather than trend-shackled homogenization.

Slapstick was an art that devoured its best practitioners alive, but some of the elders managed to make end-runs around the meat grinder.

Stan Laurel, by his final film, "Utopia" (1951), was visibly an ailing senior – but still could manufacture a cautiously measured version of his eternal imp, that his audience recognized. He did not shy away from slapstick, but approached it with the same cagey finesse that he brought to bear against age itself.

One afternoon with a couple of fellow film buffs, watching this sad end-note to Laurel & Hardy's otherwise unimpeachable filmography, it was worthy of hitting the pause button on the dvd player to briefly discuss how Stan could "still do it."

Laurel had created a screen persona with an element of poetic slapstick firmly locked in. As with other comedians with similar styles, advancing age transformed his moneymaker into a personal curse. But he played it better than most. Only icons Chaplin and Keaton appeared to defy nature in their December years.

The final gag of Chaplin's final film, "Limelight" (1952), was a clown's stumble off a theater stage into the orchestra pit. Charlie was 63.

Buster Keaton, just a year before death at 70, was still creating a slowed version of his silent era. In 1965's "The Railrodder," he could still reprise physical gags from his earliest films, and improv astonishing comic turns – such as exquisitely timing a moving locomotive's halting pace, to waddle up along side of it, grab the engine's climb rail, and appear to bring the train to a complete stop, like Superman.

What was their power?

Maybe it was not so much supernatural wizardry, as it was superhuman endurance. During the filming of "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum" (1966), director Richard Lester confronted Buster with this very question. Keaton responded by opening his toga and showing him a battered body, wearing a litany of scars, whelps and permanent bruises owed to a career of creating physical comedy.

PRATFALLS INTO THE ABYSS

In a scene for "Sherlock Jr." (1924), Buster was blasted off the top of a moving railroad car by a sudden gush from a water tower, and fell directly onto the iron trestle below. After shooting wrapped for the day, he retreated with a splitting headache to the nearby apartment of an actress friend, to drink away the pain. Years later, a veteran's hospital physician stared at an X-ray of Buster's upper body and asked him, "Buster, how long ago did you break your neck?" Keaton didn't know.

Others weren't as fortunate. Physical comedy demanded a premium from the world's favorite stooge, Jerome "Curly" Howard, the very personification of slapstick, like no other comedian of the sound era. After nearly 20 years of traumatic clowning, on both screen and stage, his body simply decided to shut down. In "Half-wit's Holiday" (1947) – dispatched out of frame by Moe, hearing director Jules White mumble "cut," Curly took perhaps ten more steps before a massive stroke ended his meteoric career. Moe and Larry had to film the two-reeler's final moments without him... then somehow carry on for two more decades with much less funny Curly look-alikes.

Eldest Howard brother, and original third stooge, Shemp, met the same fate, but in a uniquely grand exit, which a Hollywood script writer could not have envisioned more final reel-ish.

Samuel Horwitz broke away from middle-brother Moe's act in the early 1930s to pursue a solo movie career, which left an open spot on the roster for kid-brother Jerome to join the team, and proceed into comedic immortality. But Shemp didn't exactly fall off the radar. For the next 15 years his comic presence was an ubiquitous element in classic films of other top-draw comedians like W.C. Fields and Abbott & Costello. He also enjoyed a fair batch of his own starring vehicles which are now sadly obscure, or lost. Only Field's "The Bank Dick" (1940) gave Shemp a featured role that didn't require him to shtick. His death in 1955, was after a prolonged semester back with The Stooges in the wake of Curly's infirmity.

In a quickening, lighting a cigar after a day out with some cronies, the "forgotten stooge" leaned into a pal's shoulder, smiled, and departed. It's difficult to imagine that his life of frenetic laugh-getting had played no part in his body's sudden stall-out. But the "untimeliness" of Shemp's demise distracts from his actual timeline – at 60, he had been in the game about as long as Chaplin. Of course, unlike Charlie who'd learned early to calculate slapstick's consequences and survive, Shemp had practiced physical comedy like a prizefighter.

The face of Larry Fine – who had been a boxer before a Vaudevillian – was partially numb. Joe Besser, who briefly took over the Third Stooge spot after Shemp's death, outwardly refused to roughhouse. That perennial Stooge staple, the Pie Facial, was on his shitlist – which irked Moe and Larry worse than any nose-tweak or ear-twist. Joe DeRita – Curly's final stand-in – avoided becoming a slap-tistic by simply hinting that if it got too curt, he would retaliate with genuine violence disguised as comedic revenge on the next take. Only Moe, the group's paymaster, was safe from his chubby-knuckled wrath.

Lou Costello likewise spent his career on a merry path of self-annihilation in the name of his art, and in 1959 mirrored Shemp's "Hollywood" ending. His mini-sumo body weakened by a bout of rheumatic fever, and recovering from a heart attack in hospital, he cued a fatal one by merely rolling onto his side to aid a nurse changing his bedding. The persistent legend of Costello's final exit, that he sighed with delight and nodded while sipping a strawberry malted shake smuggled to him by his agent, was a press office fantasy to help his legions of fans endure the blow of his passing.

An exploding "prop" bomb nearly ended Harold Lloyd's career before it had taken full flight. Lloyd lost his right thumb and index finger, and temporarily the sight in his right eye. For the incredible "thrill comedies" with which he became synonymous years later, few knew that he'd done all those death-defying I-beam and scaffold stunts with a prosthetic hand, fabricated for him by Hal Roach's special effects department.

Lloyd made scores of comedies, from quirky to epic, either as his early counter-Chaplin persona nicknamed Lonesome Luke, or his more famous "Glasses Character." He was perhaps the most relentlessly prolific of the great silent clowns, yet it's only a handful of his most physical films – most particularly "Safety Last" (1928) – for which he is remembered, and most recognized by modern audiences.

Witnesses to these Lloyd relics still marvel at the immense degrees of danger he seemingly takes for granted. His most iconic scene, dangling from the minute hand of a large clock tower, was actually done with a fishing net below, just out of frame, and the camera angle "cheated" to make Lloyd appear dangling at nosebleed level over the city streets. His Spiderman-like antics in "Never Weaken" (1919), teetering and clinging to slippery bare girders high above a construction site, look life-gambling even if a net was present.

The thrill-comedies account for perhaps a half-dozen entries in his filmography, at most. The other 170-or-so may just as well have never been photographed – he'd rendered them obsolete, with a short daredevil leap into slapstick.

Physical comedy had always been a key component of Lloyd's toolset, as it was with all the silent clowns. One-liners didn't play well on dialogue cards. But Lloyd's cinematic immortality was the result of his taking it to demonic extremes. In retirement (Lloyd and Chaplin were perhaps the only silent era comedians to actually "retire") when interviewed about his work, he played down slapstick, and claimed his real power had derived from character development and nuance. He still wanted the other 170 films to count for something – who could blame him?

Lloyd rested for an entire decade between his next-to-last film "Professor Beware" (1938) and his 1947 swan song "The Sin of Harold Diddlebock" (Also known as "Mad Wednesday"), for which he endured the Stan Laurel syndrome: older and pained, mandated to again perform the risky stunts for which he was last remembered.

The number of "also-ran" silent comedians whose time was cut short by the stifling physicality of slapstick, may never be accurately listed.

THE NATURE OF THE BEAST

Chaplin imitator Billie Ritchie died from medical complications of injuries he suffered, tangling with a humorless ostrich loosed onto the set. The producers must have found it hilarious.

It's amazing to contemplate how routine it once was, particularly during the silent era, to have comedians cavort unprotected with potentially deadly animals. Roaming lions were a running gag at Mack Sennett's Keystone studios, nicknamed The Fun Factory.

Some claim the lions were often drugged to docility.

The lion that casually hops onto Mack Sennett's desk, however, in 1924's "The Hollywood Kid" doesn't seem very tranquilized. Already then a silent comedy cliché, a lion gag was the equivalent of a dog act. At least that's how Sennett, playing himself, reacts to the disruption of his workday – confidently clapping his hands in annoyance for the maned monster to hop back down and get lost – standing mere inches away, well within pouncing distance.

Obviously no stuntman in a fur suit, a full grown mauler allows itself to be led around like a stray pussycat by Mabel Normand in "The Extra Girl" (1923). This lion, possibly the same one used later for the scene with Sennett, could easily have been sedated, with a full belly to assure it wouldn't smell Normand and go into snack mode.

It is also likely that Sennett and his fellow moguls utilized lions that were "kept" animals, raised among – and more used to working with – people, than living among their own kind in the zoo.

The culmination of the loose-lion comedy was the over-obvious named Stooge short "Hold That Lion" (1947), which was Shemp's third appearance after rejoining the team. Columbia used a different tactic regarding the big title cat – the lion was old, toothless and apparently indifferent to two-legged lunch milling around him. He would still roar on cue, but only a phony, menacing stunt-paw slapped at Stooge backsides.

The film is still somewhat remarkable for its involvement with even a frail lion in such close proximity to the actors. Moe allows the half-ton man-eater to lick his foot protruding from behind a train berth curtain. In the bunk, Moe removes his sock to reveal a wide, fleshy, untanned foot, with a noticeably upturned big toe – it is this same foot that presents itself through the curtain. As quick and cheap as Stooge comedies were, it's doubtful they searched very long for a stuntman with Moe-like hooves.

Earlier in the film, the Stooges find themselves hiding in a cargo crate with the supposedly ferocious feline. The digital remastering of this film for the dvd market revealed a key production secret – the image made pristine, the faint reflection of the studio lights can be seen on the sheet of glass separating the Stooges from the lion.

A FINE LINE TO TRIP OVER

Perhaps we should briefly define the thin partition between slapstick and what are known as "sight gags." Both are physical comedy, but with a critical difference – though they are often combined in ways that make them seem interchangeable.

A sight gag is a comic action based on its irony or absurdity – or it can be an ongoing, carefully strategized string of actions that sum up to a comedic tableau. It doesn't necessarily involve the staging of physical abuse. Usually a frantic plot grinds down to first gear, or even neutral, for the presentation of a sight gag.

Perhaps an ultimate example is Buster Keaton's landmark short "The Playhouse" (1921) – a meticulous construct in which Keaton plays all the roles, via a now-primitive but then-astonishing camera trick.

Keaton and his cameraman, Elgin Lessley, devised a makeshift method of rewinding and re-exposing film within the camera, so that Buster could essentially clone himself – re-rolling and exposing sections of footage as many as ten times for a single shot. The necessity for Buster to record a usable take grew exponentially with each round, lest they ruin every previous take with a sudden bad one.

In one particular shot, an entire minstrel show of Busters is created. He is everyone on stage, including the trained chimp. He is every member of the audience, regardless of age or gender. He plays every instrument in the orchestra. Every name on the playbill is Buster Keaton. It was his satire of the "auteur" concept, which was ironically his own workaholic predilection. When one can finally stop distracting at the fastidious matrix that screams from each noiseless frame, its value as a compelling visual statement emerges.

Though it contains instances of neatly choreographed slapstick as it unfolds (Buster instinctively "syncing" with himself from earlier takes, in different costumes and make-up), the entire film is in essence one long sight gag, that builds to a crescendo.

Slapstick, in contrast, is physical humor for which the comedian indirectly risks safety, health, possibly even life itself. A pratfall, a punch, a tumble, a dive, a landing, a harrowing chase or narrow brush with bodily disaster. It was comedy that required a first-aid team on standby, or a ready car with a cleared path to the hospital in case the unforeseen struck too harshly.

In Keaton's most famous sight gag, a payoff to an entire reel of slapstick against a raging hurricane, he stands in the path of a falling house front, on the exact spot where an open upstairs window will pass over him. Instantly it could have turned to tragedy had he swayed in either direction about two inches.

The term "slapstick" originated in Commedia dell'arte. A lightweight wooden paddle called a "battacio," with two thin slats requiring minimal force to produce a loud smack when struck against, say, a dancer's wiggling fanny, was nicknamed the "slapstick" in American Vaudeville. The word eventually became a generic term for any type of performance that resembled exaggerated physical abuse.

In his coveted book "The Total Filmmaker" (Random House, 1971) Jerry Lewis even broke slapstick down into two sub-categories – marked in Yiddish. The Schlemiel triggers the chaos vis-a-vis his manic ineptitude (i.e. spills the drink, starts the domino effect rolling, etc.) while the Schlemazel finds himself on its receiving end, due to ongoing comic misfortune (gets the drink spilled on him, sits on the exact spot where the final domino comes crashing, etc.)

Lewis cited Laurel & Hardy as an ultimate expression of the schlemiel-schlemazel formula. His own teaming with Dean Martin was not – though Lewis portrayed the schlemiel, Martin rarely – if ever – took on its schlemazel counter-note, but instead was usually Lewis's handsome, crooning big-brother/saviour figure. He would have been impossible to sell as an ingenue were he chained to schlemazel duty.

The schlemiel-schlemazel template is in fact, not as prevalent as most people assume. It has become a stereotype in audience memory banks, for comedy teams of the Silent (1900s-20s) and Hollywood Studio System era (1930s-50s). One team in particular was its antithesis: Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. The comic scenarios H&C encountered were usually the consequences of their own misplaced bravado, or one-upsman shenanigans. Chaos resulted from their supposed "lovable" mutual arrogance, which made them oblivious, self-distracted cool-cats. A typical set-up for two performers who had solo careers to consider when they weren't teaming up for another quick haul of box-office cash.

Lewis went on to note that solo comedians, like himself post-Martin, chose a side and made the rest of the world provide the other – though it was not impossible for a single comic to subtly combine the schlemiel and schlemazel roles.

And you thought they were merely funny names in the "Laverne & Shirley" opening theme song?

NEXT: CHAPLIN'S AXE, THE INCOMPARABLE TATI, AND THE BEAN

Jerry Lewis: That's Why The Comic Is A Tramp

2011-06-23T01:52:00.000-07:00

Jerry Lewis passed away. On an afternoon in 1965, while guesting on The Andy Williams Show. That is, the Jerry who'd held the world spellbound with his wild physical comedy.

No one saw it coming. It was only a portion of what made Jerry Jerry, but it had been a key element in his comic toolbox for so long.

He'd shift gears so effortlessly. Wiry man-child, mugging goofball, manic absurdist, balletic clown, versatile post-Vaudevillian, patron saint of slapstick – and due credit fully given; important American filmmaker – Lewis was all those. Along the way he burdened himself with the weight of a worldwide charity, but that's off-topic. His comedy – bristling, unpredictable, zany and oddly dripping with syrupy show-biz savvy – was positively magnetic. He was comedy's lone untouchable in the 1960s.

Lewis achieved a comedian's dream career. He'd pioneered the tuxedoed pratfall, had gone from the saloon filler spot to command performances before royalty. He'd had Hollywood playing by his rules – complimented with full run of Paramount Studios, like the ultimate kid in the grandest candy store, based on a handshake deal that he'd be loyal to the studio that made him.

He left Paramount with artistic indignation when it stopped being Paramount, but "A Gulf + Western Company."

Though scorned by pop-culture 'intellectuals' – as were Laurel & Hardy, W.C. Fields and others in their own day – Lewis wielded a certain magic on-camera, a sometimes arrogant poetry that was his alone. No other movie comic could milk a gag beyond the over-mark and still hold an audience's rapt attention.

Critic Leonard Maltin once described him, in his wonderful and too-long-out-of-print book The Great Movie Comedians (Crown, 1979), as comedy's 'second big bang' – the sole torch-bearer of the comedic traditions and methodology of Chaplin, Keaton, Stan Laurel and their long-faded fraternity. Lewis had earned Maltin's praises with pictures like The Bellboy (1960) and The Patsy (1964) among a unique filmography of hit-or-miss comedic strides.

When Jerry Lewis hit that stride, he leveled landscapes. When he bombed, it was no less extreme. Such was his artistic polarity. He would ultimately fall out of favor with American audiences because his self-indulgent comedy reflected a similar, culturally childish yankee-ism too accurately. Was it really a surprise the French loved him?

But Lewis's comet arced downward in a heartbeat, during a sketch with Andy Williams. A wet floor. A slight twist of the hip gone horribly wrong. A quick turn that snagged a wayward muscle. It happened like a silent hammerfall, after a few minutes of amusing banter that resembled a strange, alternate-reality take of a Martin & Lewis bit. One in which Jerry dominated the crooner, channeled Buddy Love just a tad. They broke into a dance. They turned a corner. It seemed... off... possibly wrong. Jerry finished the number, with a grimace of poorly hidden agony in his jaw.

He shook Williams's hand for the fade-out to commercial. His leg covertly stretched sideways. Few suspected what had just happened. The universe had revoked Jerry's slapstick license.*

JERRY'S KID

For years following that moment, audiences would silently wonder where Lewis had stashed "Jerry"... for afterward, he'd only offer him up in quick glimpses – sudden flashes of chaos on his telethon, or in subdued form within his steadily decreasing cinema output. The explosive, frenetic Jewish kamikaze had apparently gone down for good.

Lewis's second life, filled with chronic pain and the drug addiction wrought in his battle against it – and the ghostlike comedic mask that only hinted at the "Jerry" of old – had begun. Lewis became known more for his intense sincerity, merely laced with clownishness. He was a businessman in a Vegas tux and white socks. An aloof media figure. A mysterious commodity, famous for being famous. He was still magnetic, but as a conduit to what he'd been – otherwise Lewis was a deep, dark ocean that only the snarkiest wind could make ripple. A spokesman for his causes, a show business icon, a more distant "untouchable."

He was already evolving away from that kid anyway. Age was filling him out. Even The Total Filmmaker couldn't edit around Father Time for long. But unlike Charlie Chaplin, who finally cut The Little Tramp adrift in an attempt to remake himself into a refined screen presence, Lewis adamantly held on to the caricature that had brought him to the dance.

He'd successfully departed from himself before with films like Boeing Boeing (1965) and 1968's Don't Raise The Bridge, Lower The River, in which he merely toyed with the comedic pendulum near its center. Having proved he could pull his shots – at least when directed by others – it's interesting that in the august years of his movie career, Lewis refused to revisit that territory in his own films. Instead, he became the kid enduring middle-age, which required a slight suspension of disbelief on a level most conscious.

After recovering from a sudden heart attack in the mid-1970s, Jerry delightfully stunned his fans with the comeback feature Hardly Working (1980). It was great to see Lewis back on the screen where his diehard supporters had wistfully wanted him, at least attempting a truncated version of his old movie-self. One seeming finally to embrace the onset of age as a new layer of his persona, and fuel for new gags. But unfortunately, he next threw a curve.

Second-guessing himself, a stumbling, full-blast return to his traditional antics followed in 1983 with the aptly titled Smorgasbord (alternately titled Cracking Up), in which Lewis threw in homages to nearly every style of movie clowning he'd ever attempted, with equally mixed results.

Some gags are thundering groans, some are a shade of blue; annoying shortcuts for what Lewis was perhaps trying to accomplish. But at least one shining moment – the "slippery floor" sketch – may rank as the funniest opening credits sequence ever filmed... by anyone. A scene involving over-the-top slapstick, he wisely – subconsciously? – gets it over in the first reel. The fact that he visibly measures each pratfall does nothing to diminish its tack on the laughometer – a turn that perhaps only Lewis could get away with. Fleetingly, "Jerry" returns.

Throughout his career, when Jerry Lewis detoured intentionally from his established screen persona, the sum total usually amounted to an arrogant purge of some inner demon, again in subconscious fashion. That risky formula served him supremely in his comedic Jekyll-Hyde tale The Nutty Professor (1963) as Lewis brought forth his own Antichrist; the vainglorious Buddy Love. Many critics knee-jerked that Lewis was exorcising his resentment of former partner Dean Martin, but with added years of analysis concluded that Buddy was actually Lewis's own darkside being pulled to the surface. Few comedians, even subconsciously, ever had the balls to dish out that kind of self-reprisal as plot fodder.

Lewis's most memorable "Non-Jerry" films, ironically, are ones in which he played parodies of his own showbiz-luminary self: like the nostalgic Funny Bones (1995) and Martin Scorsese's cynical King of Comedy (1982).

The punch behind Lewis's humor was kin to Charlie Chaplin's – a master-class in comedic timing and presentation, framing a window into an alarmingly fragile, ego-driven psyche. Like Chaplin, Lewis liked to occasionally hint that all the trips and tumbles were but the well-oiled dance of a sublime acrobat. Jerry's prowess with cinematic gunslinging, for example, which was part of his nightclub act, showed that he was anything but a clumsy buffoon – in fact, the opposite – possessed of a keen self-awareness. In Chaplin's underrated opus The Circus (1928), it becomes difficult to accept Charlie's moments of comic missteps after witnessing him traverse the high-wire with self-assured grace, and with a fidgety monkey clinging to his head, yet.

In a weirdly cosmic echo moment, according to legend, during filming of the Martin & Lewis feature 3 Ring Circus (1954), Jerry's comic-pathos experimentation was possibly what forced Dean to at last voice the growing tension between them. As Lewis ate up more and more camera time, Dino confronted him, asking why did he "concentrate so much on this Chaplin shit."

SERIOUS TO A FAULT

Just like Chaplin, when Lewis served up an artistic "statement," he swerved dangerously into the maudlin, or manic over-think. One noteworthy comparison is that of Chaplin's and Lewis's respective Nazi-skewering satires, The Great Dictator (1940) and Which Way To The Front? (1970).

Chaplin's film is the story of mistaken identity; a poor Jewish barber, fatefully trading places with a certain brush-mustashioed despot, who attempts to undo the latter's inhumane mandates before he is discovered. Lewis's film is too a switched-identity yarn, of the wealthiest man in the free world, stamped 4-F – who happens to be a physical doppelganger for a high-ranking Nazi officer – defying his non-status and using his riches to stage his own "undercover mission;" kidnap the villain, impersonate him, and like Chaplin's barber, clandestinely turn the tide of the war from within.

Both films are the tale of a disenfranchised soul, one of dour poverty, the other of immense affluence, to affect the fray while fate permits, and turn the entire world around – and each discover, at the risk of life itself, a sense of personal relevance.

Both films begin as a delicious dark lampoon of the times. Where Chaplin's "Dictator" dips into jingoistic rants by the end reel, Lewis's "Front" devolves into burlesque. Both great comedians were reduced to reconcile that the scope of the subject possibly eclipsed the circle of even their formidable radius with the comic rapier.

Both were panned by critics of their day. It was a new experience for Chaplin. In contrast, Lewis's love-hate relationship with the press was hardly newsworthy anymore regarding his films, compared to the battles of letters he waged in the name of his Muscular Dystrophy Telethon's honor.

Jerry would later again lash out at the Godwin Effect, to pierce the Nazi darkness; but the resulting film still hasn't been brought into the light. The Day The Clown Cried (1972) is possibly an unforgettable experience, for good or ill. Jerry plays a once-renowned German circus clown, whose gift for enthralling children is ultimately compromised by the keepers of the deathcamps, to make him a pied piper to the ovens.

Either it is a tasteless ego-fried banquet of poor artistic judgement, as its speculating detractors have suggested... or, as the leaked script I've read may indicate, possibly the most sublimely black – though Hollywoodized – indictment of 20th century fascism, and politically volatile exclamation ever offered by a movie comedian.

We may never know, unless Lewis finally greenlights the film's public release, possibly in his will. Whichever accolade "Clown" earns, revelation or repulsion, it will be worthy of Lewis's immense power to move his audience, not just as a comic, but an auteur. Perhaps he'll realize soon that he owes his audience this controversial work, which would in any case further cement his place in movie history as a creative innovator, in his frustrating, manic way, on par with Chaplin. The critics be damned.

_______________________

*About a year prior to the Williams show appearance, Jerry had taken a bad pratfall off of the top of a piano onstage in Las Vegas, which injured his spine. It's certainly possible the major damage was done there – and that the aggravation caused in the dance number was the frosting on the cake. According to Shawn Levy's intriguing book "King of Comedy" (St. Martin's Press, 1996) Jerry had taken a fall on the Williams show set, and struck his head on the floor, though it was not shown on the broadcast.

It's "Ben" Real: The Ernie Kovacs Collection

2011-04-27T04:11:00.000-07:00

Just about everyone loves, tenders respect to, and over-collects, the Beatles. I love them. I always claimed to enjoy Beatles music, but I never truly appreciated them until I heard The White Album... and compared it to all other music that was current when The White Album came along.

Some good stuff filtered over the airwaves in 1968, to be sure – a few select songs may still symbolize that era, of the Vietnam War and 1960s unrest, in the minds of those who lived it. But nothing else was quite like the empty-covered enigma that the Beatles gifted to the world, that year, which was also one of the most tumultuous of the group's career. It was there Rock evolved out of bobbie socks and biker jackets, and became something that art pundits and music journalists would debate over, for ever after.

This year, 2011, film historian and curator Ben Model, and Shout! Factory, have bestowed upon lovers of comedy an almost equal gift: The Ernie Kovacs Collection.

Being a longtime Ernie-phile myself, I can hardly describe even my punchy frustration at attempting to concisely review this 6-disc box-set, much less my temptation to sit down and watch it again, rather than write. So many other – better – writers across the country have already chimed in with giddy approval about this release. Another gushing, stellar "thumbs-up" would only appear redundant and predictable. Instead, I'd like to sum up something comparatively novel; a history of THE LACK of any comprehensive retrospect of Kovacs's work, over the past 20-or-so years.

Take a look at that photo up there... take a good look. Until The Ernie Kovacs Collection, there wasn't much. Most contemporary Kovacs fans were first turned on to Ernie by a 6-part PBS series in the summer of 1977 – the same month that the original Star Wars movie opened, if that adds any chronological context. The show was essentially just a batch of re-edits of his 1960s ABC network specials, mixed with a sprinkle of his "clue" sketches from the gameshow Take A Good Look.

In hindsight, those specials were a grand enough place to start – as modern an intro to Ernie as was available to a newbie audience. White Star Video* packaged those shows into a VHS tape set, called The Best of Ernie Kovacs.

Today, complete sets are a somewhat rare find – one occasionally still encounters random cassettes sold separately, but most savvy Kovacoisseurs have long ago traded in that shelf-hogging assortment for its lean, digital reincarnation, released in 2000. It's the center box shown above.

Soon enough, it too became a scarce item – available mainly just in eclectic media outlets, and via mail-order, if in stock. I purchased my copy at a Santa Cruz comicbook retailer's, who had just one left. I snagged it within seconds of spying it inside, from out on the sidewalk. I and the shop's owner (a fellow Kovacs fan with his own copy at home) bored his young, punk-emo counter girl to runny purple and green mascara tears, with 20 solid minutes of post-sale Ernie talk.

There were other incidental video offerings, like John Barbour's 1982 Showtime network documentary, Ernie Kovacs: Television's Original Genius. Barbour is the TV critic responsible for nicknaming Ernie the "Charlie Chaplin of Television" – a descriptive as powerful as it is concise. It was a nice, well constructed missive on Ernie, containing the remarks of other comedians who'd grown up with Kovacs's influence, like Chevy Chase.

I remember renting it, forcing my girlfriend through the torture of my relentless, geeked-out, babbling side commentary.

But before even the long-ago PBS series, all that anyone had, who'd never known Ernie Kovacs on TV during his life, was B. Ziggy Stone's 1971 80-minute opus, Viva Kovacs! It played the college circuit, and consisted of a limited sampling of Kovacs video transferred onto filmstock – which gave it the ambiance of a 1930s B-movie on the late late show.

Burbank Video, in 1992, released the film – by then a public domain oddity – on VHS cassette, renaming it simply Ernie Kovacs. That's my copy up there, on the left.

And that was it. IT!!

The only reasonably available reading material on Kovacs was David Walley's fascinating but over-prosey Nothing In Moderation, renamed The Ernie Kovacs Phile (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1984) and later, Diana Rico's masterfully thorough Kovacsland (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990).

Describing Kovacs to a neophyte was a soul-crushing exercise in futility. Dropping his name with a young comedy fan raised on Saturday Night Live, Steve Martin and John Belushi was the same as trying to have a serious dialogue with a philosophy major about Bigfoot. The comparison is valid – I've tried both.

The missionaries who first showed a Bible to cannibals... I had a feeling they pee-pee danced through a conniption similar to mine.

Kids in the mid-1980s just couldn't believe that the conceits of their hip, cutting-edge comedians were fodder to one particular guy on TV of 30 years – now about 50 years – prior.

That not only had he done it already, but that the first generation of copy-cats had come and gone.

Of course, once Ernie's work began to re-circulate, literally "in ernest" again, thanks to the PBS series, and word of mouth – helped handsomely by the emerging digital age – his overdue come-uppance started to take shape. But it wasn't without the hard work, and luck, of many diligent people over the decades who knew Kovacs and made preserving his legacy a part of their very life's devotion.

Foremost among them was his widow, actress/singer Edie Adams. Ernie had lived the antithesis of a frugal life, and left behind a financial maelstrom. Edie refused charity from friends and show business colleagues. She took every job she could get her hands on, and slowly paid off all of Ernie's mountainous post-mortem debts. Along the way she used what money was left over to buy back all of his work from the networks. Some of them were actually recording over his tapes... or dumping old footage into the Hudson River to free up space in the archives.

Fellow TV comic-icon Chuck McCann put Edie wise to that little secret, and she immediately dawned her Superwoman cape.

More and more of Ernie's treasured surviving moments began springing up on YouTube, and other video-content websites, and the realization formed that an entire "Erniverse" of yet unseen material was out there somewhere. Kovacs, supposedly a rare comic commodity, had been anything but rare in his day. He'd had shows on nearly every network – had spent entire workdays on-camera – damn, he'd been downright ubiquitous! Where was it all??

It was safe, just unavailable to the casual video consumer, until now. The Ernie Kovacs Collection is a quantum leap ahead of what even proud owners of The Best of... thought they possessed. It is, within reason, everything Ernie that's copiable onto a DVD. It's difficult to imagine what could possibly be left for Volume 2, if that's ever produced.

A comprehensive tribute, it includes much of his early TV work – a mere six or seven combined hours-worth, out of possibly hundreds that were broadcast, now lost for good. The balance of the total 13-hour running time consists of Model's exhaustive – and personally rewarding – research and reconstruction: Home movies, trailers, odds-n-ends, and some of the ABC specials, overlapping somewhat with the White Star Video content.

Ernie's final show which was broadcast posthumously, here contains the original prologue and epilogue eulogies, missing from the White Star release.

The crown jewel of The Ernie Kovacs Collection is the first-ever retail issue of his NBC Color Carnival broadcast, in which he upstaged the ballyhooed Jerry Lewis Special (the first after the break-up with Dean Martin) that preceded on that night's schedule. It was an entire show without dialogue, with the now legendary 'Eugene' segment featuring the 18-degree tilted dining room. This early color version has rarely been seen since its 1957 air date.

Until now it was only viewable by visiting UCLA's television archives. Ernie recreated it, in broader detail, for one of his ABC – black & white – specials in 1961, known as The Silent Show. That is the version with which most Kovacs fans are familiar.

Color, and the lack thereof, brings us back around to my White Album reference.

Like my then-sudden Beatles quickening, this new box-set might just turn a corner for those who previously thought they knew everything to ponder about Ernie Kovacs.

Some who see him today, shrug a "so what" at his lampoons and spoofs of television's formulaic conventions and contrivances – because all comedians do them now. Steve Allen's old newscast skits have evolved beyond Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, into Jon Stewart's Daily Show. Gameshows have transcended mere bantery quizzing, into the neo-Orwellian vid-verité of Survivor and its ilk.

Like the Beatles, you don't really fully appreciate Uncle Ern until you consider what was on every other channel in his era... That he was the ONLY comedian already parodying what everyone else was supposedly "pioneering"... That he was the comic embodiment of Marshall McLuhan's etherial proclamation "the media IS the message" when the media was newly born...

Milton Berle and Bob Hope were still recycling Vaudeville.

You don't really get the references to Ernie's predating Laugh-In, Monty Python, et al., until you see him do something Laugh-Inian or Pythonesque, and realize that those entities wouldn't come along for another decade.

You don't see the reality of his informing David Letterman, until you witness Ernie deliver a monologue or an interview in that compellingly casual, intentionally distracted style that would cement Letterman's fame... 30 years later.

Catch Ernie's off-every-wall gameshow sketch Whip The Wristwatch and you'll glimpse the embryo that gestated, indirectly, into The Firesign Theatre's Beat The Reaper.

Ernie and Edie spent so much airtime conceiving the muse of Saturday Night Live, the video footage almost ranks as comedic porn.

The Ernie Kovacs Collection is such an unmitigated treasure, so long overdue, and so utterly welcome, that to assign it some trite, pat-hand descriptive, like say, "a love letter to Kovacs fans everywhere" is... well... about as much an anti-prize as a railroad car of mercurochrome.

The most amazing aspect of Kovacs? He didn't know he was defining a future generation of media, he was just being himself, at a time when the medium was still experimental enough to accommodate his maniacal exploration. His life's time was brief, but his destiny's timing was exquisite.

If you already know Ernie, this DVD set is a must-own. It simply beats everything else available to bruised whelps. If you are just getting into him, checking out a few YouTube clips and intrigued, this box will be like your own private Disneyland... make that Kovacsland... when you decide you want something tangible of Ernie for your home DVD collection. And you will.

As you can see, I got mine. Bravo, Mr. Model!

_______________________________________

*White Star Video is now known as Kultur Films.

Larry Semon: Amid Comedy's Forefathers, A Crazy Uncle

2011-04-03T21:52:00.000-07:00

In the broadening, yet strangely claustrophobic world of media entertainment – stretched, flattened and calculated down to the last pixel – an entire genre has been created out of latent paranoia. Every nuance of cultural derangement, from the polarized politics of supposed "news" networks, to the exploitation of consumer distraction that fuels the infomercials, has become ensconced as normal, if not routine.

Someone, somewhere, behind the wizard's curtain of the television industry, figured out that our current culture obsesses over the perception of "street cred," and so was spawned the Reality-TV revolution.

Whatever informs one's neurosis; money, power, safety, health, the environment, privacy, conspiracy, appearance, societal perceptions, success or failure, and on, and on, and on... it grows to affect every decision, every day, every minute. The subconscious thrill of Paranoia has always been a sublime theme for entertainment – drawing in audiences like tunas to a net.

Meet Larry Semon. A silent era film comedian, about – oh, 90 years ahead of his time.

Some who recognize the names of not just the iconic silent comedy stars like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Harry Langdon – but perhaps too the less heroic like Charley Chase, Snub Pollard or Ben Turpin – still shrug at the name Larry Semon.

Who??

In his own era, Semon's snarky, toonish presence was well known to moviegoers, perhaps annoyingly, relentlessly so. Not nearly as universally beloved or renowned as Chaplin's Little Tramp, Larry Semon was a wiry, pasty-skinned featherweight born with a face pre-molded into a permanent comic take.

He lived a short, nerve-racked life, as if knowing each moment that destiny was melting him away like a cheap candle. Like Hank Williams, Sr. – a human mimeograph cranking out his legacy, somehow cognizant that he wasn't long for this world – nearly every atom of Semon's energy was spent too in a dysfunctionally frantic quest.

To become The King of Comedy. The scary part is, he actually came close at least once.

If Chaplin's catalytic contribution to comedy was the perfection of pathos, then we must credit Larry Semon, somewhat, for a similar refinement of psychosis – or more accurately, the panic attack as literally a lifestyle choice.

THE "ANTI-BUSTER"

Semon may be described somewhat efficiently, as the antithesis of Buster Keaton.

Keaton's stoic, unflinching stand against the collusion of nature and industrial technology – bewildered by them, yet somehow prevailing via luck, ingenuity or sheer force of will... is starkly contrasted by Semon's over-the-top larkishness, infused with an implication of mastery over every molecule captured on-screen, only to have it blow up in his harlequin face like a trick cigar. In short, you'll never witness a chronic loser more sure of himself.

Larry Semon's equivalent, in the mind of a modern audience, might be Bugs Bunny, only without the rascally rabbit's knack for side-stepping disaster at the last moment.

The initial impression Semon's persona conveys, is the notion that he was reincarnated in the sound era as Jerry Lewis. Childish buffoonery, laced with a thinly veiled roguishness; the goofy underdog subconsciously reminding you he's really a world famous movie star, is all there in Semon's – like Lewis's – screen presence. Only where Jerry could temper the contrivances with manic absurdity and an undeniable magnetism, Larry seems content to chug his own bathwater, thinking it's Koolaid. The comedy is visibly intentional – a sure kiss of death that Semon somehow never comprehends, no matter how finely he calculates each and every gag.

And wow, could he calculate!

Here Semon again draws a surreal comparison to Buster Keaton, whose comedy is just as intense with predetermination. Only Keaton achieved decidedly different – funny – results.

Buster's comedies, eminently watchable, first provoke laughter, then astonishment, then a mesmerized awe that substitutes for laughter with repeated viewings. Keaton was the human incarnation of the very boundaries of physics – continually redefining what was possible, photographable, within the confines of a framed reality. Buster would over-prep a stunt to counter for every imaginable misstep, then astoundingly place himself unprotected at its center once the camera rolled – relying on his own instincts and athleticism to complete the matrix.

In "Steamboat Bill, Jr." (1928), standing under a collapsing, three-ton building front, but on the exact spot where an open window would pass over him – allowed Buster only a two-inch elbow flinch, a "leaning margin" on either side, to avoid being killed on camera.

No stand-in. A fake wall wouldn't fall correctly – they'd experimented beforehand. The stage grip who gave the wall a final nudge to begin it falling onto Keaton, ran for his life – watch the footage carefully and you can faintly witness him. Legend has it that non-religious Buster allowed a minister to recite a prayer as the cameraman began cranking. As a further testament to Keaton's grit, he'd just been informed of his wife Natalie's abandonment of their marriage, smuggling their two sons away to Europe.

On top of all that...

He had only one take to get it right. And he could only sell the stunt as comedy by looking as if he couldn't see it coming.

Not see it coming? He'd pre-mapped it with surveyor's tools!

The moment and the laugh, a mise-en-scène of tension both technical and visceral – astonishing despite blatantly telegraphed, works because of its stark reality. A sneeze in the middle of a tight-rope walk.

An instant saturated with actual danger that no amount of preplanning could completely outweigh. A circumstance scripted and diagramed, yet with a layer of genuine peril, beams from the projector and rebounds off the screen, directly at the audience.

Why didn't Buster simply create it all with trick photography, and eliminate the risk factor? Because that falsity would translate through the screen with equal punch. This "cosmic awareness" was a Keaton hallmark. It was the one Keatonism that Semon did not possess, despite having everything else, from his Swiftian imagination, Rube Goldbergian ingenuity and a rabid monkey on his back to create laughter.

Semon failed to appreciate the power of a real "reel moment," to affect someone watching in the dark. He instead embarked upon a journey to discover the ends to which the camera could be fooled to "cheat" a laugh out of his audience.

BEHIND THE STRIPE

Nearly a century before Hollywood would depend exclusively on computer generated effects, to make over-budgeted epics more-epic-than-life, Larry Semon was convinced that live-action stunts, even undercranked ones, were over-common. He became so obsessed with the tomfoolery possible during the intervals of those mystical black stripes between film sprockets, that he lost touch with the frame – the window through which the audience connected.

In the earliest days of the cinema, French magician and filmmaker George Méliès had explored and pioneered most of what was possible by manipulating non-linear film exposures. The first movie special effect was an accident; the camera seized up while filming a bustling city street. The jam was cleared, and cranking resumed. When the resulting film was viewed, Méliès discovered he'd made a city bus appear to blink out of existence.

A million still-pictures in rapid succession, causing an illusion of movement, is a non-monolithic "reality" vulnerable to creative tampering, the way a mischievous, etherial presence – a God – might contemplate. Méliès proceeded to take a hands-on approach to this abstract notion; the art of creating film of what couldn't naturally be photographed. His 1902 opus "A Trip To The Moon/Le Voyage Dans La Lune" ranks as one of the cinema's first feature attractions to base its entertainment value almost solely upon its (then) "state-of-the-art" technical effects, with plot and performances secondary – a cinema tradition that thrives to this day.

The very first – now forgotten – breed of movie comedians, belonging to France's Pathé Company, applied Méliès's "magic" to comedy.

Animators like Walt Disney and the Fleischer Brothers, Max and David, took the outlandish possibilities of film even further by bringing life to cartoons.

As modern movie audiences continually prove, however, it is a genre with a built-in obsolescence. Once the novelty of a "groundbreaking" effect turns pale through overuse, or worse yet, common to the industry hacks, the ante must be upped. An unreal spectacle that drew gasps twenty years ago, may today hardly hold a stray attention span. Some examples of pre-digital era grandiosity can still inspire wonder, like say, the chariot race of "Ben Hur" (1959), but only can because of the obvious reality captured on film at tremendous physical risk. There was a time when all great movie moments involved a luck factor.

Semon, though by no lack of trying, could not even get luck to work for him. That ever-demanding "ante" became a weight upon his spindly shoulders.

JACK OF ALL SEMI-MAGIC TRADES

The connection to both Méliès and the early cartoon animators is more than coincidental, for Semon fully belonged to those fraternities just as well as The Order of Cinema Clowns. He was the son of "Zera The Great" Semon, a popular stage magician of his day, who was himself a magician's son.

Semon was also a cartoonist, in fact, a darn fine one. His newspaper illustration work at the turn of the 20th century holds up well against his famous contemporaries like Winsor McCay, George Herriman and the above-referenced Rube Goldberg. One of Semon's most memorable features was a weekly single panel exposing how magicians' stage tricks were done – in a way similar to the "anti-magic" act that Penn & Teller would make famous many decades later.

It's here we discover the pattern of mixed fortunes that would plague Larry Semon throughout his life, requiring him to constantly re-invent himself. He was prodigiously talented and energetic in his youth, but lacked focus for his creative prowess. Among his first attempts to earn a living with his natural abilities as a performer, was to follow Dad's footsteps onto the Vaudeville stage, with a magic act. His father, however, embittered by too many subjective successes, on his deathbed forced Semon the Younger to pledge to shun show business for something more practical.

Larry partially acquiesced, and got work at various New York papers, most notably the Sun, and the Morning Telegraph, as a compositor and illustrator. His natural humorous bent programmed him quickly into a cartoonist. In those now-ancient days when the printing press comprised the entirety of "mainstream media," an inkman whose work drew newsstand receipts could command a premium salary – Semon showed that potential, and was soon given his own byline, and a guaranteed spot on the editorial pages. If he had played his cards right, Lawrence Semon may have joined the pantheon of early American journalism's iconic editorial cartoonists.

But Semon was no card player, despite being the son of a Vaudeville confidence man.

His weekly comic exposé of the magician's stagecraft, though popular with casual readers, was making his name a cause for spit, among his father's old cronies and their own offspring inheriting their parents' stage acts. Some of those offended people had probably even shared a hand in raising him as well, for Vaudeville performers usually lived as nomadic communal villages unto themselves, and so felt doubly betrayed.

Rather than seal his fate further, Semon drifted from his drawing board. He discovered he could no longer suppress his longing to perform, and became a stage actor – a Burlesque Monologist (the name by which Stand-Up Comedy was then known). Looking naturally like he'd been carved by a drunk puppeteer, his physical, rather than verbal, stage antics drew laughter, and the attention of the new "photoplay companies" sprouting up. He was soon signed to a contract by Vitagraph, where he was perceptively put to work helping to create the screen chaos for which his unworldly appearance suggested he was best suited. Soon he was not just participating in, but taking charge of, Vitagraph's comedy wing.

THE COMIC WHO WOULD BE KING

He applied his cartoonist's sense of wild exaggeration to his films. Eventually Semon grew familiar on the nation's movie screens. Despite Charlie Chaplin literally recreating the Big Bang with a concept called comic pathos, Semon's soulless, reality-defying, manufactured sight-gag comedy became a trademark, to a substantial audience that would repeatedly pay to see him.*

Larry Semon became a bankable star – though he was unaware that it was in spite of himself.

And as the law of the "ante" dictated, the gags evolved bigger, and bigger, and Semon's compulsion to continue topping himself likewise expanded to dimensions that he could less and less control.

As the conceits of Semon's humor swelled beyond manageability, so too did the staggering budgets required to keep step with his mania to make comedies that were "bigger" than anything previous. Semon saw himself as the D.W. Griffith of comedy, rather than another yank set on upstaging the Limey.

It's interesting to note how Charlie Chaplin is the imagined bane of nearly every other film comedian of his era – except three: Buster Keaton, the only one who arguably managed to equal Chaplin's critical acclaim; Stan Laurel, who came to America originally as Chaplin's understudy with the Karno vaudeville troupe; and Larry Semon, who, like Keaton, competed only with himself, albeit with results that were inverse of Buster's.

CHAOS A'LA MODE

Ironically, Semon's basic comedic formula remained hand-drawn simple. One merely placed his patent character (in Semon's case a pasty faced, google eyed smart-aleck in derby hat and high-water overalls) into a standard cinematic setting, like a restaurant, a farm, a golf course, and then simply allowed chaos to ensue for one or two reels.

Lucille Ball took this same recipe and became a show business icon with it. Veteran Hollywood television writer Brad Radnitz once personally explained the formula to me. Writing an episode of "I Love Lucy," or any later incarnation of Ball's sitcom for that matter, boiled down to figuring out how, by plausible means (the Act-1 set-up), to get Lucy into an implausible situation (the Act-2 pay-off).

Stomping grapes in a wine barrel. Dressed as Harpo Marx, suddenly confronted by the real Harpo. At the mercy of a speeding conveyor belt in a chocolate factory. A career of comedic moments emblazoned in the minds of a generation of TV viewers. All from the same blueprint.

Semon even managed to take this surefire comedy math and make it produce negative integers.

The early cinema seemed tailor-made for someone of his background and predilections. Its own unique style of performance, technical magic, and humor generated via methodical precision – like cartooning – melded into a singular art called movie comedy. Larry Semon, by all pretension, should have been its King. It's Scion.

Semon hopped aboard the carousel, and missed the brass ring so often that reaching became his obsession, rather than finessing the ride. Where Chaplin and Keaton found freedom, Larry Semon dove inward. His laughless filmography of sublime paranoia began to take shape. His comedies today are wince-fests. Polished too hard – the comic sheen dulled by a vigorous scrubbing down to the primer.

Chases become anti-gravity trampoline launches aided by wires. Pie fights become bakeshop armageddons with barrels of flour and tubs of mincemeat, fruit and custard brought to bear. Bigger is funnier, right? Huge is high art.

Larry Semon had the heart of an animator, but the patience of a short-order cook. His "cartoons" were populated by live actors subbing for exaggerated drawings. He would have been right at home in today's CGI-enhanced cinema. But in Semon's Hollywood it was all done with piano wire, grease, glue, shaving soap, cameramen who soaked their sore wrists every night after a day of a hundred bad takes, and actors willing to risk broken bones and gangrene to make them funny.

Even in the era of undercranked freneticism, Semon's comedy often flails too fast, and becomes difficult to follow. Many of his gags conclude with pay-offs that seem vague, because the set-ups are over-complicated. Semon thinks so hard on his jokes that the visual prose becomes a stream of jabber, as from a chronically distracted wandering man, living completely inside his own head.

The genuinely intriguing quality of Semon comedies is the surreal visions they conjure of what it must have been like to film them. Or more surreal still, to watch Semon direct, and his cast and crew attempt to facilitate his nebulous revelations.

THE MUSE AND THE REAPER ENTER TOGETHER

Despite his delusions, Semon is still today a compelling screen presence. He is so demure and skeletal as to make Chaplin seem a brute by comparison. His arms and legs are so anorexic, the only feature giving them contour are his varicose veins – his face so sinewy that, combined with his huge banjo eyes, Semon needed very little make-up, or effort, to grin and implicate a lifesize punchinello.

His willow-like physique was a bit more than genetic, however, for Semon was a human amphetamine. His on-screen demeanor is that of an explosive caffeine buzz. If he was this way off-screen too, one can only wonder how he survived for even his foreshortened lifespan.

On October 7, 1928, one year to the day after the talkies arrived, Larry Semon died. Or perhaps more accurately, he became translucent. Legend states he succumbed to pneumonia at the age of 39 – actually a fairly unremarkable demise for that period of American history, all but for a few rather peculiar circumstances.

Before Semon abruptly vanished from the radar, his life was treading desperate waters. His extravagant filmmaking style was eating holes in the pockets of his financiers, and Vitagraph eventually demanded that he begin sharing in the expense of his own productions – something rarely required of contract stars who were by and large pulling their weight at the box office.

To counter the additional burden, at least in the name of indignation, Semon embarked upon his most daring project ideas. If he was forced to foot the bill, it would be for something worthy of the cost.

By the late 1920s, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd were done with two-reelers, and were gracing the screen with lauded feature-length comedies – some of them, like Chaplin's "The Gold Rush" (1925) and Keaton's "The General" (1926) were epic in terms of both creative scope and production values. Semon decided it was high-time to become a member of that elite club.

As he had with short-subjects, Semon reasoned his only option was to make his features bigger. This ill-fated move at the sunset of Semon's career, ironically gave birth to the one film for which he is most remembered – his, albeit flawed, masterpiece.

"The Wizard of Oz" (1925) was the first big-budget film adaptation of the Frank L. Baum children's classic, which surprises many who assumed the MGM sound version starring Judy Garland, filmed just 12 years later, had that honor. Just as surprising, is the approach Semon took in his rendering of the story, which was in retrospect, very un-Semonesque.

First, he typecast himself in a supporting role – as the Scarecrow. The concept of crossdressing as an uglier-than-sin Dorothy probably flitted through his thoughts, and fit with his standard comedic m.o., but it wasn't strong enough fodder for a feature-length comedy; Semon showed at least that much foresight.

The lead part he bestowed upon his glamourous actress wife, Dorothy Dwan – who was a bit old for it. Semon solved the age problem by altering the story to make the Kansas farmgirl a young adult – a liberty that was taken again for Diana Ross when Motown Records produced "The Wiz" (1978).

The film's other claim to Movie Trivia fame is whom Semon cast as the Tin Woodsman – Oliver Hardy, who had only that same year been experimentally paired to Stan Laurel, by Hal Roach, with the comedy "Do Detectives Think?". Stan and Ollie had appeared on-screen together incidentally several times since "A Lucky Dog" (1921), but Roach was just then giving pause to the epiphany of their magical chemistry, and figured it was time to intentionally capitalize on it. The rest, as they say, is history.

Semon made further embellishments on "Oz's" plot, that were steps to give the fairy-tale a degree of modern plausibility. He made Dorothy's companions decidedly non-fantasy. The Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion were revised into three conmen disguised as them. One conman, the Scarecrow – Semon's character, naturally – turns out to have a heart of gold and becomes Dorothy's ultimate ally.

The other Semonism that he was mysteriously willing to toss away for his grand opus, was on the technical side. Much of his "Oz" is filmed at normal speed, not the undercranked bedlam that was his tradition. Suddenly Larry Semon was making a movie, rather than a fleshed-out cartoon, despite the childlike elements of the plot.

One moment near the final reel, Semon's character takes a breather from his Scarecrow disguise, thinking he's out of eyeshot of the others. Hiding to rest from the chase, he backs into a lion... roaming, loosed lions were a staple, after all, of the silent comedy days. He presumes it is his Lion-suited fellow grifter, also taking a break. Distracted, he continues to back-nudge the lion, for a little elbow room in their hiding place. It slowly, slowly dawns on Semon that he is literally sitting inches from the jaws of death.

In any other Semon comedy this would have cued a lightning-zap double-take, followed by a demonic flight of terror. Here, Semon instead toys with the moment, still cranked at normal frame-speed, and milks it. Even more astonishing, he plays it close to the vest – nearly the entire scene consisting of a close-up on his face, which he does not over-sell. A slow burning – believable – expression of comedic realization.

Semon garners a legitimate laugh, with his humanity. With a real "reel moment." It is Keatonesque.

It's amusing to wonder what Larry Semon would have given the world, and classic comedy connoisseurs, had he arrived at this coming-of-age just ten years earlier. But once again, his timing was horrendous – he had little more than two years, and no money, left.

"Wizard of Oz" was not the box-office breakthrough Semon needed to satisfy his creditors. He wound up going back to short-subjects, and managed to complete a handful before the Reaper knocked. The experience had drained him, physically and financially – at 39, he was a thousand years old; broke and broken. The onset of nervous implosion sent him to a Victorville, California sanitarium. He never made it out.

Or did he?

There was a brief period when some film historians gave weight to the theory that Semon had faked his death to escape his downward-spiraling finances. To yet again perhaps re-invent himself and emerge later in some other venue for which he possessed a prodigal knack.

His wife Dorothy Dwan, cryptically, further frosted the cake by signing his death certificate with her stage name. Not her real name, Illgenfritz (who could blame her?). Not even 'Mrs. Semon.' To lend a further degree of non-persona separation, she misspelled it, as "Dawn." So a Hollywood film siren got suddenly careless with her own stage name – which she had trained herself to answer to, for the sake of her livelihood? For that matter, did so on her own husband's death certificate? How often do either of those happen?

Dwan was an alluring woman, a classic cinema femme fatale, and seeing photos of her and Larry together present an alarming visual contrast. Just as remarkable is the extent to which she outlived him, passing away in 1981. That's 53 years.

But time proved one thing about Larry Semon; he was dead. He never resurfaced, in any disguise comic or otherwise. In life, remaining anonymous was against his very grain.

It's recorded that there was a private funeral service for Larry, at Mountain View Cemetery in southern California, for which fellow comedians in attendance, like Hardy, and Snub Pollard, had to wait outside – never allowed to view the body, if there indeed was one.

The other anomaly discovered after Semon's passing, were personal artifacts that illustrated the extent of his private paranoia. Among them was a stack of notebooks in which Semon brainstormed over his monumental sight gags. They were full, way beyond anything he had yet filmed in his decade's worth of comic "gems."

Semon had just begun to scale the immense heights of his comedic vision – or perhaps he was stockpiling an arsenal of clownery to avoid running dry, years down the road. In either case, it was apparent that he was in the process of unravelling.

Larry Semon was going mad.

Spinning like a kaleidoscope wired to a runaway generator, only his own shattered nerves, and a failing exhausted body could put an end to his madness.

IRIS-OUT TO BLACK

Summing up, Semon refuses to be summed up.

Somebody apparently enjoyed his comedy, otherwise he'd have faded away long before burning through Vitagraph's – and his own – money, then suddenly blinking out of existence like the Méliès bus.

Unlike most of the silent era funnymen, he was not a Chaplin hater, nor did he ever try to mimmic him. Larry Semon was, despite all else, an original.

Had he found his stride sooner, he might have taken his place within silent comedy's highest echelon, beside Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd. His illusive pursuit of comic grandeur was not necessarily misguided, but definitely out of phase with his time. The comparison to Jerry Lewis is ultimately a complimentary one – so too did Lewis attempt larger-than-life comedies out of compounded absurdity. Jerry's 1960 experiment in improvised chaos "The Bellboy" is roughly the kind of comedy Larry Semon believed was his specialty.

"The Bellboy" is, by the way, absolutely hilarious. One of Lewis's most memorable, a favorite even among those who don't care for Jerry Lewis's style otherwise. It's the closest thing you'll ever see to a modern Larry Semon film.

His was the comedy of paranoia, from a mind whose every thought, every decision, was laced with it. Almost completely forgotten today, Larry Semon remains staring out to the future from nearly a century ago – even if he never figured out why, himself. And the stuttering, repetitive, increasingly dehumanized entertainment industry, addicted to technical chicanery – and in denial of it – has spent that century catching up with him.

Was Larry Semon a kook, or a visionary? Sometimes they can be one and the same.

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* Semon managed in his life to earn a spot among a choice league of early comedians who had a pet name chanted by European movie audiences. For example, Charlie Chaplin was "Charlot," and Charlie Bowers – though hardly causing a ripple with the public in his home country – was "Bricolo" overseas. Larry Semon was known as "Zigoto" (first coined in France – further portending of Jerry Lewis!) and the Spanish called him "Jaimito" (Little Jimmy).

Square Bubbles: Broadband In Kovacsland

2010-10-22T19:10:00.000-07:00

Ernie Kovacs didn't care for audiences.

That is, he loved his audience – the faithful and curious who tuned in – but preferred an empty gallery. His comedy was a meticulous gourmet recipe, not an improvised sandwich. It lent itself to a certain brand of relentlessness and a pursuit of perfection for which no live studio audience could've had the patience. He knew that. It's why he liked them all sitting at home watching electronically, rather than in his face, with expectant stares.

Kovacs had more than done live television, he had helped invent it. His Trenton, New Jersey morning show "Three To Get Ready" was the first ever of its kind – NBC used it as the initial template for "The Today Show," which was picked up by Ernie's station, subsequently cancelling his local program which had inspired it.

It's not difficult to see how he quickly grew to loathe live television in a way that no other comedian had yet fathomed. As the rest were reveling in its freedom and immense exposure, to Kovacs it had already become confinement. Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason and Sid Caesar had broader viewership, but only because they played it safe. In their universe, live TV was the pointing of a camera at a Vaudeville performance – as their radio work had been that same Vaudeville bent over a microphone.

The network coddled Ernie's pain with a cheap mid-morning variety show before a studio audience – in a way eerily echoed 25 years later with David Letterman – but it was a far cry from the credit he deserved, which was instead poured upon Dave Garroway. What the mundanely titled "Ernie Kovacs Show" proves in rare kinescopes, is that Kovacs in affect endured live audiences via daily bouts of agoraphobia. He seemed to sigh with accomplishment like a winded sprinter, upon arriving at some zippy, malapropish or punny one-liner that signaled a cut-away to...

Something else. The transition to the next bit. Edie. The weather report. That morning's musical guest. A chimp act. A station break. A pre-filmed sketch. Or at least ... Bill Wendell marking time before the cue for a Percy Dovetonsils skit that would allow Ern to hide inside the lisping laureate. It was that same need for "actor's armor" that plagued Orson Welles, who felt naked – without make-up, costume, an artistic facade to flesh out – when asked simply to present an audience with what he was, beneath his "on" face.

Even Ernie's oft-times bizarre gameshow "Take A Good Look" allowed him to deflect, via his compulsory persona as Host and Quizmaster. It was rather the show's pre-recorded "clue" skits that displayed Ernie in his natural element.

In a live-broadcast situation, baser rebellious instincts took over. Ernie led audiences through television's mysterious interior; revealed for them places to which they weren't privy on other more sedate or tightly formatted shows – before he ushered them there, past the "fourth wall." He made small-talk with the crew, flipped the cameras around at the audience, unabashedly let viewers witness set changes, and even did segments from the control booth – all on the air. No other comic hinted at having that size of cajones. Those who tuned in to Ernie felt like they were suddenly under the wing of a famous confidant, rather than just watching another distant, calculated entertainer.

He perceived almost from the beginning that a television set was not merely an electronic culvert for a stage show, but a self-contained dimension apart from that reality. He so proceeded to tailor a new style of content to populate it. The big-brand, traditional comedians loved Ernie as much as his at-home audience did, but couldn't quite figure why. Even Jack Benny once told Kovacs, "I don't know what it is about you – I watch, I laugh."

The comedic instincts and timing of Charlie Chaplin, the cosmic self-awareness of Buster Keaton, and the creative inclinations of Jonathan Swift were entangled in that tall, cigar huffing Hungarian who defied not just the aesthetic conventions of comedy, but the limits of its perceived technology. Of course it's plausible that without Ernie Kovacs, many of his innovations and machinations would have come along anyway, eventually, in sporadic spurts of invention, from other individuals and industry sources – doubtlessly in ways less entertaining. Entire styles of show-making evolved over time tailored directly for the small screen, which today has actually taken steps backward, within the conceit of progress.

Flattened. Morphed into a home version of the cinematic 16:9 ratio widescreen. Even the emergence of HD and 3D are merely compressed electronic reprisals of territory charted decades ago by the cinema via analog means. Television's post-modern identity seems to mirror the soulless momentum of the current youth-culture – traveling along a well-worn highway in a shiny retro-designed version of their parents' car, yet somehow still believing they are blazing original trails.

Ironically, technology has aided and abetted that blithe self-obsession.

Before he was taken from this world, Ernie was becoming a beloved pain in the ass to his technical crew. Nearly all the tasks he laid before them, however, including the final one for an upcoming show that never materialized – square bubbles – would hardly be a morning's pre-breakfast warm-up for our current industry of Gen-Y computer effects wizards. It took four long decades after Ernie's passing, for the medium he helped birth to reach the point at which it could fully accommodate his mind's eye.

What would an Ernie Kovacs do with modern television? Or the Internet? The question, pondered soberly, quickly begins to defy comprehension. Truly "Kovacs Unlimited." It is a hundred-storey tall, glowing question mark, tilted eighteen degrees, atop from which a thermos of milk still cannot pour vertically.

It's difficult to say where else Ernie would have taken television, given say, another ten years. To where had "un-Kovacsed" television progressed by 1962?

UHF became commonplace, and Telstar had made real the first transatlantic satellite broadcasting. The Jetsons premiered, as did Lucy in her first post-Desi sitcom. Johnny Carson took over The Tonight Show – which Ernie had guest-hosted many times, and helped shape, in the Steve Allen days.* Mister Ed, Dick Van Dyke, The Avengers and Andy Griffith were already going strong. On the night Ernie died, comedian Jim Carrey was not yet quite a week old. Eddy Izzard's mother was about to go into labor. Marilyn Monroe still had one summer left. John F. Kennedy had two.

Across the pond, a cherubic clown of a thousand faces named Benny Hill was just beginning his journey to become the most watched comedian in history.

Televised comedy's next "revolution," The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, was still roughly a Bachelor Degree's worth of years away. They'd kick a completely different door open to the medium's future, and soon after would be born Laugh-In, which would launch itself from the nest by basically recycling the Kovacs muse without openly crediting its source. It was hardly coincidental; Laugh-In's creator, George Schlatter, just happened to be the husband of comic actress Jolene Brand, who'd been a veteran member of Ernie's repertory, and almost as familiar a fixture in the Erniverse as Edie Adams – Mrs. Kovacs – was.

Television's technical playground reverted back to a somber, boring, all-but-ignored prospect after Ernie's sudden absence. Even Walt Disney, who logically should have been keen to explore television's potential in ways similar to Kovacs, merely populated it with warmed-over fodder from his studio's cinema archives, both live-action and animated. The most accelerant TV offering from the Disney company, in that era, was a rocket-ride to puberty for its young male viewers – Annette Funicello.

Some might argue that it was all moot – that Kovacs had about run his course. He was done with TV and had gone Hollywood by the 1960s, diverted onto a more conventional path. He was still struggling to break out as star of his own films, much less given the chance to "auteur" with the cinema's broader horizons. Only 1961's "Five Golden Hours" with co-stars Cyd Charisse and George Sanders, offers any clue that Ernie Kovacs was possibly gaining any headway in the movies. Though he under-billed plenty of A-listers, from Jimmy Stewart to John Wayne, as a solo movie talent he seemed trapped in limbo, a perpetual victim of the typecasting machine.

His baneful, frustrating string of "Captain" roles was really not quite as shallowly explained as mere rotten luck with sheep-headed casting agents. It was actually a bi-product of strange political timing. Ernie was trapped between the cinema's melodramatic past and society's emerging radical future. Ernie looked the classic cinema villain, and by the onset of the Sixties, villains were becoming synonymous with authority figures, particularly those of a military stripe.

Hollywood's love for Kovacs came in the form of destructive enabling, then it lavished his grave with ironic laurels. The juicier, high-profile comic roles which Ernie hoped impatiently for, all at once seemed to come along in rapid succession, after he was planted in the Court of Remembrance at Forest Lawn.

It becomes enticing, though a bit strained, to imagine Ernie instead of Walter Matthau, with pal Jack Lemmon, in "The Odd Couple" (1968) and only a bit easier with "The Fortune Cookie" (1966). Perhaps the most spectral twist was Lemmon himself possibly attempting to channel his old friend, as Professor Fate, in "The Great Race" (1965), a Kovacsian film role if ever there was one. The big-budget spectacle also had Peter Falk as a comic sidekick not dissimilar to those routinely played, in those days, by ancient Buster Keaton – who had similarly partnered with Kovacs in the pilot for the deservedly ill-fated western sitcom "Medicine Man," which had wrapped filming hardly 24 hours prior to Ernie's final cigar.

The fantasies of an Ernie Kovacs paired with a Blake Edwards, or beefing out a part written by Neil Simon, or even a Terry Southern, are all treasures to remain buried.

For the 1963 comic summit meeting "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," it became not just ironic, but creepy, to watch Edie play the wife of Sid Caesar, Ernie's fellow TV-comic icon and chief rival. Her taking the role was no doubt to help pay off nightmarish gambling debts, bar tabs, and a terrifying IRS shortfall among other posthumous hurdles born of Ernie's immoderate living and abrupt exit – plus raise their three daughters.

So how do we imagine Ernie Kovacs given his due, past that bygone age of grainy kinescope and shaving-razor edits of 2-inch quad video tape?

Buster Keaton once remarked that had he not been born to show business, and become a film comedian, he would have been perhaps a civil engineer, or an inventor. That's the man he truly was, only his medium's substance was comedy and the mechanics of the motion picture, rather than bridges, city skylines and power grids. Could Kovacs have made a like statement?

Had he simply been an aficionado of technology for its own sake, it isn't likely he'd have remained a performer. Like the main character of his one and only novel, "Zoomar," Tom Moore, Ernie would gravitate upward to a producer/VP's office. Oddly, he may have never moved from New York, but spent his career promoting younger, less motivated comedians and actors, and lived to a ripe old age – or at least to whatever age his cigar habit would allow. Groucho, Berle and George Burns didn't seem to fair too shabbily in the longevity department.

In Hollywood, Ernie's passion was likewise to ultimately produce, or perhaps even live in the Director's chair. He would have possibly become a surrealist, post-modern Preston Sturges – just as his techno-Chaplinesque alter-ego, Eugene, had on a night of comedic destiny, become a divertingly abstract alternative to the tuxedoed burlesque of Jerry Lewis.

Perhaps the closest thing we'll ever have to a taste of "An Ernie Kovacs Film" is the output of French funnyman Jacques Tati, whose works like "Mon Oncle" (1958) and "Trafic" (1971) captured the essense of a Keatonesque clash with self-conscious, self-important, self-distracted modernity. His mind lived in the sharp-cornered present, his heart in the wordlessly cerebral past, and his comic instincts empowered him to navigate between the two. Kovacs greatly admired Tati, and it was undoubtable that the "Chaplin of France" was a goading muse and inspiration to the "Chaplin of Television."

Kovacs's indirect tribute to Tati was the naively mischievous Eugene – Tati's Mr. Hulot bumpkinized – in the award-winning "Silent Show," Ernie's aforementioned upstaging of Lewis, and the ultimate lock-down of his own stardom.

All that television had left to offer Kovacs was its own slowly progressing technology. His catalytic influence via his comedy, increasingly demanding, may have indeed continued to spur things along faster, but only for a time. Kovacs would begin to drop off the radar at some point where the constant geometric expansion of technology would simply outpace his human limitations.

Though he was anything but television's standard Variety-101 comedian, he still had to travel a map drawn by industry traditionalists before him. Guest appearances on other shows and – yes, the sad process had already begun with "Take A Good Look" and "Medicine Man" – gameshows and sitcom hell would all become necessary battlefields upon which Ernie would keep his career in the fight. As a comedian, Ernie Kovacs would evolve into a "bookable personality." His other title, "innovator," would fade into entertainment history – even though one occasionally wonders why and how he never secured any patents of his brainchildren, like the soupcan/kaleidescope filter, or the concept of the music video; stuff that today would enjoy legal protection under the banner of "intellectual property."

Jerry Lewis's industry-altering invention of the Cinematic Video Assist seemed latently Kovacsian. It, rather than all of Lewis's movie accolades, has guaranteed that Jerry's great-grandkids will have university educations. Ern could have at least eased, if not eradicated, Edie's pain of his disastrous post-mortem finances.

The real question is, given a full-length lifespan, and a sustained career in the industry, would Kovacs have continued to evolve with the medium? Or with media in general?

An unlikely comedic source provided one possible answer – that of the über-standup, George Carlin, who embraced every new facet of communication that emerged as a new conduit to be explored, in the name of promoting his product: himself.

Carlin fell in step with the cyber age immediately, and viewed it as simply another audience – who applauded with mouse-clicks. He managed his own official website, rather than leave it a chore for a hired managing "associate," making it an all-inclusive extension of his act, and persona. As live television had done for stage comedians, the Internet created a new, more personal sense of accessibility between the artist and audience – and Carlin was its "Kovacs." He also became part owner of then-fledgling comedy mega-site Laugh.com, which still features him as its "headline" attraction, and helps to keep his, and the legacies of other comedians of the past – including Ernie's – alive and immediate for the enjoyment of present and future leagues of fans.

Like Ernie had with early TV, George saw the untapped potential of the Net; everyone having their own personal digital-porthole into his career. Instead of putting up barricades, he converted that paradigm into his own cyber-version of Elvis's Graceland.

If any single reality-swing brought about by the World-Wide Web is sublimely Kovacsian, it is YouTube and similar content-on-demand cyber portals which, fortunately for us all, most of Ernie's visual legacy – the well-known elements and the rare – now exists upon. Combined with the emergence of broadcast-quality personal video, the freedom of every user to be his or her own producer and program director, to surgically self-edit one's entertainment divorced from the intrusion of societal trends, would make Ernie feel perfectly vindicated at last, were he here to see it.

That, in actuality, is how ahead of the curve Ernie was.

A half century later... finally anyone – everyone – can be Ernie Kovacs.

The cigar is optional.

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*Allen apparently liked Ernie's humor enough to steal it on occasion. One example was Ernie's unflappable "Mr. Question Man," from whom Allen's "Mr. Answer Man" took liberties with slightly altered punchlines. Kovacs told Allen, via an ad in the industry newspaper Variety, to "get his own material for a change."

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*A late breaker: Ben Model has produced an incredible, new box set of Kovacs rarities, many never seen since their original airdates. The Ernie Kovacs Collection (Shout! Factory 2010). More info here.

Dusting Out Comedy's Attic – Part Two

2010-08-22T14:50:00.000-07:00

ABBOTT & COSTELLO, LAUREL & HARDY

The public domain did not serve well these two great comedy teams. Perhaps more accurately, it lived down to its reputation. Do not judge the value of these men and their work, by what may be found of their legacies in the bargain bin.

No one denies Laurel & Hardy's place in cinema history. Abbott & Costello, despite a hit-n-miss résumé of diverting romps and formulaic yawners, were the comedic gatekeepers of America's morale through the WWII years, and Hollywood's top draw until Martin & Lewis in the mid-1950s.

The best films of both teams are preserved in beautifully packaged box sets and single-disk collections of varying price and quality. Yet the pub-dom has still managed to sneak a foothold.

Two particular L&H titles have lurked for years in the PD aisle, usually packaged together, shadily, as back-to-back "classics." Just remember, they're not in the public domain for nothing.

"The Flying Deuces" (1939) is often rated higher than it deserves, simply because of its status as a full-fledged Laurel & Hardy feature by a major studio – made while the pair were still considered not too far distant from their prime.

A few decently comic moments give it about the right "feel" of a typical L&H vehicle, but by no means does it earn a place among their best. How it ended up PD is not hard to fathom, being the first Laurel & Hardy project made apart from Hal Roach, whose studio first paired them, and by whom the majority of their classic comedies were produced. "Deuces" was made at RKO.

Despite such watersheds to its credit as "King Kong" (1933) and "Citizen Kane" (1941), RKO pumped out far more B-Stinkers than its reputation – or memorable baubles like the above – could counter-balance. When the studio went belly-up, becoming part of Desi Arnaz's "Desilu" empire in the 1950s, this orphaned Laurel & Hardy movie was left to fend for itself.

Essentially a half-hearted remake of their earlier film "Beau Hunks" (1931), "Deuces" puts the pair in the French Foreign Legion. Oliver impulsively joins – dragging Stan along – to eradicate from his heart the memory of a lost paramour. This, after a failed attempt at suicide by drowning, along to which he'd also dragged poor little Stan. Perhaps the film's most shining moment is a rare sample of Hardy's disarming tenor, in a brief rendition of "Harvest Moon."

Its initial box-office success had convinced Stan & Ollie that they'd run their course with Roach, and hastened their signing with 20th-Century Fox. The "upgrade" signaled the beginning of the end, as slowly they realized they'd sold their souls to become merely brand-names.

Laurel, the duo's comedic mastermind behind the scenes, was confronted by something he'd never dealt with at Roach: production committees who overruled him, and who had no real clue about the unique chemistry he and Oliver shared.

The result at Fox was a slew of dragging, overboiled feature-comedies that were exactly what they looked like: stop-watched, formula-scripted, thin-skinned pabulum. Laurel & Hardy would never again star in films as satisfying – to themselves or their audience – as those of their Hal Roach era.

"Utopia" (1951), also known by "Atoll K" and "Robinson Crusoeland," represents the absolute end of the line; the last act of their careers, and not on a high note.

Filmed independently in Italy, with a French-only speaking director, "Utopia" was a scheduled 12-week shoot that wound up costing an entire year of their lives. Plagued by age and illness, Laurel & Hardy's finalé was their worst nightmare. At various points during the marathon, both Stan and Oliver required hospitalization. Gaunt little Stan's diabetes flared in the prolonged interval away from home, and formed an ulcerous colon infection. Oliver's weight ballooned over 300 pounds and he endured cardiac strain. Production slowed to a crawl, to afford the film's ailing stars frequent rest-breaks from the onslaught of approaching death.

The grind wore them down, visibly. Their relationship with the director, to whom they could not even verbally communicate, became predictably dicey. Blacklisted American director John Berry was quietly recruited to run herd on the film. His name is not in the credits, but Stan's widow Ida, years later, confirmed his presence.

How could anything funny have resulted from such horrid circumstances?

"Utopia" may own another quaint distinction, as one of the earliest examples of intentional product placement. In a scene that involved wine, a full-on shot of a bottle of Welch's Grape Juice was randomly spliced in, for the sake of any impressionable kiddies in the audience. Though at the time they were probably on enough prescription meds and painkillers to stock a junkie's closet, Laurel & Hardy could not be seen to condone alcoholism.

Even in this little slice of Hell on celluloid, however, they still manage to be Stan & Ollie.

Laurel, then a frail old man, could still sheepishly confide to the lens, deliver his trademark malapropisms, and – finessing his body english carefully – throw down slapstick. Oliver was still the master of the slow burn past the fourth wall, communicating directly to the audience his evaporating patience with Stan's twerpishness – the comedic turn that only he could get away with. It is, at its core, a Laurel & Hardy picture. Maybe that's all it needs.

But the way-too-obvious physical pain etched on their faces between gags is an ordeal you may only want to endure once.

Abbott & Costello's PD entries are a real study in contrasts; two films that respectively represent both extremes of the public domain dichotomy – a rip-off repository of crap, yet a vault of cinema preservation and artistic democracy.

First, the crap.

You'd have to search awfully hard – possibly even film one yourself – to hold in your hands a comedy as unfunny as "Africa Screams" (1949). Its catchy title suggests a yock-fest of long-whiskered punchlines, and a generous helping of what might be termed "nurturing corn." If only it were that good.

Bud and Lou were under contract to Universal Studios for most of their film careers. Written into that contract was the privilege to occasionally go "off campus" to film comedies independently, under their own banner. A shrewd move, at least on paper.

Their first attempt, "Africa Screams" was shot at Nassour Studios, a typical lower-rent movie facility of 1940s Hollywood, and released through United Artists.

The script reads like a first draft, painfully straining, but defaulting to old standby routines when flopsweat threatens. Possibly they didn't yet trust themselves away from the streamlined assembly system of Universal Studios – on their own, with a track record to uphold. To shore up Universal's vested interest in their success, a number of then-famous cameos were thrown in as insurance.

Celebrated animal trainer Clyde Beatty (the Sigfried & Roy of his day) starred in a number of his own jungle B-adventures, usually as himself. Since "Africa Screams" was a spoof of such films, Beatty was given a featured spot in hopes it would attract his audience's box-office. Did it work? Hint: Beatty's own films just barely tread water in the public lake too.

Also shticking hither and tither are denizens of the Stooge universe, Shemp Howard and Joe Besser. Besser supplies his childish "stinky" character, and Shemp pops up as a nearsighted jungle tour-guide. Some of the (damn few) genuinely funny moments in the film belong to Shemp, who was known in the business as a "saver," a utility comic who could compliment an otherwise lackluster film, making its producers seem semi-competent with improvised clowning on a level that the script could apparently not create.

If only Shemp Howard's nearly forgotten solo starring vehicles were given a spotlight like the one in which the hardly-deserving "Africa Screams" has basked for so long. Presently the only ray of hope is Passport Video's 2008 release, "Shemp Cocktail: A Toast To The Original Stooge," but that's another article.

Two of A&C's other co-stars in the brutal catastrophe that is "Africa Screams" are anything but funny – in fact, they become downright scary, beyond their roles as heavies.

The Baer brothers, Max and Buddy, were tough hombres in real life. Max, today remembered primarily as the dad of actor Max Baer, Jr. (Jethro on the original "Beverly Hillbillies" sitcom), was a former heavyweight boxing champion. Younger brother Buddy was even bigger, and a contender himself.

How tough?

Buddy once knocked Joe Louis completely out of the ring – though the Brown Bomber climbed back in to get even. Max was infamous for arguably the single hardest punch ever thrown in modern boxing, against a fighter named Frank Campbell, who had been considered a major up-and-comer, until...

Baer delivered a shot that tore Campbell's brain free of all its connective tissue inside the skull, which should have been instantly fatal. Campbell somehow lasted the round, and slowly fading into oblivion while still on his feet, groggily complained to his cornermen that something in his head had "snapped." Campbell fought on for three more rounds unaware that he'd just been killed, until his corpse finally ceased functioning and slumped against the ropes in the fifth. Later, Max Baer's public apology to Campbell's widow, offering to have amputated and present her with the hand that took her husband, became sports legend. She declined, saying "it could have been you, too." Baer was ultimately dethroned by James "Cinderella Man" Braddock.

Lou Costello, despite his cannonball-like physique, was an astonishingly capable athlete, and himself an amateur boxer. He had great natural rapport with he-men like the Baers, and his celebrity status allowed him access into their social circles, and they into his. It's no surprise they crop up in supporting roles in Costello's films from time to time.

The brothers, quite convincingly, play bickering hitmen who stalk Bud & Lou. In one scene their squabbling turns physical. Though the fracas may have been part of the script, somehow it looks a bit unscripted on-screen. Fully out of character, Max blurts, "I'll hit you harder than Louis ever did!" The fight ceases to appear comical at that instant – though Buddy finally "sells" the knock-out punch and goes down on cue, albeit with a pissed expression.

Everything about the film has an air of desperation. Even a King Kong joke, in the final reel, falls flatter than a canned ham dropped from the Empire State Building.

Thanks to the public domain, with countless re-issues over the years, the world will never fully be rid of "Africa Screams." It's even been covertly thrown into some cheap PD box-sets as filler. If you bought one of these instant film collections, recheck that contents list; you may own a copy of Abbott & Costello's least-wanted film without even knowing it!

At the other end of the spectrum, Abbott & Costello also starred in what may be a candidate for Crown Jewel of Public Domain Cinema. It is a film so rare that it technically no longer exists – the print used for PD distribution is a poor second-generation copy, the only version known.

"Jack and the Beanstalk" (1952), like its bastard cousin "Africa Screams," was made independently from Universal. Gladly, all similarity ends there! Lou Costello himself, with his brother Pat, were executive producers, under Lou's "Exclusive Productions" banner. It was first released through Warner Brothers.

Lou starred as Jack, and Bud as Mr. Dinklepuss, who buys Jack's cow for those pesky magic beans and tags along for the trip up-stalk. Big scary Buddy Baer returned, to play the Giant – and rarely was there ever more inspired typecasting.

MGM's "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) served as the template for "Jack," which along with "Abbott & Costello Meet Captain Kidd" (also 1952), are the only two A&C features shot in color.

Though not nearly as financially extravagant as "Oz," Costello's musical comic-fantasy succeeds in exuding a kindred charm. The disparities are obvious, but not damning.

Where "Oz" employs a cast of thousands, "Jack" has... well, merely dozens. "Oz's" immense musical numbers overflow with throngs of dancers. "Jack" uses an ensemble of five; four women and one man, attempting to dance hard enough for a troop ten times larger. They provide both opening and end-reel dance numbers, while the remaining "townspeople" watch on, subtly bouncing in rhythm – but somehow one can still come away recalling these segments as huge.

Like "Oz," the film begins with non-color footage to represent the movie's "reality," then switches to full-color to serve up the magical other-worldliness of the fairy-tale. Sadly, it is here we must document the most tragic chapter of this film's journey to the public domain.

Costello financed the project out of his own pocket, and sank a major portion of the film's half-million dollar budget into its technical aspects. He wanted it to be every bit as wonderful, visually, as its muse, "The Wizard of Oz."

The non-color portions were not filmed black-&-white, but in rich amber sepia-tone, using the expensive "SuperCine" color process, which also made the full-color portions fantastically vibrant.

After its theatrical run, the film disappeared into that anonymous Hollywood vault, and did not emerge again until the film was released for television. Long story short: when the 16mm TV dupes were made from the original Eastman negative, the amber footage was mis-processed as standard black-&-white, and the shrinkage from 35mm did a hardluck number on the color portion as well.

Then, a twist of the dagger – the dynamic original was lost. A pristine first-generation print may still exist somewhere, but if so, it has not been released on DVD. Only the sub-standard TV print remains to represent this unique piece of comedy cinema. It seems that every re-issue of Abbott & Costello's "Jack and the Beanstalk" has been made from the same crappy 16mm dupe. So, no one who did not witness an original 1952 theatrical screening has ever seen the film in its intended format.

Happily, what it may forfeit technically, it reimburses comedically. The experience holds up considerably well; Bud & Lou in fine form. The fun is well-paced and just right for kids – parents need not worry about inappropriate content when leaving the room to check on dinner.

The Giant – Buddy Baer in assuredly the most memorable role of his acting career – is truly menacing, though not quite over-the-top enough to cause an actual nightmare. Like Andre in "Princess Bride," Buddy pulls off giant-ness just fine without special effects.

Though kid-level corny, A&C's hijinks are well-metered and confident. Even dastardly Bud attempts some slapstick, rather than leaving it all for cherubic Lou, whose most charming scene is his dance with the Giant's amazon housemaid, played by 6' 2" actress Dorothy Ford.

The film's only drawback is its handling of the romantic leads, Shaye Cogan and James Alexander, as Princess Eloise and Prince Arthur. Not to slam their talents, but here they could just as easily have been cardboard stand-ins. Community Theatre 101 singing roles, for an equally forgettable set of romantic duets, which they nearly sleepwalk through anyway. Fact was that the audience was there to see Abbott & Costello. A prince and princess were simply obligatory story elements, thus left undercooked. Cogan's and Alexander's only stylistic choice may have simply been to impersonate singing firewood.

"Jack and the Beanstalk" is still by all means a PD must-own for any fan of the Boys From Joisey, or any serious comedy collector for that matter, period. It's more than worth its inevitably meager price.

Also worth a quick mention are A&C's hosting turns on the Colgate Comedy Hour... on second thought, maybe that's all they're worth. Let's move on.

THE THREE STOOGES

Something stupid, and wonderful, happened in the late 1960s to the Three Stooges.

First we must backtrack to the 30s, and the beginning of their careers at Columbia Studios. Harry Cohn, grand mogul and industry asshole of legend, made a magnanimous pledge to Moe Howard: that for as long as he (Cohn) lived, the Stooges would have work at Columbia. Even when surrogate Stooges were employed after the deaths of Curly and Shemp, Cohn kept his word, literally.

In a 1974 interview, elderly Larry Fine recalled a surreal moment at Harry Cohn's funeral. One of the Columbia VPs gazed over the chief's casket at he and Moe – pointed to them subtly but quite deliberately, then made a slow cut-throat gesture. That pretty much said it all, before Cohn was even in the ground.

It's hard to imagine today, with Stoogemania as popular and profitable as ever, that Columbia once considered them nothing more than disdainful dead weight, despite all the box-office they had earned. They were old and in the way. The entire industry seemed to turn on them – while still profiting from their work. Finally the government too weighed in with an anti-stooge bias.

Legislation signed by then-California Governor and former Screen Actors' Guild President, Ronald Reagan, regarding royalty limitations past the 1960s, meant the Stooges were owed the whopping sum of... nothing, nada, zilch, for their nearly 200 films. Then to turn yet another quick buck from their vast archive of duty-free Stooge shorts, Columbia sold them in random incremental bundles to TV syndication.

Among the first to go were "Disorder In The Court" (1936), "Malice In The Palace" (1949), "Sing A Song of Six Pants" and that ageless favorite of Shemp fans, "Brideless Groom" (both 1947).

Columbia was too busy counting syndication receipts to notice mere copyrights oozing down the drain. Then something happened that nobody in the head office had counted on. The old Stooge films were hits – enormous hits – becoming overnight the hottest after-school TV property. Station managers and theater owners were phoning, asking if the Stooges were even still alive, and if so, were they available for promotional appearances.

Moe Howard and Larry Fine had just accepted the onset of mundane retirement. Moe had even been turned away at the Columbia front gate, humiliated over an expired entrance pass – a crushing insult that made the "rough stooge's" tears flow.

Larry, having reconciled with hasbeen-ism – his wild frizzy mane now trimmed and combed to look like any other boring non-stooge his age – was working as manager of a small apartment complex.

Suddenly Showbiz put them on speed-dial; senior citizen status and all, they were stars again! All was "forgiven." Tch.

There followed a spontaneous bowel-loosening at Columbia when someone noticed their new big sellers were legal free balloons. Their unabashed dissing of the longest-running comedy act in the history of Hollywood's studio system was about to boomerang on them; a legal custard pie right in the face!

The Stooges were due an engraved apology at that once foreboding front gate – not to mention a shiny new pass card.

A mad scramble commenced, before Moe Howard could catch news of the gaffe. Moe was known as an astute businessman, who chummed around more with judges and attorneys than with showfolk, and who would have certainly brought them to the fray, were he suddenly savvy to the legal bumble. Columbia went into a Stooge copyright renewal frenzy.

They further managed to distract the Stooges from pursuing a day in court, with lucrative new contracts to star in feature-length comedies – something the team had always begged them for, in vain, when they were younger, more capable funnymen – and key members Curly and Shemp were alive.

"Snow White and the Three Stooges" (1961), "The Three Stooges Meet Hercules," "The Three Stooges In Orbit" (both 1962) and similar films that followed – with makeshift stooge Curly Joe DeRita taking the Curly/Shemp spot on the roster – were rightful rewards to the Stooges on behalf of their rebirth and new popularity, but were not minus an agenda.

That first handful of short films sold to TV, however, managed to slip under the wire and become public domain freejacks. They may still be included in "official" remastered Stooge box sets, but are ripe pickings for anyone with a duping fee and a distribution license.

"Brideless Groom" – in which Emil Sitka uttered his trademark "Hold hands, you lovebirds!" – is soaked in irony. The bittersweet backstory begins with its being a rehash of a film already in the public domain, thanks to one particular man behind the camera.

Screenwriter and sometime director Clyde Bruckman's name should sound familiar to most classic comedy collectors. His career spanned the silent era to mid-50s television. He was crony to nearly every major film comedian of his day, and lent a hand in shaping a number of them.

He also had a somewhat off-color reputation in the business, as a script scavenger. His pattern was to retool work he'd penned for the silents, add dialogue, and offer it up as new writing. The practice may not sound quite underhanded, especially when the old script being cannibalized was his own anyway. But it was considered artistic thievery, since it was secretly giving one comedian's material to another.

Bruckman's script for "Brideless Groom" was a butcher-blocked reprise of "Seven Chances," which he'd co-authored with Buster Keaton a quarter-century earlier. The plot centers around devoutly unmarried Shemp's (like Buster's) frantic need to find a wife before an hours-away deadline, or kiss a massive, willed inheritance goodbye.

In the Keaton version, Buster's sweetheart refuses to marry him for any reason materialistic. "You just want me for YOUR money!" The entire plot may have been to facilitate that one punchline.

Buster is stymied by his own good luck, engaged to a genuine, pure hearted Miss Right. A well-meaning friend attempts to remedy the situation by taking the story to the newspapers – it winds up on that afternoon's front page. Suddenly every hulking spinster in the tri-county area is roaming the streets, in wedding veiled hordes, each clutching Buster's photo. What results is one of the greatest, and most original, chase comedies of the silent golden age – replete with a veritable portfolio of Keaton's mesmerizing physical stunts and antics, that would have sent any lesser comedian to the hospital, if not the morgue.

Bruckman took the Keatonesque scenario and Stooge-a-fied it, to accommodate the less-death defying comedy of Shemp Howard. The most original line in the film is not about its words, but Shemp's delivery of them: "Nobody's interested in me!" spoken not as a lament, but a triumph of the soul!

In Bruckman's revamping, Moe puts an ad in the local paper to find his stubborn partner a mate, which is soon answered by every ball-busting poolhall skirt who ever rolled Shemp for a free drink. A butch battle royale ensues, with slim hope of Shemp's bachelorhood being KO'd before the final bell – even against his will – by the one woman who genuinely wants him regardless of the windfall, a frumpy amazon with a heart of gold, played by plain but statuesque Dee Green.

Perhaps it's fitting that nobody legitimately connected to "Brideless Groom" could ever collect a royalty, considering the bad blood it would potentially have stirred.

Keaton was never heard to complain over the Stooges "borrowing" from him. The silent icon was an easy emotional touch, with undying faith in his former collaborators, unruffled by their accused iniquities. Keaton stood by his claim of Arbuckle's innocence, to his own death, 33 years after Fatty's. It's easy to imagine that Bruckman too garnered his forgiveness. Clyde wrote the story to begin with, Buster probably reasoned, so it was Clyde's to rewrite. Artistic license, legal or otherwise, be damned. The real question is whether Bruckman ever forgave himself.

Harold Lloyd, who had also employed Bruckman in the silent era, wasn't as charitable. Lloyd sued him, when gags he recognized from his own films began seeping into Abbott & Costello's weekly television programs, for which Bruckman served as writer.

Whatever penalty the industry dealt Clyde Bruckman because of his constant self-plagerism, it was small compared to the emotional toll of the artistic stigma. He was an addict, in violation of a creative trust that perhaps he himself held sacred despite his own compulsive misdeeds against it. Like an alcoholic whose heart yearns for sobriety even while his brain covets drink.

Lloyd's lawsuit tipped the scale out of Bruckman's favor, far enough to crack his will. His predilection had finally cost him his membership in the old comedy fraternity. One night in 1955, the weight could be endured no longer.

Packing a .45 pistol – borrowed, in a double-twist of irony, like the plot of "Seven Chances," from Buster Keaton – Bruckman entered a Santa Monica restaurant. After consuming an expensive meal he was too broke to afford, he went into the mens washroom and put the gun's muzzle to his temple.

"Groom" is also famous among Stoogephiles for the lovely songbird Christine McIntyre's legendary ballistic meltdown with Shemp.

After several useless takes, she just couldn't mean-up enough to smack Howard around as the script called for. Story goes, the director resorted to pushing her emotional buttons between takes, tweaking her into a semi-legit rage, to color her performance. Then Shemp, usually a softspoken soul behind the scenes, forced the issue: "Come on, Chris, give it to me, let me have it!"

McIntyre exploded. The cameras rolled, and Shemp must've thought he'd stepped into the ring with Jack Dempsey. The demure blonde singer/actress slapped him rawer than steak tartar, then iced the cake with a right haymaker that knocked Shemp through the thin pastewood door of the set. Everyone rushed to Shemp lying prone on the floor. In tears, McIntyre got to him first, to profusely apologize, but he woozily stopped her; "I told ya to let me have it, kid, and you sure as hell did!"

It's interesting to watch McIntyre in Stooge films subsequent to "Groom" – any trepidation or reluctance she may have harbored about dishing out slapstick was apparently erased clean by that whirlwind moment of madness with Shemp. Her inner-Moe had broken through – the Stooge-force was with her.

Among other odd Stoogean treasures drifting along the public tributary is the neglected old relic, "Swing Parade of 1946," a full-length musical comedy produced by Monogram Studios, for which the Stooges (Moe, Larry & Curly) were on loan from Columbia.

It's unknown whether an immaculate print of this diced and spliced wonder exists, which is a shame. Hardly was there ever a poverty-row curio more deserving of restoration. Filmed just before their Columbia short "Half-Wit's Holiday," during which Curly's career was garroted by a massive stroke, "Swing Parade" almost owned the grim asterisk as the comedian's final screen appearance. Otherwise, it is one of the most overlooked, under-appreciated gemstones in the entire PD dowry.

Rebelling against a rich tight-collared father, an ambitious young nightclub owner (singer Phil Regan) hires dishwashers/handymen/waiters, the Stooges, to help him open for business before his creditors and competitors descend – legal and mobster alike. A hopeful songstress facing eviction (Gale Storm) shows up to audition, and must battle her way into Regan's heart after being mistaken for a collections-server and repeatedly tossed to the curb. But aided by the Stooges, love and luck prevail. A run-of-the-mill plot as budget musical comedies go, but don't be fooled.

Monogram wisely refrained from the temptation to homogenize the Stooges away from their Columbia-style shenanigans. The boys are as enjoyable here as in almost anything filmed at their homebase studio – hardly a second-rate outing for them. The gags are of course derivative. Only two are lifted outright from previous Stooge films. First is their patented dishwashing shtick – Larry and Curly absent-mindedly wash and dry the same dish over and over, around Moe's back. The bit had been reprised so often, however, it hardly belonged to any single film. Second is Curly's plumbing fiasco; he keeps attaching pipes together until he has trapped himself in a maze – with the leak he was attempting to plug still raining down on him.

Moe and Curly also take turns recreating snipets of their waiter routine from the Ted Healey years. Still, it comes off with a certain freshness, and yes, it's still funny.

Monogram managed to wrap together a nice little parcel in "Swing Parade," despite its reputation as the studio where the careers of has-beens and never-weres went to die – whose contribution to cinema amounts to little more than the Bowery Boys, some of John Wayne's pre-stardom westerns and Bela Lugosi's dead end as a studio contract star. They wasted little potential regarding their ever-brief ownership of the Stooges, complimenting them with a fine cadre of supporting actors, though they aren't technically the actual stars of the picture.

In a secondary plot this remarkable cast, of war-era Hollywood's most underrated, includes character actress Mary Treen in a rare – singing yet – ingenue role. That same year she played Harry Bailey's wiry spinster cousin Tilly in "It's A Wonderful Life."

Even musically, the film flirts with surprising levels of quality, featuring rare performances like Louis Jordan's incredible throw-down of "Caldonia," and Connee Boswell's take of "Stormy Weather."

Sadly, this gem has gone long without polish, as its distracting technical flaws will attest in most re-issues. Some splices look like a sleeve of Scotch tape is being forced through the projector.

So far, only Legend Films has stepped forward, who offer the film in both b&w and colorized versions. However, their 2008 set, "The Three Stooges: Classic Shorts & Swing Parade" tosses in yet another set of the four traditional Stooge pub-dom re-dupes as its raison d'être, hinting the all-but-forgotten musical could not justify a singular release.

If the domain stands for anything, it's redundancy.

Perhaps a mediocre watch to the average DVD consumer, to cine-buffs who appreciate what "Swing Parade of 1946" represents – a solid effort by a studio not known for greatness, and a showcase of quality performers who were usually taken for granted and under-used elsewhere – it's a brief spring stroll amid the public domain winter.

Dusting Out Comedy's Attic – Part One

2010-08-19T19:48:00.000-07:00

To a motion picture, "public domain" is the placard on the graveyard gate.

It can mean a movie is ancient, utter crap, or both. For reasons long forgotten, nobody gives a damn – likely because everyone connected to the epic is dead, or at least old and broke. The film has been reduced to its mere value as an historical curiosity, or lack thereof; hardly even worth the watch. Now it belongs to no one, and therefor, everyone.

The quickest clue that the DVD in your hand is a PD property, is when you spot other copies with differing box designs, by competing distributors.

Someone found an old neg, or print, of a movie with an expired copyright – or inherited it from a previous distributor – paid a duping fee, hired a cheap designer to produce zippy new packaging, and put the film back on the market. Nothing illegal.

If it's a film on your list, you'll likely have no problem finding it in abundance, and cheap. Your only hardship will be selecting which ugly package design you most tolerate. Your only real risk the quality of the source used for duping, which may be anything from pristine to an animation of projector-burn bubbles and jagged splices.

The shortfalls can be offset by the purchase price. I've paid anywhere from 99¢ for titles that became welcome additions to my collection, up to $10 for some that ended up in the Goodwill donation box. Clinkers abound, but there are some real treasures lurking on poverty row.

George Romero's original "Night of the Living Dead" (1966) is an ultimate must-have for any serious horror aficionado – and the cheapest ticket at the video store. Romero sold his film outright just to get it into theaters. Years later the copyrights lapsed and "Night" was lost in limbo. Before Romero could blink, dozens of fly-by-night video houses had their own releases on the market, cashing in on its growing "post mortem" popularity, denying him, its own author, of a rightful payday. All legally.

At last he bit the bullet and produced a remake in 1990, just to recapture his copyright on the title.

In terms of Classic Comedies in the public domain, there are definitely equal helpings of gems and junk. Though the diamonds are there to be unearthed, for one willing to burrow.

For anally adamant purists, meticulously restored editions of these films do exist – usually as part of pricey, major studio-licensed box sets. If you'd settle for less-than-ideal, and your DVD library looking hodgepodge-slutty rather than virginally symmetrical, you can still own the kings of early comedy, on a budget.

The films, and a few connected anecdotes, are worth a look.

CHARLIE CHAPLIN, BUSTER KEATON and NEARLY THE ENTIRE SILENT ERA

Many of Chaplin's and Keaton's works have PD versions afloat. Early in the home-video craze, however, the keepers of Chaplin's estate swooped in to secure the rights to his most iconic titles. Who could blame them?

The only Chaplin films left readily accessible to PD hunters are his earliest, which despite the Estate's cherry-picking, still comprise a noteworthy list containing many of his landmarks.

The two films that vie for Charlie's first appearance as the Tramp, "Kid Auto Races At Venice" and "Mabel's Strange Predicament" (both 1914) are public. Also in legal freefall are "The Tramp" (1915), "The Rink" (1916), "Easy Street" and "The Immigrant" (1917), and even his surreally melancholy "Sunnyside" (1919), to name a few.

The public trail also contains two historic mileposts. Mack Sennett's "Tillie's Punctured Romance" (1914), the cinema's first feature-length comedy, stars Marie Dressler, plus Chaplin and Mabel Normand as featured players. "The Kid" (1921), starring Chaplin and prodigy Jackie Coogan, is a bona fide piece of comedy history indeed; Chaplin's first attempt at a grand opus, the moment he turned movie comedy on its head with a then-radical concept called comic-pathos: comedy that tugs the heartstrings – as well as taps the funnybone – to triumphal heights.

In the VHS era, Chaplin's first major feature, "The Gold Rush" (1925) was an ubiquitous presence on the PD shelf, released under many disparate distribution banners. Though Chaplin himself re-released the film theatrically in 1942, he'd added a narration track – creating technically a "new" work. The original silent version was, legally speaking, left out in the cold by that misstep, and the vultures descended.

The Chaplin Estate rectified the situation somewhat for the DVD market, awarding the Parisian company MK2, in league with Warner Home Video, the official rights to the Tramp's adventures – and most importantly Charlie's latter-career masterpieces. Fans desiring copies of, say, "City Lights" (1931) or "The Great Dictator" (1940) to complete their collections, must pay full retail, or hope for a deal on Amazon. Warner Home Video's "The Chaplin Collection" is the obvious first choice.

Fortunately for the PD Chaplin connoisseur, there is an almost equivalent "single purchase" instant library.

St. Clair Entertainment offers over 50 of Charlie's silents in a 3-disk compilation entitled simply enough: "Charlie Chaplin." It includes just about everything one could need, except "Tillie" and "Gold Rush," which can still be had separately, or within less satisfying sets than St. Clair's, released by other distributors. The set also contains a few of his partnerings with Mabel Normand, making it a great budget-friendly find for her fans as well.

Many of these films are available as free internet downloads, some even live on YouTube, but again there are no guarantees regarding picture quality.

Buster Keaton was not as lucky. There was no "Keaton Estate" to rescue his films from the public swamp. In fact, there were almost no films to be rescued.

In the early 1950s, actor James Mason became owner of the residence that had once been Keaton's lavish Beverly Hills "Italian Villa." While remodeling he discovered a long-ignored and deteriorating garden toolshed, which had apparently served as Keaton's editing studio. Inside sat Keaton's films – most considered lost, up until that moment – still in the canisters that the comedian had left them, years prior.

Those air-tight tins, combined with the cold of many winters, were all that had preserved Keaton's legacy, printed on the unstable nitrate film of the silent era. Buster believed that the talkies had made his work hopelessly obsolete, and so had left his classics behind to rot.

Successfully copied onto safety filmstock, the pancake-hatted "Great Stone Face" was reborn to delight modern audiences just as he had those of his own era. The rediscovery of Keaton's genius, by cinema buffs worldwide, sparked searches around the globe for other archived-and-forgotten Keaton gems. The quest yielded enough material for Public Domain distributors to become the primary custodians of Keaton's filmography. Many, many competing releases of Buster Keaton masterworks are now available, and in quite viewable condition.

Consistently the best are by Kino International. Ted Turner's TMC Archives also offers well restored Keaton keepers, and Sony recently released Keaton's rare – if less classic – Columbia shorts, in a 2006 package somewhat misleadingly titled "The Buster Keaton Collection."

The Kino release of "Seven Chances" (1925) – part of their DVD box "The Art of Buster Keaton" – screen size not withstanding, may be exactly what 1925 audiences witnessed. A picture as crystal as any digital age could imagine; it appears to have been filmed yesterday.

Also from Kino is "Arbuckle & Keaton, Volumes One and Two: The Original Comique/Paramount Shorts 1917-1920" which offers Keaton's early collaborations with his mentor, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, in digitally restored quality. Image Entertainment's "The Best Arbuckle/Keaton Collection" features practically the same den of films, plus two, also restored – with just a few differences in applied music and other peripherals. It may in fact be a superior buy.

Both sets preserve a rare, unique chapter in silent comedy history; the filmed incubation period of one of the cinema's greatest clowns.

While jewel prints of Keaton's "College," "The General" (both 1927) and "Steamboat Bill Jr." (1928) are all available at premium prices, budget-friendly gently-flawed versions can still be had by the neophyte film buff living paycheck-to-paycheck. Echo Bridge Home Entertainment's "Buster Keaton 2-DVD Pack" contains the above-mentioned three, plus a Keaton documentary, all for about the cost of lunch for two at McDonalds. Public powerhouse Alpha Video has long offered "The General" as one of its flagship DVDs, though likely not from a source as well-preserved as that in Kino's catalog. The prices are of course different, and the choice yours.

Keaton's equally collectible silent shorts can be acquired with single-box buys like BCI/Eclipse's "Buster Keaton: The Great Stone Face of Comedy." In addition to the aforementioned "General," "College" and 1931's "Parlor, Bedroom and Bath," it includes "The Boat" and "The Playhouse" (both 1921 and themselves worth the set's asking price), 1922's "The Paleface," "The Electric House," "The Frozen North" and the incomparable "Cops." Start collecting!

W.C. FIELDS

Fields's very first film, the silent "Pool Sharks" (1915) is little more than a documentation of his Vaudeville billiards act, with comic romance tacked on. Filmed at New York's Gaumont Company, and written by Fields himself, it nearly ranks as a home movie.

Its most prominent aspect today is the indirect historical reference to the state of his career at the time it was filmed. His classic persona was still years, decades, away. He sports a very fake mustache – jet black in contrast to a starkly blond head – transparently in hopes of jumpstarting his film career via resonance with Charlie Chaplin's audience.

Years before Chaplin even beheld a movie camera, W.C. Fields was already a world celebrity; master juggler, marquee dominant Vaudevillian. He prided himself as a "next-to-closing" caliber performer whom few dared follow on the bill – save the silver-haired cellist sent on to drive the audience toward the exits; "play to the haircuts."

When the scrawny, cane-twirling, derby-hatted limey in the "flickers" threatened to surpass his stardom, and income, literally overnight, alpha-male Fields took it as a cue; it was time he conquered the movies. In terms of fame, he reasoned, he simply outranked Chaplin. Assuming a quick rectification of the pecking order, he failed the classic comedian's fail – the sin of trying too hard.

By the mid-twenties, it would be arguable that Chaplin was the most recognized man on Earth, eclipsing even world leaders.

Fields did not capture great public interest with his initial run at film comedy. He burned through warehouses of film, sometimes serving as his own mogul, attempting to bottle Chaplin's thunder, with only subjective success.

Harold Lloyd fought a similarly futile battle, in over a hundred short comedies for Hal Roach, as an acutely formulated "Anti-Tramp" character nicknamed Lonesome Luke.

Fields's pre-talkie era speaks for itself regarding the sheer hell through which he put himself. Hardly any of his silents after "Pool Sharks" has survived. Near zippo. Movie historians reference them in flimsy context-free anecdotes occasionally, but rarely does an inch of celluloid ever surface.

In fact, when Fields's entire filmography is considered, including his sound-era classics – which proved he may indeed have been the world's funniest man, possibly second only to Groucho Marx – less than half his life's output is still available to modern audiences.

If all known of Eddie Murphy was his work after Saturday Night Live... or we had only Jerry Lewis's movies without Dean Martin... that's about the ratio reflected by what presently exists of W.C. Fields. The films for which he is most celebrated were produced in his autumn years, long after Fields the young skinny juggler and acrobat had cross-dissolved into Fields the wide-trousered, bulbous-nosed curmudgeon.

His luck as a film actor was better served by directors like D.W. Griffith, who recognized his natural magnetism, and cast him accordingly in work like "Sally of the Sawdust" (1925) and even a remake of "Tillie's Punctured Romance" (1928). But when he defaulted in his head, to his ego's competition with Charlie, his grinding gears became intensely visible. Only years later, after his stagnating career demanded he re-invent himself, did Fields finally gain self-awareness. His pretense of hatred against The Little Tramp had blinded him to his own true caricature.

In the public domain, one may still view the turning point: "The Golf Specialist" (1930) resulted from Fields bartering with Mack Sennett who at the time, like Fields, was rudderless, seeking an inroad back to relevance. They each offered something the other craved; Sennett a bankable star to revitalize his career as a producer, and Fields a movie industry facilitator who'd allow him to experiment divorced from a crippling need to outshine Chaplin. He'd obviously, years prior, lost that war. Finally freed, he wanted to compete instead with his own perfectionism, and get it on film.

The series of short comedies Fields embarked upon under Sennett's post-prime supervision were his second attempt to make himself a film comedian, and Sennett's last hurrah as a comedy filmmaker. Just before exposing the first reel, Fields nearly jinxed the entire deal by mentioning to Mack that he expected $5,000 per week – his customary Vaudeville performance fee. Sennett swallowed hard, but forked over nearly his last roll of dimes to keep the stalled superstar hovering in his airspace.

"The Golf Specialist," like "Pool Sharks," was made from retooling a Fields stage skit, both to minimize scripting chores, and hasten completion of the inaugural project of their partnership – quick and dirty as a back alley skirt-lift.

The budget, nearly drained by Fields's abrupt stipend demand, dropped to ultra-cheap. The final scene, supposedly on a golf course, was staged indoors upon a cinderblock platform. The fairway was a painted backdrop. A static single-camera set captured Fields's Vaudeville golf sketch for posterity, in a prolonged medium shot. The claustrophobic cinematography was intentional, however, to allow the presence of the film's real star – the crucial element that Fields had latently realized was his "keystone," pun intended – a microphone.

Unlike in his silent debut's misguided faux Chaplinisms, Fields embraced his legitimate muse – his own mother. Her outrageous, hilarious, corner-of-the-mouth wisecracks about errant relatives and neighbors were etched in his memory from childhood. Well enough that he could himself ad-lib on the cuff to equal affect.

He had spent a few previous years lab-testing this verbal add-on to his acrobatic comedy, in Vaudeville, and had brought down houses with it. When Al Jolson ushered in the talkies with "The Jazz Singer" (1927), a fire was lit under Fields. His ticket out from Chaplin's shadow had arrived. Biding his time for the right opportunity, he finally crossed paths with Sennett.

The security of the Tramp's mustache, however, was still damn hard to toss away for the trial run. He held on to it, just once more. Though he still sprinkled in bits of acrobatic whimsy, the heart of the film's comedy was verbal. Fields had discovered himself. The rest would be gravy.

"The Dentist," "The Pharmacist" (both 1932), "The Fatal Glass of Beer" and "The Barber Shop" (1933) reveal Fields's and Sennett's learning curve regarding comedy wired for sound. They were already miles ahead of the pack simply relying on their instincts, which were mutually complimentary, honed by years of combined film and stage experience.

While not direct copies of Fields stage routines, the four films still dwell in familiar Fields territory; satire of "typical" American life. Foreshadows of the modern sitcom – a theme he explored thoroughly in Broadway sketch revues, and would still throughout most of his film career. "Beer" is a spoof of the old cattletown melodramas that dominated American "theatre" in the previous century.

"Dentist" is an astonishing experience even today. Modern film theorists still see just-barely subliminal sexual aerobics between Fields and a dental patient played by the exotically gothic Elise Cavanna. Her long, gymnastic body (she studied dance under Isadora Duncan) is easily imagined negotiating positions that would make Kinsey's jaw flap – until Fields comically suggests one far more traditional, planting himself with authority between her legs to get his "tool" within striking distance. As if that weren't front-and-center enough, Fields has Cavanna "consummate" the act by ramming her bare foot phallically home into his coat pocket – a virginally white cloth vagina. He wears himself out with frustration attempting to reverse the dynamics of their symbolic coitus.

Censors were still shearing Fields's "evil" comedy to ribbons well into the television era, three decades later. Oddly, all other sinfulness cataloged in its riotous 25 minutes – abuse, sloth, violence, xenophobia, et al. – remained intact through eight decades. Is to enjoy this humor to condone such things, or appreciate, along with Fields, their ribald absurdity? The answer is within the public domain. Judge for yourself.

With equally subliminal tact in the very next film, "The Pharmacist," Fields nudged the pendulum back in favor of the cinema's temperance league, casting himself as a stoic family man and Elise Cavanna as his nagging but devoted wife. Their allegorical honeymoon was long over, but the fruitful marriage between film and W.C. Fields was just beginning.

NEXT: PART TWO... Public Domain Abbott & Costello, Laurel & Hardy, and The Three Stooges

Mask of the Misanthrope

2010-06-06T00:38:00.000-07:00

In 2004 I wrote and co-produced a stage show about the 20th century's most important stand-up comic, Lenny Bruce, called "Mr. Bruce, Do You Swear?" Within the programme notes, I included a phrase that made a few people uncomfortable. "If Lenny Bruce were Jesus, it would make George Carlin his Paul."

I have referred back to that statement a time or two since then – as I do here – in writing about comedy and comedians, but I've never given it a deeper second pondering until recently. Perhaps it was true in the beginning, but with time it has become a flawed analogy. Perhaps not quite flawed, but shallow.

Bruce and Carlin had similar origins. Bruce came from a humble Jewish upbringing. He served in the Navy. His mother was a heavy influence on his early life. His comedy found its moorings in the 1950s Jazz scene, unfortunately he became involved with its seedier underbelly along the way. Carlin's bio could read identically, only substitute Irish-Catholic, Air Force, and 60s Rock n' Roll.

When one attempts to analyze Carlin's humor, it usually leads to a tangential discussion of Lenny Bruce, who pulled stand-up comedy from the teat of Vaudeville, and dragged it kicking and screaming into the American counter-culture – martyring himself in the process, but leaving an opened door for everyone else coming after to explore the reality beyond the veil.

As Lenny Bruce's legal battles sent his career into fatal freefall, and before landing dead on his bathroom floor, he had made the first experimental steps in the direction that stand-up comedy would eventually travel full-thottle in the 1970s, with George Carlin taking over the wheel: the college circuit.

No other single performer personifies comedy's transit into modernity as does George Carlin – as he himself put it, as stand-up abandoned drunk uncle and fat wife jokes for the newer, more exciting realms of drugs and politics, "stand-up changed from AM to FM." Strangely, just as Bruce had adopted a priest's garment amid his evolution from comic to cult icon, so too did Carlin carry out the completion of the metamorphosis – growing his hair and beard to become a mugging, wiseacre vision of the Christ figure. The muse that was crucified with Lenny, was resurrected in George.

The Jewish comedian assumed the caricature of a Catholic holyman, and the (formerly) Catholic comic would embody... well, need I spell out the irony. But there the divine symbology stops.

As he aged, into the 1990s and 2000s, Carlin did not prove immune to the downward spiral from skeptic to cynic to curmudgeon. With the onset of world-weariness, as happens with many men – even the inventive, outspoken ones – who can only battle their life's frustrations to a draw, his "mean old codger" finally waddled out to sit on the front porch of his personality.

To be fair, this progression did not feel unnatural to those of us who had grown up watching him evolve. Even late in his life, Carlin would occasionally revert back to the George of old, illustrating the absurd with the absurd, and reminding us that the grandest joke of all was found in the mirror – while giving us a sublime nod of hope. Listen to 2001's "Complaints And Grievances" (Atlantic).

But no comedian knew his core audience as well as Carlin knew his. To keep putting asses in the seats, he eventually began tailoring his act directly to them. Often simply making "fuck you" the continuous punchline was enough to get his regular crowd into the adrenaline zone. His 1996 CD "Back In Town" (Atlantic) crackles with this dark polarity. It is proof that even the mighty Carlin could occasionally swing out of phase with himself, fly on auto-pilot, and miss the runway.

Of course, if one truly finds joy in that brand of intense pessimism, the CD is a comedic goldmine.

Finally, snowy haired and walking his last mile, Carlin turned in the only direction left to a comedian whose style derives its energy from rebellion against convention: atheism. In so doing, Carlin snipped the final spiritual thread of his fellowship to Lenny Bruce.

It's perhaps easy for someone not versed in Bruce's humor, listening to Carlin, with a vague notion in mind that he is supposedly carrying on Lenny's tradition, to thereby assume that the two comedians are essentially interchangeable – the only difference being merely the political timeframes in which they existed respectively. This is the rarely-mentioned great flaw in any comparison between Bruce and Carlin.

The particular Bruce routines considered groundbreaking were not indicative of a faithlessness in society's ability to be moral or just, but of a dubiousness about those who defined and administered morality and justice. Toward the autumn of Carlin's career he seemed dissatisfied, wont to drive skepticism toward a cynical cul-de-sac. Once there, he appeared to find it equally dissatisfying, and jumped it up onto the curb.

If you are about to jump to the conclusion that I am down on George Carlin, please consider my tribute to him, here.

Even Bruce's slams of religion – most notably "Religions, Inc." – were not aimed at an individual's right to determine his own beliefs, but at the elitists who claimed authority to dictate the protocols of those beliefs. Carlin took it further, down a dark path, to portray the beliefs themselves as contemptible.

Carlin's dour take on Christianity might include a laundry list of those whose actions appeared to prove it condemnable – Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, et al. Bruce's view, I contend, would instead find fault with organized Christianity's abandonment of its only true authority figure, Christ, in favor of false ones... Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, et al. That's probably what Paul would say as well. Bruce's routine "Christ and Moses" was directed at the pride and avarice of the Catholic Church, not the humble convictions of those in the congregation.

To question authority, even in matters of personal spiritual conviction, is not a sin. Even the Holy Bible recommends a healthy degree of skepticism regarding the influences and external forces attempting to prevail upon the soul (1 John, 4:1).

Bruce had already sacrificed the sacred cow of blind ritualistic religious loyalty upon the altar. Carlin took the carcass to the smelting plant and returned with a golden calf. Never before had such a high-profile comedian risked audience alienation as a career move.

There were only two great comedians of yesteryear whose expression of curmudgeonism (if that can be a word) became comedic revelation; the über-comedian, Groucho Marx, and the Martin Luther of political incorrectness, W.C. Fields – whose salty persona is a more accurate model for comparison to George Carlin in his final years.

Better essayists than I have analyzed and dissected Fields's life-journey as the groundwork for his art; the poverty of his youth that made him dream hugely and rebel to follow those dreams, the number of times he had to re-invent himself in show business – from young conman-showman, to juggler, to Vaudevillian, to silent film actor, back to Vaudevillian, back to film comic, then to radio, and on...

The short version of the story is that the school of hard knocks had laminated Fields's spirit. Every match-point volley that the world attempted in his direction, Fields swatted back – with a funny spin on it, to hang on for another round.

Carlin and Fields both used the vices they had enjoyed – and fallen prey to – throughout their lives as fodder for humor; Fields his beloved hooch, and Carlin his drugs. Groucho once even commented that if marijuana had been around in those days like it is now, Fields would have assuredly partaken.

Another similarity the two men shared was their knack for memorable words of original cynic's wisdom – some absurd, some sublime, some both – which was in essence the soul of each's genius. Every devout fan of either man carries with them a mental archive of treasured one-liners that have become public domain in American conversation. They belong to everyone, which is in a way, the ultimate tribute – like Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde.

Someone once asked Fields if he would live life differently if he could do it over. In a rare moment of out-of-character sincerity, he replied, "I'd like to try it without the booze." One wonders if Carlin would have made a similar wish regarding his substances of choice. Some argue that without alcohol, W.C. Fields would never have become W.C. Fields, and George Carlin likewise, without pot, LSD, cocaine and who-knows-what-else, would have evolved into something less than a George Carlin. The ages-old argument arises that there is really no good or evil, but merely causes and effects.

We will never know what happened in that alternate universe, whether William Dukenfield merely went on to manage a boardwalk casino, and George Carlin a radio station – or each fulfilled their same comedic destinies, albeit clean and sober.

Like most comedians, their styles were shaped by their back-stories colored by the amount of struggle in their lives and the methods they chose to combat it, as they climbed the ladder of the comedy business. Both masked themselves as the misanthrope; on-stage personalities that appeared to have unflappable hearts of stone, but according to industry gossip, were underneath those masks secretly Santa Claus.

Both died from the toll that years of substance use had taken on their bodies.

Legend has it that Fields's last conscious act, on his deathbed, was to place his finger to his lips to shush a talkative nurse, then he closed his eyes and drifted off into oblivion. Everything sayable had been said. It was time to be quiet now.

Writer and close personal Fields associate Gene Fowler recalled that Fields heard caroling children somewhere below his hospital window (he died on Christmas Day, 1946) and then suddenly requested that after his death a portion of his estate be set aside to build an orphanage.

"On second thought," he pondered a moment, then muttered, "fuck 'em." *

It's funny; some of Fields's last words, would decades later become George Carlin's all-purpose catchphrase.

Carlin, the stand-up's stand-up, left this plane of existence in 2008. He was 71, but he was actually hundreds of years old. He'd survived five heart attacks in his life, each related to his substance abuse. He once even got out of a hospital bed to make a show date, such was his work ethic. He loved words – they were his personal passion as well as his financial livelihood. But suddenly, laying on a gurney with doctors and nurses hovering, like W.C. Fields, he knew that everything sayable had been said.

It's worth wondering if anyone tending to him in that moment was the recipient of a cocked eyebrow, that silently shouted, "time to be quiet now."

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*All writers should own their words without apology. I just feel compelled to remark in this instance, given the undercurrent theme of Biblical reference contained in this article, that it was not my intent to offend anyone, especially those with clearly spelled-out spiritual convictions, which is every person's right – and whom I also claim to be myself. I merely also respect the need to present my subject matter with honesty, which I take to mean not hiding from the ugly elements. I want this blog to be something that everyone, and anyone, can read. These performers who were harbingers of laughter in their professional lives, some family-friendly, some ribald, were only human beings in private, like all of us.

The Mabel Effect

2010-04-05T22:28:00.000-07:00

Set out to be an actor, from community level to pro, and inevitably you will have the misfortune to work with someone who believes that it is "all about them."

With a grotesque degree of self-confidence, no matter the size of their role in the show, they hold court at rehearsals, upstage others with heavier line loads, steal scenes, and generally ruin the experience for everyone else. I've worked with this type, and been accused of the foul odor myself.

Travel back to the first or second decade of the 20th century, specifically Los Angeles, and the Keystone Studio lot, and you might run into someone very, very special – a woman as self-assured as she is beautiful – who indeed acts as if it is "all about her." But this lady has a unique edge; in her case, it's quite possible she is correct.

You would be in the presence of Mabel Normand. The grandest of the silent film comediennes.

No female in the pre-talkie era, except perhaps Mary Pickford, arm-wrestled Hollywood to a draw as did Mabel. In her too brief life, she sampled all of what it was to live and breathe the Dream Capitol. She was the damsel tied many times to the railroad tracks, but was by no means in distress. At least in the beginning.

While more famous "actresses" were being posed before the lens by light crews and cameramen, and in some cases squatting below frame to appear shorter than their leading men, Mabel was doing handstands on motorcycles, hanging from hot air balloons, diving off piers and outswimming police, and having ice-cream for breakfast.

The Suffragettes had nothing on her.

To be sure, Mabel held her own against many of the traditional beauties of the cinema, just as she did against the new industry's male comedians. In fact, she had a hand in the incubation of two important ones.

MABEL'S MEN

Rather than another laundry list of "Mabelisms" so numerous on the Web, we'll view her presence in movie history based on her influence upon it. We could literally coin a term here for her sublime mark on film comedy; which in my estimation is likely far more permeating than commonly imagined. Let's call it "The Mabel Effect."

Without Mabel, who knows what heights comedy would never have reached. Remove her from the landscape, and the pantheon of great early film comics would be populated by different – less meteoric – heroes.

Mabel's stormy relationship with Mack Sennett is legend in early Hollywood. Years would pass before either would realize that the other was the only person they had ever really, truly, loved. Sennett at least admitted it, albeit decades too late.

FLIRTING WITH FATTY

The "press release" version of Mack Sennett's first encounter with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, has the big boyish Vaudevillian stopping Mack on the front steps of his office, clapping hands and doing a standing backflip. Then, no less winded, he asked if the Comedy King thought he'd be a "cinch in pictures." The first flaw in this tale can be surmised, indirectly, by the narrative of Frank Capra, who began his career as one of Sennett's writers.

According to Capra, no one got near Sennett unless sent for. The Keystone lot was his Fiefdom. If you earned Sennett's ire – and there were more than the standard ten commandments regarding acceptable conduct on Keystone grounds – you were banished. Literally thrown outside, with the mark of Cain upon you. One's only hope was to stand at the front gate every morning with a puppy-dog eyed plea for mercy, and wait, even if it took days, for "Father Goose" to catch a glimpse of your angst as his chauffeur cruised him inside. If he realized he needed you, eventually someone would allow you back in, with all forgiven and forgotten.

The real "skinny" on Fatty's debut at Keystone may be closer to that told by Jerry Stahl, in his savvy novel "I, Fatty" (Bloomsbury, 2004). Arbuckle met Mabel Normand, possibly as a performer she'd seen while on one of her numerous excursions or "dates" with Mack. She liked Arbuckle enough to keep prodding Sennett about him. Finally he put out the call, possibly to get Normand off his back about it.

Mack Sennett seems to have delighted, on occasion, in "shock testing" auditions and new hires. Part of Sennett's daily routine was a soak in his huge bathtub, followed by the vigorous attention of a masseuse. All this took place right in Sennett's office; he had no qualms against holding meetings during his regimen.

To a man as ego driven, this was perhaps an ideal way to keep his staff off-balance, and therefore in line. In that early, tight-collared era, a studio head wearing his own nudity with the confidence of a business suit was probably an unnerving experience, the first few times anyway. Sennett used it to full potential.

Arbuckle arrived to find Sennett standing in his sudsy tank, wearing nothing save a cigar in his lips, and being dried off by a towelman. To Sennett's subtle amazement, Arbuckle seemed nonplussed by this surreal job interview in the official "presence" of his potential new boss. At its conclusion, he finally asked what "Fatty" thought. The answer is probably what convinced Sennett to hire him. "I grew up around farm animals."

When Arbuckle proved himself as a Keystone Kop, and was deemed ready to be primed as a "name," it was Mabel Normand to whom Sennett handed him off.

Sidebar note: Mabel, by the way, was one of the cinema's first female directors, in addition to being its Queen of Laughter.

Arbuckle knew how to hold an audience's attention upon a Vaudeville stage. Mabel herself toyed with the camera's eye like a voyeur lover, in much the same way that Marilyn Monroe would become renowned for. It's hardly worth mentioning that they were magical together on-screen.

She was perhaps unable to fully articulate the whys and hows of that power, in those early experimental days, when even the artform's pioneers were still pondering problems like why a spoked wheel appears on film to rotate in reverse when traveling forward at high speed.

The cinema's earliest star comedian, France's Max Linder, was somehow born knowing the art of commanding the camera's focus from in front of it. All those who followed – including Charlie Chaplin – saw and learned from him that art, that science – of prohibiting anything, from a forest fire to a dynamited dam, from upstaging you.

Mabel had the femme equivalent of Linder's telepathic link to the emulsion. Sennett was ever grateful.

Arbuckle's star would rise higher than any other actor's, even the dramatic ones, in the pre-Chaplin era. The Mabel Effect was possibly the cause, for without it, the ciné-artiste in Fatty Arbuckle might never have broken through to daylight.

It's here we must pause. Many of Mabel's biographers have acknowledged it indirectly, but rarely discussed it openly, perhaps out of respect for her silent era royalty. I think we can indeed do the former without threatening the latter; in fact maybe it's high time. Mabel was a perfect personification of the fusion of comedy... and sex. Harlow eat your heart out. It did not make her trampy, but more a symbol of life lived fully. Perhaps it is better stated as happiness (laughter) and health (arousal).

It was not simply the standard sex appeal that most film sirens exude on-screen.

Mabel's aura could visibly affect the people in the scene with her, as perceived in a sample of her films. Even in still photos, it's subtly apparent that the Keystone Kops enjoyed coming to Mabel's rescue, a bit more than just any panicked maiden whose car is stuck on the tracks. And one gets the impression as well, that Mabel appreciated their extra layer of difficulty; running, mugging and pratfalling – with hard-ons.

But Hollywood lore records no hanky-panky between Mabel and the backfield. She was no Clara Bow. Mabel staunchly picked and chose who got past her knickers. Only the tales of Sennett and the murdered director William Desmond Taylor offer any clue that they were among a very elite club of successful suitors. Actor Lew Cody, toward the end of both Mabel's life and his own, was the man who finally got her to walk the aisle – despite Sennett, who secretly must have still pined for her. The only stories that survive of the Cody-Normand marriage, however, paint rather a portrait of a formalized contract between two partied-out lushes. A business deal to save Mabel from the irony of obscure spinsterhood.

Mabel made several comedies with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, who was happily married to Sennett bathing beauty Minta Durfee. Even during the scandal that destroyed his career, Minta stood by Roscoe, and even stepped forward as a character witness on his behalf in court against the likes of Will Hayes and legal pitbull Matthew Brady.

There was no reported funny business between Fatty and Mabel off the set, but on-screen... yes it's there, plain and direct; one can only call it sexual chemistry. To be blunt, one can watch Normand interact with Arbuckle, and get a strangely confident feeling that she dug the fat man, and he wasn't ignorant of it.

Her power to project – outpour – an aura of sexual attraction that the camera could see, went on auto-pilot. Not cartoonish or vampy, but simply "there," intangible yet omnipresent. And Arbuckle, despite his loyalty to Minta, was not immune to that aura.

A prime example of The Mabel Effect can be witnessed in "Fatty and Mabel Adrift" (1916), in which they play imperiled newlyweds.

Not even the absence of sound can diminish the sublime spark between them. Unlike the great majority of silent films in which "speech" is merely indecipherable jaw wagging, when Fatty speaks to Mabel his lips are so readable as to make the title cards redundant. How transparent could attraction be?

The film also contains Arbuckle's famous "phantom kiss" scene, in which he stands in the fading dusk of an open bedroom door, to bid Mabel goodnight. As she drifts off to sleep in her bed, across the room he slowly bends down – so that his shadow plants a tender kiss upon Mabel's cheek. This was possibly the first instance in American silent film of a comedian esoterically reaching for the heartstrings; Arbuckle taking it to the next level – years before Chaplin. A move that possibly triggered his ascent to superstardom – inspired by a personal, secret need to please and impress Mabel.

With a lesser co-star, would Arbuckle's heart have soared to such inspiration? His humanity – his magnetism – would have stayed hidden behind the usual Keystone slapstick. Audiences would not have grown to endear him, as they did after the prompting by Mabel Normand; an on-camera appeal planting the seed that he could possibly be as lovable as any chiseled mannequin leading man – even a sex object.

A "switch" was flipped somewhere inside Arbuckle by his Mabel Effect experience. He'd move on in his career to be the first high-profile film comedian to attempt comedy with elements of pathos – a concept which would take a soul as huge as Chaplin's to perfect.

Without Mabel's influence, both fame and infamy would have passed Fatty over. He might not have become one of silent comedy's idols, and would later just as likely never have been the target of national scandal and character assassination. Such is The Mabel Effect.

COERCING CHARLIE

"Tillie's Punctured Romance" (1914), produced by Sennett, was the American cinema's first feature-length comedy. It starred Marie Dressler, who had created the lead role on Broadway. Listed among her co-stars are Charlie Chaplin, and Mabel Normand, who play a pair of grifters on the run.

The playful sexual tension that coyly colored Mabel's pairings with Arbuckle is not present with Chaplin. The unease between them seems to derive from a different emotion. Chaplin is in the company of the only foil to ever intimidate him.

Some of Chaplin's first films at Keystone were under Mabel's direction. In those days it was not uncommon for a comedy short to consist, if only partially, of improv. Mabel had prodded Sennett to hang onto Chaplin, but as recorded in the book "Chaplin: His Life and Art" by David Robinson (McGraw-Hill, 1989) she sometimes found his "rookie" contributions less than inspired in those initial outings. She made him do things over again. Made him work. Charlie found himself confronted by a director – a woman yet – who did not give him the Golden Boy treatment.

She approached him as an equal, something to which Chaplin could never quite grow accustomed, all of his life.

One of the pair's key scenes in "Tillie," finds Charlie squirming on a park bench next to Mabel as they attempt to "hide in plain sight" from a wandering beat cop. Something isn't very "Chaplinesque" about this scene. It's almost as if he isn't acting. As he talks, his eyes wander. The conceit is that he's trying to keep a visual tab on the patrolman. The reality may be that he was rattled by Mabel's lack of acquiescence.

After "Tillie's Punctured Romance," something occurred within Chaplin. Like Arbuckle, a switch was flipped. Chaplin would never be overawed by anyone ever again – and would spend the rest of his career as comedy's maverick prince and visionary. He even defied the sound era, unwilling to abandon silent film well after it was all but dead – he himself being its sole life-support. Chaplin's "Modern Times" (1936) is considered the concluding entry of the silent era canon.

Did the initial growth of Chaplin's "brass set" begin with The Mabel Effect? Let us not overlook the fact that despite Chaplin's "Tramp" making his first unofficial appearance in "Kid Auto Races At Venice" (1914), it was during production of "Mabel's Strange Predicament" that same year, when Chaplin heard the Tramp "calling him" in the costume shed... and Arbuckle contributed the use of his voluminous trousers to the creation of the single most iconic caricature in cinema.

Chaplin and Normand would grow to get along famously, but the general assumption that they were destined to be a romantic pair off-camera never seemed to materialize. One may wonder if it were not for any lack of effort on Chaplin's part.

MANHANDLED BY MAE

Mabel, for all her wild-child antics, was as loyal as any woman ever was to Mack Sennett during their years-long affair. It was Mack who broke form. Mabel wanted something from Sennett that scared the tub soap off of him – an engagement ring. What she got was a mother's boy's rebellion.

Actress Mae Busch was a fetching beauty who would eventually become a name in the hallowed halls of early film comedy herself, providing feisty, vampy antagonism to Laurel & Hardy. At meetings of the Laurel & Hardy fan organization, The Sons of the Desert, her name is among the elite list of official "toasts," along with Stan, Oliver, and comic actors Charlie Hall and James Finalyson ("Fin").

Busch's presence in Mabel's life, however, became no laughing matter. Normand arrived one evening at the bungalow she shared with Mack, to discover Busch naked and presenting on his bed, and he in the process of dropping trow to take care of business. What followed was a comedienne catfight that ended with a vase cracked over Mabel's head. She wandered the lot, a line of blood trickling down her brow, finally to wind up on the bungalow doorstep of... Roscoe and Minta.

Mabel never got her ring from Mack. He gave her instead her own studio. A poor substitute. They were from that time on, merely business partners.

From that "gift" studio, and the sudden death of her romantic involvement with Sennett, ironically came Mabel's most beloved film, "Mickie" (1918). It would be recognized as the centerpiece of her filmography, and the high point of her career.

The years after that were a roller coaster ride, mostly downhill. Mabel made a handful of memorable comedies, but nothing quite matching the charm of her initial outing as head of her own studio. Her popularity diminished as her lifestyle of parties, booze, drugs – and an occasional scandal – increased. She was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and spent her last days in a Monrovia, California sanitarium. One of the final memories of Mabel was of her receiving a lavish bouquet of flowers from Mack Sennett, to which she remarked from her deathbed, "he still thinks of me."

Comedy's First Lady passed away on February 23, 1930. She was only 37. The "talkies" were just two years old.

"THE GIRL"

Nearly thirty long years after Mabel was in the ground, a snowy-haired Mack Sennett sat down with ghost writer Cameron Shipp, to put his memoirs to paper. The resulting book "King of Comedy: The Lively Arts" (Doubleday, 1954) is a tome crammed with tales of all the chaos and magic of the birth of the movies, and the special cinematic product manufactured at his Keystone Studios – which today serves as the main identity of the silent era to modern audiences.

The pie fights. The car chases. The pursuits by loosed lions. The pratfalls. The banana peels. The Bathing Beauties. The Kops. The rise of Arbuckle, and of Chaplin, and of an other-worldly little genius named Harry Langdon. The second birth of W.C. Fields's screen career, which was also Sennett's last hurrah as a producer. Sennett's autumn years yearning to recreate the Keystone era, only for the new fledgeling medium, television.

But through it all, refusing to fade with the onset of his winter, like the scent of a long ago spring day of his youth, "the girl" was still on his mind.

Mack Sennett was regarded as the Father of Movie Comedy. He concluded his book, by admitting that he did it all... because of her.

"I wanted to tell you about the comedies and how we made them, and about the funny fellows and pretty women who acted in them. They are a lost breed... Most of all I wanted you to meet Mabel Normand." Comedy was perhaps Mack's SECOND love.

Her presence made the Keystone Kops jump higher, run faster, pratfall wilder.

She broke – and yet kept – the King of Comedy's heart, to his grave.

She led Roscoe Arbuckle into the spotlight of world fame, symbolically by his dick.

She pokerfaced Charlie Chaplin into unleashing – possibly out of indignation – his immense genius.

She was "the face that launched a thousand slips." Would there have been the same silent comedy legacy to the modern movie industry, as we know it, were it not for The Mabel Effect?

Mack Sennett indirectly confirmed it himself. The entire universe of film comedy in the silent era may have really been... all about Mabel Normand.

The Broken Heart of Moses Horwitz

2010-02-25T00:35:00.000-08:00

It may feel strange at first, but if I can persuade you to humor me just for the length of an article (this one), my request is that you drop all contrary notions that have developed over the years, and consider the Three Stooges as human beings. They were, after all.

Like the Ritz Brothers they began in Vaudeville, and like the Marx Brothers they played Broadway (yes, believe it). Only the presence of non-blood relation Larry Fine – the fuzzy-haired middle Stooge – prevented the movie-going public from ever knowing them as The Horwitz Brothers.

The Three Stooges were a semi-brother act.

Early in Vaudeville, Moe and Shemp*, performing as a duo (Sam & Harry), intentionally "Americanized" their sir-name to Howard. When they joined forces with fellow Vaudevillian – and Moe's boyhood buddy – Ted Healey, to become his "stooges," the name Horwitz would never surface again in connection with them.

Even so, the three actual "Howard" brothers, Moses, Jerome and Samuel (Moe, Curly** and Shemp), only appeared on-screen together once, in "Hold That Lion" (1947).

Moe, Larry & Shemp – the "official" Stooge roster at the time – encounter a man snoring ferociously with his derby hat pulled over his face. Moe lifts the derby to discover that the gent has a clothespin fastened to his nose. Removing the pin causes the snoring to erupt into a very "Curlyesque" yammer. It's too close to home for Moe, who wisely re-clips the pin and replaces the derby.

Despite Moe's role as the cruel, bossy Stooge, his soft center had a way of betraying him on-camera. The snoring man under the derby, with a full head of moppy auburn hair, was Curly, making a cameo in the very series where he once shared top billing. Had his head been shaved, he would have been instantly recognizable – but Jerome Howard decided that he was permanently retired, and kept his hair, and the scene remains an inside gag to all but the most observant audiences.

Larry delivers a Stooge-101 doubletake at his former partner. Shemp – the venerable trooper, and original Third Stooge in the group's formative years – stares somewhat emptily at his kid brother Jerome; a blankness that could easily have a comical twist read into it. But Moe cannot even manage that, though he tries awfully hard. His instinct is to get the scene over as soon as possible – before his tears can flow.

Just a year prior, on the set of "Halfwit's Holiday" (completed in 1946, but released in 1947), which was a remake of their 1935 short "Hoi Polloi," a satire of – sit down for it – a George Bernard Shaw play, there had occurred a dour turning point for the seemingly unstoppable Stooges.

Moe had grabbed Curly by his tux lapel and given him the standard Stooge-brand noggin whap, sending him packing out of the frame. Neither of them realized it was the last gag of Jerome's career as a Stooge. The director, Jules White, grunted "cut." Moe disengaged, and went to pat off his perspiration with a towel before the next scene.

Character actor Emil Sitka, coming on-set for what was his very first appearance in a Stooge comedy (he'd become their most ubiquitous regular), would write in his diary later about that suddenly terrible moment. "Got on just in time to see Curly fold."***

On "cut," Curly made it to director White's chair, and had a stroke. A massive one. Though not quite deadly, to his life as a comedian, assuredly fatal. When White called in his talent for the next shot, Curly could not move from the chair. Nor could he even speak. Moe raced over to him, and knew the horrible truth instantly. It was over.

Curly was rushed to the hospital, and big brother Moe reached deep within himself to pull out that old Vaudevillian's creed that he and his brothers had based their lives upon; "The show goes on." He and Larry completed the day's shoot, including the film's final fade-out, sans Curly.

Moe, the "tough" Stooge, held up production with copious weeping, but somehow sucked it up long enough to keep White's heartless shooting schedule.

It was, of all things, a pie fight, where the reactions – doubletakes and cartoony mugging – are what sell the laughs as much as the gooey explosions of whipped cream and custard.

And in the film, against that contrasting emotive backdrop, it became quite visibly obvious that Moe's heart had abandoned him.

He is not mentally present, even for that staple of the Stooge repertoire, a blueberry battle royale. He shares in the tart-tossing, but his mind is clearly elsewhere. His one line amid the creamy carnage, "C'mon now, you started this!" seems frosted with weariness – delivered with the same tone as perhaps "Please, no more, let me leave."

He sped to Curly's bedside at the hospital immediately, in full Stooge make-up, as soon as White yelled "wrap."

Moe would have to roll with an identical blow again, about eight years later. The oldest Horwitz brother, Sam/Shemp, went with some friends to the horseraces in the afternoon, and then to witness some prizefights that evening. On the way home, somewhere on Barham Avenue in Los Angeles, in the back seat of a cab, Shemp asked for a light for his cigar, grinned, placed his head upon the shoulder of the buddy next to him, and left this world.

Curly, after additional strokes, had passed away in a less melodramatic fashion, three years before Shemp's "Hollywood" ending.

Like Curly, Shemp departed with work unfinished.

Columbia Studios came up with a novel plan for filling the vacuum of Shemp's absence in the remaining two uncompleted Stooge films, in a way that chipped at Moe's twice-broken heart even more.

Shemp's remaining scenes were shot using a stand-in; actor Joe Palma, never allowing him to face the camera. With his similar build and hair-comb, it worked. Audiences saw only the back of Palma's head in close shots, or in distant longshots obscuring his face with say, a toolbox carried on his forward shoulder. To anyone not hep to the switcheroo, it was Shemp.

But like Curly, the real Shemp was gone, and with him his intangible magic that had made the team click, as Curly's had.

Shemp Howard was the only one of the Stooges who had a solo career apart from the team – co-starring along side the likes of W.C. Fields, the Andrews Sisters and Abbott & Costello, as well as starring in his own – now somewhat obscure – features and short subjects.

Curly was Shemp's replacement when the Stooges first signed with Columbia, after a nasty parting of ways with Ted Healey, that had left Shemp uneasy about continuing with the group. Years later when Shemp returned to the Stooges in the wake of Curly's illness, he'd been a separate entity for so long that most audiences had forgotten him, and believed Curly was the original "third stooge."

Shemp did not mimic his kid brother's style, but brought his own. Of the three Horwitz brothers, Shemp was the true "comedian." Curly had invented his own comedic science and was its master, but Shemp was a puristic cinema clown; he could improv, pantomime, throw down slapstick, and deliver a one-liner impeccably. In one poverty-row film, he'd even played a "rough" Moe-like character to a team of stooge-like partners. Both he and Curly had, in turn, been the team's real money-makers.

Now the funny business was left solely to Moe and Larry, who by themselves could not quite muster the ambient comic chaos that had once existed with Curly's or Shemp's help.

When they came to scenes that had originally called for Shemp's presence, in a way too involved for Palma's turned head to accomodate, the Third Stooge would simply become missing. In one such instance, Moe was given the line "Where IS that Shemp!"

Moe couldn't pull the line off without giving it a cryptic double meaning. Or a look as though tears were threatening to form.

The charade could not last long. Finally Moe and Larry welcomed aboard comic actor Joe Besser to help them run out the team's final commitments to Columbia. They had been with the studio for 24 years. The last 12-or-so shorts ranked as forgettable – and at least one of them was a tacky remake of a Curly film, with Jerome's longshots intact, but all the close-ups re-shot – with Besser.

In his posthumously published autobiography, "Moe Howard & The Three Stooges" (Citadel, 1979), Moe claimed that he could never quite get over seeing Curly or Shemp in his mind's eye, in later Stooge films, when he had to brutalize surrogate Stooges Besser and Curly-Joe DeRita.

It has been theorized that the cranial abuse that Curly and Larry endured during their careers as Stooges may have contributed to their demise. Both men died of strokes, after years of Moe's slaps, punches and faux eye-pokes. The eye shots were actually delivered to their foreheads, but "sold" by a quick flinch and scrunch of the eyes.

The medical connection can't be proven, of course. But it may have been on Moe's mind for years after – another layer to his melancholy.

Legend has it that before becoming a Stooge, Joe DeRita expressed that he was not crazy about such high-impact comedy – especially being on the receiving end. Allegedly Larry assured him that he would himself, from then on, be catching the brunt of Moe's attacks. Larry drove the point home by demonstrating that a portion of his face was basically a solid callus, from nearly three decades of back-handing and sucker punches.

The Stooges' roughhousing had been not-quite-fake in the beginning, during the Healey years, when the slaps and tweaks popped and snapped unaided by the zany cartoon sound effects that would be commonplace in their Columbia two-reelers.

For sheer survival's sake they worked out each patented assault into harmless technique – yet there were always bumps and bruises, and the many injuries the Stooges suffered simply by specializing in such extreme physical comedy.

On the shoot of one particularly long pie fight, when the pastry/ammo ran out, the stage crew scraped together a last batch of new pies from the gooey remains on the studio floor. The Stooges and their accompanying troop of character extras discovered the hard way, in mid-take, that the pies also contained wood shavings, floor grime, and a slew of random carpet nails. Still, the show went on.

Even professional wrestlers of that period didn't have such working conditions.

As the Stooges reached their forties, it all began to exact its toll. It should not have surprised Moe that Curly went first.

Jerome Howard had come to detest shaving his head, and would periodically go through a depression. In his younger days, Jerome had been – again, sit down for it – quite the ladies' man, with a full mop of hair and sometimes even a mustache. He and the screen's top pre-Bogart "hoodlum," George Raft, had a running unofficial competition as to whom was the better ballroom dancer. Jerome specialized in sweeping the young ladies off their feet, and wowing the crowd with an uncommon grace and agility on the dance floor, given his "padded" build. Shaving his head to play Curly had robbed him of all that.

Moe and Larry were both happily married all their lives, but Curly's marriage to his wife Elaine had crumbled during the Stooges' time at Columbia.

Moses Horwitz and Louis Feinberg could disengage from their screen characters merely with a comb. Jerome Horwitz was forced to look his part 24/7. His fame as the world's favorite Stooge came with a heavy price.

He turned to the drinking and partying that had dominated his twenties, prior to joining up with the Stooges. Toward his final films as Curly, beginning in the mid-1940s, one can spot a grim transformation taking shape. His speech is strained. His face seems puffier than normal, his gaze hollow and far-off, and his timing is slowed and unevenly metered.

They began giving Curly less to do, as he would tire easily. Moe would sometimes literally feed him his lines, one at a time, to get a decent take out of him. Moe's "violence" became choreographed differently as well, so that both Curly and Larry took more evenly dished out portions – to ease Curly's physical burden. In "Three Loan Wolves" (1946) Curly could not gather sufficient energy for his usual solo scene, and it was given to Larry, who pulled it off with only marginal success.

The stroke was building, several films before it finally struck.

During a television interview in the mid-1960s, Moe demonstrated on Curly-Joe DeRita how some of his "violent" shtick was actually done – for the benefit of parents who were rattled by their children mimicking the comedic warfare – Tai Kwon Moe – upon their smaller siblings to injurious effect.

DeRita's face spoke volumes. Obviously no more painful than pats with an angora mitten, Moe's nose tweaks and ear twists were considered by DeRita with near-homicidal disdain. Utterly refusing to "sell" the gags with any facial reaction, comedic or otherwise, a glowing slow burn did his talking for him. Joe DeRita – who'd grown up in show business, and whose career's finalé had been to serve the legacy of two of the early talkie era's most extreme physical comics, Curly and Shemp Howard – hated slapstick with a passion.

He did it grudgingly when needed. Only Moe, who signed his paycheck, was immune to his temper.

Joe DeRita and Moe Howard died more typical "old man" deaths – DeRita, the "Last Stooge," in his 80s. The argument that Moe indirectly hastened his brothers and Larry Fine to their graves just doesn't hold water, and is in fact somewhat of an insult. The Stooges were, each in turn, victimized by the ever-hungering Movie Machine. Their lives were ones of sacrifice, to an artform they loved, and served from its lowest dregs, despite all the heartbreak it caused them.

Moe Howard never referred to himself as a comedian, but an actor, period. An actor, he said, whose career just happened to consist of comedy work. But the meanest Stooge, behind the scenes, had the biggest, softest heart. Occasionally, he didn't hide it very well. Some actor.

Call him instead Pagliacci... with a bad haircut.

__________________________

*Sam's screen name "Shemp" was a gift from their mother, who spoke in Yiddish. It was how she pronounced "Sam."

**Jerome got the moniker "Curly" at the beginning of his Stoogedom, when he showed up with a shaved head to counter Moe's bowlcut and Larry's lion mane. It was like calling a tall guy "shorty," Moe explained. Those not familiar with the Stooges sometimes confuse Larry's and Curly's names because of Larry's wild skull mop.

***My memory of this quote is that it was attributable to Sitka, and was quoted in the documentary "The Three Stooges Story" by director Edward Bernds.

Genius Interrupted: Harry Langdon

2010-01-28T20:22:00.000-08:00

Mack Sennett, the silent cinema's grand comic impresario, had an unofficial motto that he sometimes repeated in disgusted whispers – all from the time his two greatest discoveries – Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, and then in turn, Charlie Chaplin – left him to become, respectively, the highest paid actors in the movies.

"Start at Sennett, get rich somewhere else."

Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd comprised the golden triumvirate of comedy's silent era. Of the three, only Chaplin had been a Sennett property.

Lloyd began his career playing a painfully calculated character nicknamed "Lonesome Luke," who existed for only one reason, to compete directly with Charlie Chaplin. It was a long, hundred-plus film mission that would end in confusion and frustration for himself and his producer, Hal Roach – Sennett's chief rival.

Crestfallen, Lloyd blipped over to Sennett's company briefly, perhaps searching for himself, and after a season of languishing in small undercranked roles, straggled back home to Roach – where to finally discover that simply placing Lloyd behind a large pair of studious eyeglasses was an amazing formula for success. The rest is history, as they say.

Roach would hit the target again by pairing a wiry Englishman who'd come to America as Chaplin's understudy – Stan Laurel – with a large boyish Georgian who'd been a dependable character presence, but hardly anything remarkable until then – Oliver "Babe" Hardy.

Keaton yet again stands out as a great anomaly of the era, having belonged to neither comedy mogul, Sennett or Roach. All of Keaton's films were for the comedy wings of larger studios – chiefly Paramount and Metro, who never directly took credit for them, until a generation later when Keaton's work was accepted as bona fide "art."

There were others who could have stood on that elite pedestal. After the Virginia Rappe scandal took over his life, Arbuckle simply became famous for being famous – his career would never reboot. And when it finally stood on the precipice of renewed flight, the rotund funnyman drifted off to sleep in his fiancée's bed and never woke.

The majority of early top comedy stars like Ford Sterling, Ben Turpin, Billy Bevan, and the queen of silent film comediennes, Mabel Normand, had all been Sennett's. His stable of directors were kings of comedy in their own right behind the camera – men like Dick Jones, Harry Edwards, Larry Semon, and even Del Lord, who would become the Three Stooges' most predominant director, in the 40s. (Yes, the Stooges had direction.)

If you expand the triumvirate into a quatrefoil, in the opposite direction, post-Lloyd rather than pre-Chaplin, there is just one comedian that all aficionados and historians agree deserves that coveted fourth perch – Harry Langdon.

LANGDON'S EVOLUTION: CAPRA VS. LOUVISH

No one could deny Sennett's knack for spotting talent. The turn-over in the early years of film comedy demanded it – whether from burn-out, stress, overexposure (Ford Sterling was perhaps the most popular "one-note" comic) or the mounting physical injuries that took a dour toll in those noiseless phrenetic days.

But the loss of Chaplin had always lingered with Sennett. He spent considerable effort over the years afterward, trying to find another "Charlie." One night at a Vaudeville show, he came as close to hitting the jackpot as anyone could.

A prop-heavy skit (including a nearly full-size collapsable automobile) called "Johnny's New Car" starred an odd little soul, and his wife, as a couple set out on a motor trip. Sennett found the comedian strangely compelling and hired him.

Sennett wasn't sure yet exactly how to use his new employee, but threw him into the Funhouse with the rest of his pet comedians nonetheless. At this point in Harry's journey, we come to a much-disputed fork in the road.

One of Sennett's top "idea men" at the time was Frank Capra – the same Capra who would later become one of Hollywood's iconic directors, of "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" and "It's A Wonderful Life" fame, to name just two of his masterpieces.

According to Capra – interviewed for the Thames Television documentary series "Hollywood" (1980) – Sennett hired Langdon almost out of desperation, over the lack of a central star at his company. Beloved, cross-eyed Ben Turpin was his current top commodity, who held his own in ticket sales during this period, but was no Chaplin. Unsure of what to do with Langdon, but determined not to lose a potential box office nickel, Sennett decreed an order to Capra and fellow writer Arthur Ripley: "make this guy into something."

Capra and Ripley saw a confused little Vaudevillian, surrounded by Sennett's army of explosive film comics who could run faster, mug sillier and pratfall harder than any others in the business... and immediately threw up their hands in futility. Or so Capra remembers.

The actual timeline of events, as recorded by Simon Louvish in his book, "Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett" (2003, Faber and Faber, New York), seems to contradict Capra's recollection.

Langdon, it seems, was already appearing in Sennett comedies, usually in supporting roles, as much as a year before Capra and Ripley were even hired by Sennett into his scenario department. Langdon's first film for Sennett was 1923's "Picking Peaches." Frank Capra does not enter the frame until March of 1925, as writer/gagman for "Plain Clothes."

In fact, one of Langdon's most splendid comedies, "Smile Please" (1924) was released prior to both Capra's and Ripley's employment at Keystone. It becomes apparent that Langdon wasn't exactly being overwhelmed by Sennett's masters of mayhem – but was in fact becoming one of them.

Langdon already possessed certain attributes that not only set him apart from the typical Sennett clowns, but on some levels, placed him beyond them. He was already a senior citizen among the ranks – the average life expectancy in the 1920s hovered near 46, and Langdon was nearly that, yet his eternally boyish face gracefully hid his "advanced" age from moviegoers. It was that very age difference that afforded Langdon a unique edge over his peers. He'd lived longer than anyone on the Keystone lot – except for "Papa Goose" himself – so he had more life experience to draw his "funny" from.

Like Keaton, and Chaplin, Langdon had been born into show business. He brought with him over 30 years of Vaudeville savvy – that translated onto film. He had at least 10 more years of stage experience than either Keaton or Chaplin. And most peculiar for a Sennett comic, he possessed a deliberate ability to be funny without resorting to mugging or tumbling.

His babyface was the infantile equivalent of Keaton's deadpan. His comic timing was otherworldly; different than Chaplin's, but in its own mysterious way, equally flawless. His on-screen countenance, a bewildered toddler enduring adult urges, literally subpoenaed laughter.

Yet Sennett's view was that Langdon just wasn't figuring out how to pull it all together when a camera was pointed at him, and so called in his "brain trust" (Capra and Ripley) to help the old fellow find his "lens legs," and give him one more chance before pulling the plug.

It is more realistic to imagine that Sennett indeed kept a close eye on Harry's progress playing in "typical" Keystone fare. He saw, but could not facilitate, the need for a "breakthrough" that would validate his baffling attraction to Langdon. Nothing would gel.

He possibly handed Langdon off to Capra and Ripley, out of frustration, as Capra said, but as the duo's first big assignment – not necessarily Langdon's last. Even Capra admitted that whenever they found themselves about to give up, Sennett kept prodding. "He's got SOMETHING. Keep working."

It was then that Arthur Ripley uttered the words that gave Capra a grand epiphany, and sparked Harry Langdon's comedy to its full potential. "Only God can help that twerp."

Capra's imagination lit up like Edison's lab. Chaplin was "The Tramp." So Langdon would be "The Twerp." A twerp whose only ally just might be God, if any.

Harry Langdon's "character" was born, fully formed straight from the womb of Capra's mind. And from the very first frame it was magic.

THE TWERP'S TEMPTATIONS

Here the narrative runs into trouble yet again.

When interviewed by Thames, Capra literally took full credit for "inventing" Langdon. To him that was probably fairly accurate. As Langdon's star rose to eventually touch point-to-point with Chaplin's, according to Capra, the proverbial heights became proverbially dizzying. Langdon was subconsciously overwhelmed by the magnitude of his own stardom, and gradually adopted a prima donna attitude that ultimately sank his career.

Capra claimed that Langdon suffered one crucial flaw that plagued neither Chaplin nor Keaton – a shortfall of "self-awareness" regarding his on-screen character. Chaplin had himself created The Tramp, and thus, knew exactly how the character would react, grow and evolve from film to film. Keaton too, had a "creator's insight" into the machinations and thinking of his pancake-hatted alter-ego.

Langdon lacked similar knowledge, Capra said, and thus was not his own man, on-screen. The Twerp had been created for Langdon – by Capra and Ripley – and they, not Langdon, had access to the Twerp's subconscious. Of course, Langdon believed otherwise.

Since Capra went on to become one of Hollywood's most beloved and revered directors, and Langdon's career faded after breaking ranks with Capra, it is quite easy to follow a conventional, convenient path of assumption that Capra was obviously correct.

But here we will explore the road least taken, and consider the alternate – Langdon-friendly – view that perhaps Capra overestimated his influence on Harry, and underestimated Harry's ability to grasp the concept behind the "character" he was bringing to life for the camera. Langdon, after all, was the one actually doing it.

One immediate "fact" regarding Langdon that we shall entertain as a potential myth, is his unorthodox comic timing. Not that he lacked any – he most certainly did not – but that his inner-barometer was not quite as unorthodox, or mysterious, as claimed by the Frank Capras of cinema history.

Sennett, Capra, Ripley – and everyone – reportedly marveled at Langdon's savant-like ability to make "slow" funny. This notion flew in the face of Sennett's every philosophy that faster was funnier – that comedy was frenzied and just a choreographed step above filmed chaos.

Langdon seemed the exception to every Keystone rule. The more methodical, the funnier he became. Capra never arrived at any better an explanation – Langdon belonged to an alternate comic universe – Alice's mirror-opposite Wonderland. No other clown, Keystone or otherwise, could duplicate Harry's comedy and make it work.

All the other cinema clowns painted on a broad canvass, but Langdon was, as author Kevin Brownlow described, a miniaturist. At Keystone, Langdon defied logic.

He walked the fine thread between comedy and tragedy like a tightrope, almost as if sleepwalking. It was not exactly the "pathos" that Chaplin pioneered and perfected, but the hark of a stiller, smaller voice – a deep far-off melancholy, faintly calling, that causes... laughter.

Langdon had no imitators – Chaplin had hundreds. Could Langdon articulate his talent? If so, it was perhaps never written down. Capra tried, but perhaps fell short, unbeknownst to himself.

What Capra and Sennett assumed was undefinable, may have been something much, much simpler. Langdon had the valuable lessons taught him by years of Vaudevillian struggle – a mental arsenal that he, like all cagey showbiz veterans, knew to keep mum about.

Age had taught Harry to conserve his energy, carefully pick and choose his bits, and improv efficiently in a tighter circle of motion than say, a newbie experimenter with boundless youth and a pain-free body. Harry developed his minimalist approach to comedy – using his expressive face, wasteless motion, and yes, a methodicalism – crafting a "slow" style that defied convention – as a means of survival. Could it be that neither Capra nor Ripley had considered that?

Langdon had simply figured out how to stay funny, given his autumn years. Being blessed with an eternally youthful face helped too. Most comedians never planned their retirement – Langdon had deliberated a way around it, shrewdly re-inventing himself for the time when he'd be competing against those much younger, faster, less-fragile. Maybe Capra didn't get it. Maybe Langdon wasn't about to explain it to him.

Capra's underestimation of Harry in this regard, and every other comedian's inability to share Harry's comedic methodology, essentially proves that Langdon was indeed "his own man" in ways that were unique to his own comprehension – the "self-awareness" that Capra believed was absent.

Whether it was Capra's supervision, Langdon's intuition, or mixtures of both, it was Harry Langdon who produced those incredible results before the camera. One either has a pulse or doesn't. Harry's priceless slow burns and perfectly timed "blank" blinky gazes were not flukes captured only after a hundred exhaustive takes. Harry Langdon was already "something" before Capra and Ripley supposedly made him into one.

When one watches a slew of Langdon comedies back-to-back, as can be done with the splendid DVD set, "Harry Langdon: Lost & Found" (All Day Entertainment/Facets Video), a surreal link can be observed, to Langdon's influence on Stan Laurel. For "Stanley" is most certainly a refined reincarnation of The Twerp, playing a divine comedic duet with "Ollie," the over-confident tubby kid grown-up, unaware of his own gooey center.

Capra did not gift Langdon with this quality, though he apparently wound up thinking he had. It was already present, molded by years of trial and error. The old story comes to mind of a portrait artist who toils for years without much success, until he gives a painting away, to someone who places it in a frame and manages to sell it for a large sum. The artist ponders this. "I never realized it was art until I saw it in a frame."

The frame was indeed Capra's, but he forgot that the paint was Langdon's.

Capra was right, however, about Langdon's downfall – stardom did cloud Harry's judgment eventually.

Langdon seemingly forgot that he already was a legitimate Chaplin rival. He embarked upon trying to transfigure the Twerp into a Tramp, to better "compete" against Chaplin, and eventually threw audiences off. He over-thought himself into becoming just another Chaplin imitator – a market already glutted. Along the way he grew weary of Capra's and Ripley's protests, and fired them – assuring that his trajectory would never be corrected by calmer navigators. Harry's star fell, but what heights it had reached in its brief flight.

LOOKING BACK, WITH A TEARY SMILE

Harry Langdon is perhaps the oddest, most compelling of the elite silent clowns. His career did last into the sound era, but by then he was merely a marginal presence. His skill as a performer never waned – and he apparently never fretted over the approach of the talkies, even when it was wholesale-demolishing established careers, like those of John Garfield and Clara Bow. The stage had toughened him.

On the above mentioned DVD set is preserved some of Langdon's sound work. His most visible speaking role was a supporting part in the Al Jolson musical "Hallelujah, I'm A Bum" (1933). Langdon displays a steady-handed ability to share a scene with the legendary crooner, and he can carry a lyric.

But Langdon mostly occupied the land of short subjects in the age of sound. Some were to promote other stars' upcoming productions.

His "improvised" dialogue is often somewhat off-planet. There are moments when Harry seems to utter phrases that make sense only to him – non-sequitur comments that roll off his tongue in some joyously eerie, context-free "word-jazz." He begins to bring to mind all of those strangely comical yet somehow dangerous interviews 40 years later between some hapless mic-jockey and Keith Moon.

If Harry Langdon was from another planet, is was a happier planet than ours. He departed back to it around Christmas of 1944, having never regained his lofty perch, but working behind the scenes for other comedians including Laurel & Hardy. Harry actually stepped before the camera one final time, to co-star with Oliver Hardy in "Zenobia" (1939) as Stan Laurel's de-facto replacement, during a contract dispute between Laurel and Hal Roach. The film was not remarkable, but on an invisibly cosmic level, quite fitting, given Langdon's role as Laurel's character's muse, earlier in the century.

His wings took him high enough to disorient him, and melt in the sudden heat of his own intense fame. Harry Langdon's rise to the summit, and tumble back to the valley, paints a portrait of the most human of the great silent clowns. His films, though not as sought after as those of Chaplin and Keaton, deserve preservation, and increased viewing. His absolute masterpiece, "The Strong Man," directed, yes, by Frank Capra, crops up now and again on late night/early morning cable. It's precisely the kind of film for which the VCR and TiVo were invented.

Could any "success story" be any more compelling than Langdon's? He'd have been merely a forgotten name on a tombstone had not a bored Mack Sennett, on a night among any of a thousand nights, purchased a Vaudville ticket... and merely another lost face on celluloid of a century ago, had not Arthur Ripley sighed the word "twerp."

Harold Lloyd's films, ironically, have waned somewhat through the years, and faded into history, perhaps because fewer and fewer people can identify with him as a source of comedy. His modern day equivalent would be too busy answering his cell phone, or texting on his Blackberry, to engage in any extracurricular shenanigans worthy of shooting a film about. Sadly, of his hundreds of films, only a small handful – his precarious "thrill" comedies like "Safety Last" (1923) – are regarded by today's audiences.

Maybe it is time for Harry Langdon to once again assume his place in the early cinema's universe – an ancient, odd little star, shining brightly.

Chaplin's "Limelight" – A Critical Appreciation (including the Keaton scenes)

2009-12-15T12:07:00.001-08:00

With his Little Tramp long gone, Sir Charles Chaplin – one of the forefathers of modern screen comedy and perhaps the most important single screen presence in the history of early cinema – makes his final film, and some might say, life statement.

The scripted plot of "Limelight" (1952) may be summed up as a May-December love story set in the by-gone world where Chaplin began his career as a child performer, the British Music Hall. The story between the lines, however, is a revealing glimpse into the mind of the artist as an old man – and his final attempt to re-invent himself.

Chaplin creates a complex, if somewhat trite persona in Calvero, an aging stage clown who saves a young ballerina – Claire Bloom – from suicide, and nurses her back from a near career-ending paralysis. Their relationship as mentor-and-mentored becomes strained as he falls in love with her – and she of course never realizes it, until it's past too-late.

If it all sounds familiar, it is. Like the Tramp had done numerous times, and even the lowly barber masquerading as demagogue in "The Great Dictator" (1940), Chaplin's Calvero willingly lays everything on the altar of righteous sacrifice for the sake of an ideal.

It is a window with only an inward view. Chaplin seems to relish his own sage presence. In his sound films he never fails to gift himself with a younger – or at least naive – protégé upon whom to inflict long-winded monologues about the real Chaplin's off-camera worldview. In the silent days, interestingly, it was usually the Tramp who "discovered" these political revelations on his heroically innocent journeys.

In this rightly named finalé to his screen career, Chaplin's performance is visibly calculated. He has nothing left to prove, given his already well ensconced status in film history, and knows it. "Of course I'm brilliant," he exudes in each episodic scene, though this is not to deny the scope or formidable quality of what he offers throughout the picture. That white-haired elder statesman is still "Charlie" somewhere inside, and it shows, despite his obvious struggle to step out of the immense shadow of the Little Tramp.

For those familiar only with the Tramp, his performance here may strike a surreal chord. "Limelight" is arguably his most "talkative" talkie, and Chaplin's character is awash, nay, glowing in self-importance, even when down on his luck. The Tramp would've found this utterly incomprehensible, possibly immoral.

Chaplin was the last great silent era filmmaker to cross over to sound; a maverick holdout against the talkies. They were a blasphemy to him. And only Chaplin could have held out for as long, before finally relenting to the age of the microphone. His "Modern Times" (1936) is in fact, considered the very movie that officially closed the American cinema's silent era. Like his earlier silent masterpiece "City Lights" (1931), it was completed and exhibited well after theaters equipped for sound had become dominant.

The "Limelight" soundtrack boasts surprises on many levels. Chaplin doesn't just speak for novelty's sake, but displays a casual expertise with dialogue, and in a scene or two, a handsomely robust singing voice. The music hall boy still lurked inside him.

The mind reels so slightly for an instant: Chaplin's voice...!

As if he'd never spoken on film before, in each of Chaplin's "soundies," his voice seems to mesmerize. The ear hangs on his every word, seeking to capture it, like a rare bird. Charlie Chaplin's presence on any soundtrack is a somewhat mystical experience. Like witnessing the fleeting passage of a wraith across a dark hallway.

But with some of Chaplin's speaking roles, he'd misjudged its value. In "The Great Dictator," Chaplin's bromide-heavy speech for universal solidarity, in the final reel, is a single flaw in an otherwise peerless black satire of Hitler. On the other hand, in "Monsieur Verdoux" (1947) he definitely released his vocal powers to memorable and even haunting effect. Verdoux, a serial murderer 30 years before that term entered the lexicon, was certainly his greatest, and perhaps most successful, attempt to exorcise the Tramp; the "little fellow's" mirror opposite in every way.

Yes, Charlie Chaplin, playing a serial killer. Intrigued? Rent it!

Instead of waddling off into the sunset, Verdoux marches defiantly to the waiting gallows at dawn, after swallowing a glass of brine, with a hint of dark ecstasy – the Tramp's delicious death rattle: "I always wanted to taste it."

In "Limelight" he portrays a man very much dependent upon his voice. Calvero is a song & dance comedian. Up until his sound films, Chaplin spent four decades perfecting the caricature of the Little Tramp, living in a visual universe where voice was not only unnecessary but in some cases irrelevant – where those who spoke could only mime a stammering jaw-wag that visually stood in for the outpouring of words. The want hardly even occurs to imagine the Tramp's voice. Everything the Tramp ever needed was visual. Though Chaplin may have loosely made the Tramp a template when he manufactured Calvero, he drew an outline only, and replaced the center with a stunning departure from his realm of masterful visual storytelling – a character for whom sound and voice are not just crucial elements, but defining ones.

The Tramp's voice had been heard only once before "The Great Dictator." In "Modern Times" he takes a turn as a singing waiter, and when his crib-noted lyrics fly away during his opening dance, he sings a song of faux-French gibberish. The meaningless yet saucy non-word lyrics served to only further illustrate Chaplin's philosophy that visual presentation was the true focal point. The verbal was garnish, nothing more.

In Kevin Brownlow's incomparable book on the silent era, "The Parade's Gone By" (1976, University Of California Press), he declares that the silent and sound cinemas were more than just opposing sets of expository rules, but were in actuality two entirely different art forms. Charlie Chaplin proved Brownlow's hypothesis, although in ways that were sometimes disappointing – he would never dominate the talkies as he had the silents.

"Limelight" has a contrivance-on-rye flavor. The plot lurches and shuffles around the most obvious corners and twists. The dialogue is stiff and intemperately punctuated, though delivered undeservedly well. Chaplin unwinds his yarn like a teacher reading a storybook to a room of kindergartners; overstuffed even by 1950s standards. And as it is later revealed, all a set-up for one of his self-indulgent manifestos.

Calvero's flea circus act is over-simple, and overlong. It is enigmatic only for being a sanded-down reprise of a rare performance filmed nearly thirty-five years earlier.

During his stay at either the silent Mutual Studios, or First National, Chaplin attempted his first departure from the Little Tramp, with a character almost exactly the Tramp's opposite. "The Flea Circus" (1919), also known as "The Professor," is a freakish little presense in Chaplin's canon – a gift from an alternate universe, never officially released, but restored and viewable within some modern Chaplin documentaries. Chaplin plays a cynical, wrangley sideshow gypsy, dour and grimy, down to a moth eaten longcoat and ragged top-hat. Performing his act in a flophouse, chaos erupts when his flea performers mutiny and quickly infest everything, and everyone, in sight. Chaplin had even created a comic, misanthropic walk for this dour persona – a polar opposite of the Tramp's optimistic waddle. The only commonality was in the film's final shot, where Charlie exits into the sunset (or in this case, moonset) offering one last leg-shake to dislodge one of his insect tormentors.

Technically, "Limelight" is at times a groaner. Sound effects scream out their tinny artificiality. The most glaring sins occur in the theater scenes where the audience is clearly present on the soundtrack only, as evidenced by obvious volume manipulations to raise and lower the applause.

The one moment that earns this movie a permanent place on every cinema buff's shelf occurs in the last reel. And what a moment it is. For Calvero's farewell performance, he enlists an old friend to assist him – an old friend portrayed by none other than real-life old friend, Buster Keaton.

Though they are both slowed by age, the scene is nonetheless historic – their only appearance in a feature together, ever – and cosmic for silent comedy aficionados. Rembrandt and Di Vinci share a tea break.

Keaton's first line is so pregnant, it's hard to imagine the two men were unaware of its significance: "Well who'd have thought we'd come to THIS."

Buster's line delivery looks and sounds earnest to a fault – the still-present stage method from Vaudeville, and a main gripe among critics of Keaton's sound film work. Chaplin, meanwhile, remains aloof and catlike; an almost subconscious betrayal of his defenses being triggered by Keaton's close proximity, perhaps? Or was he simply Calvero, as his own script dictated?

Word spread that Chaplin was curt with Buster during filming, but this seems to be mere rumor. Other historical sources have revealed a few basic facts that outweigh the claptrap. Chaplin adamantly barred people he didn't like from his sets, therefore, he and Keaton were obviously on good terms. Some sources claim he personally requested Keaton – which seems most likely; rather than a cartoonish scenario of Buster Keaton answering a blind casting call for a Charlie Chaplin film.

Neither can we overlook the photographic evidence: still shots exist of Charlie and Buster working out the choreography of the scene, between takes! These details seem to dismiss any gossip of on-set tension between the two.

It's difficult to imagine Buster being hostile toward anyone on-set – if anything, he may have tried too hard to be helpful, to a point that perhaps annoyed Chaplin.

In the production of his last film, "The Railrodder" (1965), a travelogue shot in Canada, the only thing that apparently got under Buster's skin was his perception of his young director's inability to stage shots properly, in order to be matched up in editing. Keaton could only watch – and occasionally diagram for the youngster how certain on-screen business should fit together – then wander off to shed tears of anguish when his suggestions were overruled.

There exists footage of this, in the behind-the-scenes documentary "Buster Keaton Rides Again" (1965/66). The visage of the Great Stone Face openly weeping is heart-wrenching indeed. Then he sniffs it up... and proceeds to take his mark before the lens and be BUSTER KEATON. A remarkable man, under-appreciated, and used up.

But on the set of "Limelight," there were no such moments of private torment. All was as it should be; Chaplin and Keaton, each the other's only legitimate rival, yet with their private competition settled long ago to a mutual satisfaction. It was a draw. Both were content. Case closed.

They do a comic duet on stage in which Keaton plays the piano while Chaplin takes the violin. Hardly a note is played, as the comedic business involves the attempts of the two "virtuosos" to prepare to play. Chaplin emerges as the dominant performer in the scene, perhaps because he gives himself the majority of the business in the script. Despite the non-balance, this is one – and for some, the only – scene in the whole movie that causes audible laughter.

It is also the scene that displays Chaplin's showman genius in top form – not just in his performance, but his strategic involvement of Keaton, for the "skit" contains a subliminal geography of historical respect and appreciation for his chum.

Chaplin's comedic action is a study in "low" pantomime – consisting of body gags and facial expressions. Keaton's business relies on slapstick and the abuse of props – garnished by Keaton's stone deadpan. Chaplin's half of the scene perspires of the British Music Hall... Keaton's of Vaudeville. It is a testament to Chaplin's cognizance and keen measuring of his fellow silent clown's roots, against his own – and his ability to mesh them together so pleasingly. It might indeed be observed, that from all of Keaton's film roles that he did not self-direct, his best director was possibly Charlie Chaplin!

One bit involves Keaton accidentally stomping on Chaplin's violin, causing the two to briefly share a double-take at the destroyed instrument. No, it isn't the funniest thing ever captured on film, but on the galactic scale of cinematic comedy, Chaplin and Keaton double-taking at the same object has got to rank somewhere just below the Big Bang. Hardcore comedy fans may come away with the moment still looping in their minds, to the point of distraction, perhaps even missing the film's ending because of it.

Did the two men wonder if reality itself would shudder? Probably not. Did they just view it as another job? One wonders.

"Limelight" is an anomaly in Chaplin's cinema catalog for yet another reason. While important for being his last screen appearance, and rare cinematic evidence that he and Keaton shared the same planet, it is also a strange prism of distortion regarding his own theatrical moorings.

At its core "Limelight" is little more than B-movie fodder; an unremarkable work, considering the magnitude of its star. The screen personality whom at his peak was arguably the most famous human being on the globe, takes his final bow with nothing more than a death scene hardly worthy of low-budget melodrama. Calvero suffers a heart attack on stage, and passes away in the wings, watching his young ballerina enjoy the "limelight" of a renewed career.

The film's "fin" is utter cliché. Chaplin ends an incredible forty-year solo with a cough.

A white cloth is draped over his brow. Everyone looks on, including Keaton, probably wondering "oh brother," but playing his role exactly as his old pal requires him to.

Charlie does not amble off toward a horizon of tomorrow's promise, with his lady love, as he had done in "Modern Times." In fact, the final shot of that film may have served as a far more satisfying farewell regarding Chaplin's career.

When the Tramp made his final exit, so too did Charles Chaplin, only he apparently failed to realize it.

Many believed Chaplin lost his edge when he abandoned his derby hatted alter ego, including fellow silent era icon, and longtime Chaplin friend and associate, Mary Pickford. "When Chaplin got rid of the little tramp with the cane, the tramp turned around and killed him," she once said. Over a half-century later, her observation still appears spot-on.

Intersecting Parallels: Keaton and Kovacs

2009-12-15T12:05:00.000-08:00

In the early 1960s, the careers of comedians Ernie Kovacs and Buster Keaton crossed paths. This despite the maxim that two parallel lines can never intersect. It occurred literally at the concluding note of both men's lives, though Buster's journey to Griffith Park in 1962 had taken thirty years longer than Kovacs.

Buster began in Vaudeville, and graduated to the movies, the world that all but eluded Ernie – who had started in radio, the only medium Keaton never mastered. The nexus point was television.

Buster became a TV star almost as a last resort. Ernie had arrived intentionally, on a fast track.

He had ignored red lights before, with a certain cocky impudence, and once with a mildly startled Jack Lemmon riding shotgun. It may have been precisely why he did it.

In the first rainy Los Angeles hours of January 12, 1962, there was nobody in the passenger seat to playfully – perilously – agitate. Ernie Kovacs was alone. And distracted.

Unclear is why he arrived at this particular intersection, supposedly trailing home after his wife, actress-singer-ingenue Edie Adams, who'd driven ahead in another car – it was not the route she had taken.

Maybe he felt one more nightcap beckoning. He was after all, alone with his thoughts, perhaps for the first time in several days, or even weeks. His favorite watering hole, PJ's, was not conveniently near his opulent home on Coldwater Canyon Drive. Or given a dark, drizzly morning after a day just a bit too crazy, even for him, his dulled senses may simply have gotten him lost.

The day before had begun hundreds of hours ago, it seemed. He'd been up before dawn – a steambath to shore up the horizontal and vertical holds of his low-ebbing energy. Giving a friend a lift to the airport. Then down to Griffith Park for a morning-long shoot on a show that wasn't his own, which likely meant he hated it – all but for the chance to work with a particular legendary co-star. A late afternoon editing session for his own network show, that would broadcast weeks later, posthumously. A productive day, but not really a relished one.

Sitcoms were among the televised fodder he'd once vowed never to do, but circumstances had pressured him into taking the gig – he needed money.

Gameshows were another personal taboo he'd compromised to embrace for a badly needed wallet boost. At least they'd given him liberty to turn "Take A Good Look" (a playful rip-off of "What's My Line") into a nonsensical catch-all of Kovacsian chaos. Much like his fellow mustachioed, cigar-trademark comedian, Groucho Marx, Ernie was a natural at quiz-mastering. One would never guess from his cordially feisty on-camera demeanor, that the everything-but-logical half hour disgusted him.

He'd often reveled in spoofing shows like it – now he was saddled with the real thing, and forced to make it work. Like teasing the poorest girl in school, and then having to take her to the prom.

He loathed the gameshow's confined format, so he robbed it of all sense. The taped skits were supposed to disclose clues about the identity of the contestant, for the celebrity panel. He made them intentionally vague, so that anyone – a milkman in full white uniform, a dog catcher with a torn net and a spotted mastiff clamping down on his wrist – could come on the show and stump the famous-folk.

Ernie stumped the panel for them – so that they, like himself, could accept a pocket full of quick cash courtesy of Dutch Masters Cigars.

He'd stood in the eye of winter, shirtless, to film the predicament of a lovable snake-oil villain, for a comic-western something called "Medicine Man" – the pilot episode was titled "A Pony For Chris." His co-star shared more with him than just billing on this wretched mortgage-payer.

Like Kovacs, ancient icon Buster Keaton needed the paycheck. The show was only slightly more dignified than the Beach Party movies he'd been paid to wander through. Like notches on the handle of an old gunfighter's pistol, every hard-earned laugh of a tumultuous career was etched somewhere on his now frail body – a scar here, a permanent bruise there, a whelp, a discoloration – even a broken neck that he'd learned about fifteen years after it happened, when a veterans hospital doctor showed him a telling x-ray. A wrinkled, sad-eyed Father Time of show business, he was four short years away from death. Ernie would hardly imagine he was mere hours from his own.

The show's whirlwind shoot made the type of cosmic summit meeting some might envision between Ernie and Buster hellishly difficult, if not impossible. It is perhaps pleasant to contemplate them acknowledging each other, even confidentially. Getting some quality time between takes with Buster was reason alone to endure what must have been an otherwise joyless project, garnished in post production with canned laughter – another unpardonable sin Ernie silently tolerated in animus.

Critic John Barbour once summed up Kovacs with a review as powerful as it was concise: "Ernie Kovacs, the Charlie Chaplin of television." The compliment was great, and accurate, but on a stylistic level, Kovacs was more in tune with Keaton. And moreover, on this final day of his life, Kovacs found himself in an inner place not unlike where Keaton would wind up as he neared his own finish line.

In his senior years, Buster's trademark caricature had become marketable again in the movies, for its novelty appeal. But Buster the human being underneath the pork-pie hat was otherwise a persona non grata; a dogfaced geriatric answering a casting call. He would never helm a motion picture again, despite his silent era canon consisting of classic after classic – a body of work rivaled only by Chaplin's.

His legacy would have been lost forever had not actor James Mason discovered stacks of film canisters in a gardening shed of the southern California residence he purchased, which was formerly Buster's. Keaton had been certain that nobody past 1940 would ever watch a silent movie. So he hid them away. He intended eventually to use his cinematic gems like "The General" and "Cops" as packing tape.

He considered his past to reside in another Hollywood, an alternate universe that existed only in the memory of those who'd survived it. There weren't many left.

Based on that, he spent a number of years drinking himself into obscurity, becoming less and less employable – and more and more diluted. Hollywood's new younger casting agents and directors were clueless about who he had been.

One quick and dirty production actually had him in clown make-up, and its oblivious director tried to make him smile. Keaton dropped out of Hollywood not long after walking out on that grievous turn. His career, if not his liver, found a bit of renewed life in foreign films – where he was still considered the "Buster" of old – even if the poor quality of production materials and preservation methods, or a lack thereof, left those years irretrievable, even in the modern age of digital mastering.

Hollywood rang Kovacs supposedly due to his uniqueness, because of how different and larger than life he had been on television. Then as it had to Keaton, it merrily attempted to homogenize him. Ernie's handful of films contain only his presence, and a sample of his competent acting ability, but lack any hint of the substance of what made him Ernie Kovacs.

Back home that evening, drooping, worn out, yet stubbornly relentless, he was due at a party. A christening for Milton Berle's adopted son, Michael, at Billy Wilder's house. He'd promised Edie that he would show. As he busied himself dressing, the weight of the day finally cracked his veneer – in front of one of his children, yet. It was vile, but not directed at her. He told her so, mid-rant.

On the way he detoured by PJ's, and had a couple quick ones for a relaxer. As if an insomia-plagued 24 hours wasn't enough.

At the gathering he was, of course, on.

Bags under his eyes and all, he was Ern. Everyone loved Ern. Later, they'd all claim he'd been the life of the party. Lucille Ball's husband, Gary Morton, would deliver the obligatory "the Kovacs trademark cigar was in great evidence." Predictable, patented PR pabulum. So had the Berle trademark cigar, and probably the Burns trademark cigar, and the cigars of other well-knowns who kept them a private trademark. Kovacs was running on fumes. He got a giggle out of Dean Martin's wife, Jeanne, with his secret of eternal life: "cigars, steambaths and one hour of sleep a night." Finally homeward bound after midnight, Ernie asked the French movie star Yves Montland if he needed a ride. He said thanks, but no.

The Ernie Kovacs headstone, at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills cemetery – a two-minute walk from Keaton's, which bears only a name and a date – is inscribed with the legend "Nothing In Moderation." It was the motto of Ernie's coat of arms. Even with creditors dogging his ankles, Kovacs settled only for things he could less and less afford. His unpaid tab at PJ's was scary – and why he had to keep showing up, lest they think he'd skipped town.

Emerging from Berle's party, Kovacs did something most curious. Living beyond his means was exacting a huge toll on his health, his marriage, and his work quality – but sudden, impulsive frugality would come at a premium. He and Edie had driven to the party in separate cars; he in the Rolls and she in their grocery cart, a '61 Corvair Lakewood stationwagon. For the trip home, he switched with her – one documented instance when Ernie decided to break conspicuous form – and it cost him his life.

Was he cavalier? Was weariness eating him? Or did he just want an hour to himself? A quick return to PJ's for another mellow-maker, in a ride that wouldn't attract attention.

A light rain fell. His driving was a bit lubricated, and unfocussed.

The peck of the rain drops on the Corvair's thin metal hull, the damply hypnotic twitch-twitch of the wipers, the glow of a Los Angeles midnight, and his aloneness – Kovacs was perhaps for the first time in three days, silent. Eugene at the wheel. If he had told Edie that he'd be right behind her, he wasn't. It was not necessarily a lie – perhaps once behind the wheel, things changed.

In the last phase of his life, Buster Keaton had transformed into a shriveled little paperwad who just still resembled, vaguely, the American silent cinema's Van Gogh. He'd been adored and then rejected by Hollywood, both with such magnitude, that up to his dying afternoon, he'd remained stone-like and defiant. Even if it was only in his mind.

In a dream marriage to an ex-dancer many years his junior, Keaton nevertheless retreated to a private cell of self-containment – a bare-walled, gray little room in a merely average suburban dwelling, that he'd bought with the fee from his "consultation" on the movie of his life, "The Buster Keaton Story." They had ignored him, but still paid him.

The most sublime insult of all – they'd cast cherubic Donald O'Connor to play Keaton. O'Connor had the physical magic to ape most of Buster's mesmerizing stunts of a past lifetime, but he was the very antithesis of the stone-faced stoic, and made no attempt in the film to hide it. The level of indirect mockery Keaton endured from the biopic's inaccuracies was sadly garnished by O'Connor's indelible grin. An extra twist of a an already deeply lodged dagger.

To catch Buster Keaton smiling on film is akin to spotting a UFO over the White House. Only in his earliest films, along side the mentor he surpassed, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle – Keaton curled his lips only when the script called for it, and never, ever, ad-libbed even a smirk. He'd learned it from his boyhood, in the most violent act in Vaudeville, the Three Keatons.

O'Connor's face was a child on Christmas morning, etched in blond oak.

Ironically, O'Connor was the only person associated with this cinematic donnybrook of Keaton's life to actually take an interest in the truth, and spend time with the man himself.

In the film, a brave young Buster witnesses his father's death from the circus high-wire. When O'Connor asked him how he'd dealt with such a blow, Keaton duly informed him that it didn't happen. The Keatons were never a circus act. Buster's father, Joe, had actually appeared as an extra in many of Keaton's early films, and passed away after Buster was himself past 40.

Nobody cared. O'Connor, oddly, never complained.

By the time Keaton was done – in his heart – with Hollywood, his one true joy had become cards; Rummy, Bridge, Solitaire... and his most sacred remaining possession, his solitude. Even a visit by hot young comic Bill Cosby could not roust Buster from his comfortable self-exile.

In his mind, Buster lived on an island. With his past. He seemed uninterested, distant.

In his final hour, the damn burst. The human monolith of silent clowns would not shut up!

He'd begun a game of Bridge with his wife and two guests... suddenly he was marching restlessly about the house, allowing 60 years of repressed energy and frustration – the volcanic ash of his life as exiled Hollywood royalty – to issue forth in a pauseless torrent. Stories of the old days... long pent-up complaints about Louis Mayer and the rest of those sons of bitches... the years lost away from his children (whom were smuggled out of his life by his first wife Natalie, in a way similar to how Ernie's first wife, Bette, kidnapped their own daughters). A stroke finally quieted him... and once calmed, he did not lay down, but sat upright, on the gurney, and once safely at the hospital, died.

In Ernie's final hour, he too was feeling used up. His final comedy special for ABC seemed to show a man frustrated by the enigma of his situation. He faced the only thing on Earth seemingly larger than his talent: his debt.

Tired. The show was not up to his usual standard for what turned out to be the end run. The wick that once burned brightly, was now charred and bent, the melted wax rising like an oily tide, to snuff the flame.

Hollywood was slowly devouring him, using his one great weakness – an addiction to extravagance – against him. He wasn't the first to be applauded while perched on the gangplank.

To be a fly on the barroom wall, and listen to Ernie share a drink with an Orson Welles, or more surreally, an Erich Von Stroheim.

The Ernie Kovacs presiding over that last broadcast was a man caring less than ever before. Not carefree, but careworn. Gone was the suit and black razor tie. Instead, he sat and spoke at the camera, hunched upon a console in a nameless editing room – in a pull-over golf shirt that looked like it hadn't seen an iron lately, of either kind. The makeup was a token gesture – Kovacs looked dimmed, running on auxiliary since yesterday.

The cameras were switched on. He needed it in the can a week ago.

He was at the point to which a tipsy midnight drive would be enough to do him in. He held on just a few days longer.

The last show Kovacs guest-starred on, was also the last in which Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball appeared as a couple.

"The Desi & Lucy Comedy Hour" was not so much a sitcom as it was a business deal, to keep rolling the gravy train that had been "I Love Lucy," after the two leads admitted they were pedal-to-floor for divorce court. As with Kovacs's pokerface smile on TAGL, however, on camera Lucy and "Ricky" were still seemingly holding it together.

The show was fraudulent from opening credits to final fade, and subliminally illustrated just how Hollywood could not get its head around an Ernie Kovacs – and how it had decided to quick-fry him, in a way that Buster Keaton could probably relate to.

The final Desi-Lucy episode, entitled "Lucy Meets The Mustache" was about a powerful Hollywood TV comedian named Ernie Kovacs helping out a Cuban ex-bandleader named Ricky Ricardo, who is desperate for work, whose marriage is stressed.

In real life, Desi Arnaz was the epitome of Hollywood financial godhood – the once mighty RKO Studio now wearing his "Desilu" logo; an empire that Lucy herself would helm after the dust had settled. Even the affected marriage angle was partially inaccurate – the marriage had been over for years. The two were now just business partners.

Ernie Kovacs was anything but the network power player he portrayed. He was in fact the one flat broke, with a troubled marriage. Hosting a low-on-the-dial gameshow – keeping just two skips ahead of the IRS and other creditors.

The show's final gag was one that must have irked Kovacs right to the core; it mocked his every triumph of a decade reinventing TV comedy – an exploding cigar. A doubletake that every Vaudevillian knew by heart. The laugh that Kovacs wanted least, all his life.

Even a pie in the face was only acceptable in the Erniverse if hurled at a spoof of someone real... like Loretta Young, or a June Taylor dancer.

Like Keaton, Kovacs braved the clueless insult of an industry he had helped birth.

An exploding cigar? Typical dim-bulb sitcom-think. Do it just this once, Ern. It's a natural gag since you smoke cigars n' all that. Don't it just kill you? (Pick nose here.)

Like "The Buster Keaton Story," "Lucy Meets The Mustache" proved just how soon and how much Hollywood could forget, about someone it owed so much.

The light was green or red, yellow or lavender – when he made the intersection of Santa Monica and Beverly Glenn.

It didn't matter – he didn't see it. Some imagine he took his hands off the wheel to grab a cigar from his inside breast pocket, or already had it out and was lighting it – allowing the car to drive itself. Or it was something simpler, after the preceding marathon of unrest – even an insomniac must slumber some time – a nod that lasted a moment too long.

When the car didn't auto-pilot the left turn, Ernie bolted to grab the wheel and correct the car's trajectory, and likely overcompensated, given the wet road, and his lubed reflexes. The turn became a spin – once, counter-clockwise. A power pole at the corner stopped it, horseshoeing the thin-shelled Corvair. The impact might have been less, and survivable, had the car's engine been in the front – or even merely anecdotal if he'd been in the Rolls, the car he'd driven to the party.

No car in the early 60s came equipped with an airbag. Kovacs was knocked across the Corvair's front bench seat by a forty-foot steel ballbat. His head glanced off the steering wheel in the process.

The split-second mangling burst his aorta. What did he see in that instant – in essence punched out of his own body? Were his eyes even still registering images?

Some reports said he died instantly, but certain clues indicate something terribly different. Ernie Kovacs experienced a few unimaginable seconds after his moment of death. He crawled. His last cigar still clamped in his fingers, he scooted himself out the blast-open passenger door. He made it to the asphalt, then blipped out, into the unknowable. The cigar freed itself and rolled a few inches from his hand.

The 1963 movie "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" starred, among an avalanche of the day's most popular comedians, the two Kings of TV Clownery, Milton Berle and Sid Caesar. Ernie would have made it the comedic triumvirate, had he been alive. Ernie's widow instead played the wife of Caesar's character, maintaining Ernie's presence in spirit, in a cinematic blockbuster he had deserved to share, after too many films that are now merely footnotes of other actors' careers.

Buster Keaton, incidentally, had a bit part in that picture.

Both Keaton's and Kovacs's final bows were to serve scripts that cared nothing for their respective legacies. Both had first wives who stole their children; Keaton's boys and Kovacs's girls. Each took the conventional wisdom of his era's comedy and defied it, forced it to reveal its full potential, even with still-primitive tools.

When one man's career is summed up, it eerily mirrors that of the other.

"He" left a successful career in an established medium, to pioneer an experimental one – and wound up virtually reinventing it. Buster abandoned a star spotlight on Broadway, something most actors would kill for, to follow a sudden compulsive fascination with the motion picture camera. Ernie left the well-oiled radio industry for the new game in town, television.

"His" most productive years, containing his greatest achievements, were the first ten.

Both Buster and Ernie created forms of comedy that were unique and exclusive to their own respective mediums. Verbal humor was neither man's style. Kovacs made videotape itself his straight-man, as Keaton had with celluloid.

An Afternoon at Forest Lawn with a Few of My Heroes

2009-12-15T12:02:00.000-08:00

It took 90 minutes of tramping up and down rows, and finally backtracking over a hill, to the information kiosk, to find Ernie Kovacs.

Someone had placed at his grave a tiny purple bouquet, which I immediately, carelessly, knocked over, then with great apologies re-stuck about where it had been planted. Ernie is in the Court of Remembrance, in the oval lawn in front of the mausoleum. A little red churchhouse and the open countryside are beautifully visible from the gravesite. Ernie's signature hewn right into the stone serves instead of a block lettered stamp-job, and the inscription below reads "Nothing In Moderation, We All Loved Him." We still do.

To Ernie's right are two of his daughters, Mia and Kippie.* I was glad to finally find him. I took a second sojourn inspired by Kovacs; to the intersection where he was killed, the crossing of Santa Monica Boulevard and Beverly Glenn. The power pole array at the corner is still there and it was easy to visualize taking a left turn too sharply on a rainsoaked road and spinning right into them, just like legend has it that Ernie did. Ironically, with today's better built cars it would have been a survivable impact.

Into the mausoleum, one must get past Bette Davis, standing sentinel like a pit bull. "It's going to be a bumpy night."

Inside, one might never find Lucille Ball if you expect something huge and ornate with "BALL" emblazoned upon it. She's in an urn, in a shoebox sized tomb labled "Morton" which is owned by her last husband, comic Gary Morton. Behind a bouquet of (again, purple) blossoms bigger than the grave they marked... there's Lucy.

Across this tiny sunlit chamber, Charles Laughton and George Raft keep Freddie Prinze company.

Driving on toward that little red church mentioned above, one comes to a huge court – the military section – resided over by a giant statue of George Washington, along with other brooding gods of warriors past.

Behind George, against the wall – is Stan Laurel. Sharing the plot with his wife Ida. His plaque says it all. "Master of Comedy." That's the league above any mere "King of – ". Even Chaplin revered him. Stan Laurel forgot more about the art of laugh-getting than most comedians ever know.

Like Lucy, Stan was cremated, so the marker is really just symbolic. Ida's body rests at the marker's foot.

Another good Brit rests near Washington, in front, to his right. Marty Feldman. "Damn your eyes!" "Too late."

But wait, look closer at Washington. He's pointing to something. What could it be? What could our country's father not want me to miss?

I followed his silent command, out to the front lawn of the military court. I kept checking to make sure I was lined up with his stern direction...

There, beyond the small stone wall of the court is... Buster Keaton.

This was the most emotional find in the park. I was taken unexpectedly by my own feelings.

I think (General) Washington pointing RIGHT AT Buster Keaton was what took me over the top.

Below this tiny stone with only a name and a date is a true giant. I stood there several minutes pondering. Someone had placed pennies over the loops of the sixes, as if they were eyes. A "General" golf ball rested on the stone with the word "the" scribbled on it. I actually started misting up at this small, unremarkable headstone – the inconspicuous resting place of the most remarkable man in the entire cemetery. Keep pointing, Mr. President. I got it.

On one afternoon in Hollywood, around 2001, I bought a bottle of all-purpose cleaner and a metal brush. I returned to Buster's grave and polished it up. The bronze caught the sun like it had when brand new. The Sons Of The Desert, the international Laurel & Hardy fan club, had left a pot of daisies for him, for Veteran's Day. I wondered why daisies? I went to get my camera to take a second shot of the tombstone now bright and polished, but my battery was low, and I had to get on the road. Perhaps I'll be back before too long, and take care of unfinished business.

*Since I wrote this article some years ago, Ernie's wife, actress-singer-ingenue Edie Adams has passed on, and joined the family at Forest Lawn.

Sticky Showdown At The Tapehead Corral

2009-12-15T11:56:00.000-08:00

All I wanted to do was watch a western. That's it. Big whoop. Little did I know that I was actually asking Earth and the Heavens to move.

Western movies are one of the great vanishing American artforms. And GOOD old westerns are all the more rare.

Give them half a chance, and I believe an old western – a good one – will captivate your afternoon. Hollywood doesn't know how to make them anymore – not good ones, anyway.

Think John Wayne can't act? You haven't seen very many of his films – you've definitely never experienced "The Searchers," or "Red River." You've never burst out in involuntary tears of heartbreak at the 'messed up' final scene of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."

I can't channel-surf past the Wayne version of "The Alamo" without dropping the remote and staring fixedly until the closing credits roll. Don't leave out Howard Hawks' manifesto of manliness, the 'talking' western, "Rio Bravo."

And there's the great 'non-Duke' oaters, like "The Wild Bunch," "Welcome To Hard Times," "Winchester '73," and the incomparable "Shane."

Wow, I sound like a junky to this passé genre – but I'm hardly that. Let me tell you of one little situation that should prove it to you...

Short version of story: I go to a video store, and I buy an old western. I want to watch it. "The Professionals" (1966). Yes, there are westerns far older, but few better.

Burt Lancaster. Lee Marvin. Robert Ryan. A western with any of these names in the credits is the promise of quality. This western has all three, plus Jack Palance. The female lead is Claudia Cardinale, a causer of wet dreams during my young, young adulthood, in most any film she appeared in. Also present is one of the great, great unsung character actors of the 50s and 60s – and a few 70s – cowboy epics: Woody Strode. Bald before bald was cool; a solumn, unflinching, Biblically intense gaze; intimidatingly manly – call him a black 'Duke.' He occupied space on the screen, the same way that Orson Welles once said of James Cagney – an ultimate compliment. Nuff said?

So anyway, I get a used, er... pre-owned VHS. That's why it's cheap, and such an easy decision. I get home, make myself comfy with a sandwich and a soda, and pop the tape into my VCR (which sits atop my DVD player, lest you assume I live entirely in a career-bachelor backwater).

Problem. The picture appears to have a swarm of bright, digitized cockroaches attacking it. I wait patiently for my VCR, a Quasar Omnivision – not a new model, but not too old for auto-tracking – to self-correct. It doesn't. Instead the screen goes blue-neon, and up zings a screen message that the tapeheads require cleaning.

OK. I put my sandwich and soda in their 'on-hold' positions on the wide wooden arm of my futon. I search about ten minutes for my tapehead cleaning cassette. You remember those, right? Looks just like a VHS tape, but you drip a little cleaning fluid on the 'tape,' put it in the VCR, and it scrubs all the dust and neo-magnetic gunk from the tapeheads. Cool beans. Only, I discover I no longer possess one.

Right. I have to go find some place that still sells them, and buy a new one.

Longs Drugs. Thank the Big Guy for Longs. Maxell still makes VHS tapehead cleaning cassettes. Longs still carries them. O-yeah.

A half hour later I am back home, ripping the plastic wrap off a brand new tapehead cleaning cassette (from this point referred to as the TCC). I'll be enjoying "The Professionals" any minute now. My sandwich and soda casually wait in the fridge.

Opening the TCC's package, I see that it comes with a handy stick-on label, with spaces to document each time the TCC is used. I've never pondered the importance of keeping track of tapehead cleanings – it's so rare a task that the very cassette is usually lost, like mine was, after the first use – but this strikes me as a pretty practical and nifty idea. I peel off the label and sloppily press it in place along the cassette spine. Then I notice that the small bottle of cleaner fluid crucial to the TCC's success, is contained within the frame of the cassette itself, behind a clear plastic, removable window – which I have just made unremovable, because of the distracted fashion with which I applied the handy stick-on label.

Alright. A minor speed bump on the path to classic western cinema enjoyment. I can handle it. My sandwich and soda will keep, nicely chilled.

I attempt to peel the label back off – child's play: create a tiny lip along the edge, slowly pull, and the label should lift off without being destroyed, and still be easily re-applicable. Only... damn, they put strong glue on this. I didn't press it on that hard, did I? Holy crap, this is stuck on good. What kind of atomic time-capsule cement do they put on these stupid monkey-ass things??

Back in the day, video labels were basically worthless – they wouldn't stay stuck – in fact the frikkin' VCR would usually heat them off, and you'd spend hours diddling inside with a ballpoint pen to retrieve the semi-sticky wad from the machine's innards without pulling out some tiny important metal component along with it. But in the years since, Maxell has apparently solved the label glue problem. Bigtime.

The label rips. I manage to peel off a flake, leaving the majority of an ugly, ragged label still super-grafted to the TCC, and still firmly sealing shut the compartment containing the cleaning fluid bottle.

Twenty more minutes of peeling off slivery flakes of label – and still not enough to free the trapped bottle. We approach piss-off territory.

Do I have anything in the closet – a solvent, that will eat the label off? Rubbing alcohol? No – I'll have to get some, one of these days. The very substance that would do the job, is the stuff in the tiny trapped bottle behind the damn label.

Hah! I have something: Half a tube of skin oil astringent! So it isn't exactly sulphuric acid, but it's for dismantling greasy debris on some level, right? I squirt some on the cassette. It works a little – eats away the outer perimeter of the label, aided by some intense action with a dish scrubber, but it doesn't quite put the same whammy on the label's central mass – still with a pitbull grip on the removable plastic window. I need a more powerful corrosive.

The answer would be simple if I was a smoker: lighter fluid! But no. Fantastik? 409? Scrubbing Bubbles? No, no, and no. Clean tapeheads on a ruined VCR? Yeah, right. I commence to rub the shit out of the label with the damp dish scrubber. Slowly, slowly... the skin of my fingertips wears thin and bloody.

A kitchen knife becomes an impromptu scraper. Now I'm making headway. Bit by insufferable bit, finally the label is gone – no longer usable in any way – but no longer holding the cleaning fluid bottle captive. Yes! Oh ecstasy. Consummate joy.

It's only been a mere hour since I tried to start my western. All is not lost. I slide out the clear plastic window, take out the bottle, unscrew the cap to apply it to the TCC, and... nothing. And the damn bottle isn't even squeezable. I examine it more closely... 'please puncture tip of applicator to extract fluid.'

It's like a men's haircolor applicator – yes, I'm savvy with those, so sue me – I have to cut a D.I.Y. hole in the lid of the bottle. Only the bottleneck is so narrow, I need something sharp that's thin enough to fit. I need a pin. A needle. Do I have a pin? Or a needle? I look.

I look for twenty minutes.

BALLS!!!! Okay-dokey. Allllrighty. I try to snip the tip off with scissors, hoping to cut it low enough to get past the solid part of the bottle. No dice. I have to go buy pins!

You hear this?? I gotta go all fucking way back to Longs, to buy a pack of pins, so I can poke a hole in the tip of an applicator bottle, which I've just spent an hour on – crapping my pants, with a Brillo pad, a knife and skin astringent – trying to get it out of a damn plastic cassette, that I impulsively glued shut with a gawddamm cement-soaked, one-inch strip of handy-label, like a brainless twat. So I can clean the tapeheads on my old Quasar VCR. So I can sit on my futon with a soggy sandwich and a flat diet-soda and watch a used, 5-dollar VHS tape. Of a movie that's nearly the same age as I am.

I am not getting in the car one more time tonight. I must have something, anything, pin-like. Finally I come upon it: an aluminum dental pick. Yeah, I bought it a year or two ago, on a whim. It's just like the little metal prong that your dentist probes your cavities with before he drills. I remember I got it at Longs. Irony? Only the best, the most humiliating.

I use the dental pick to puncture the bottle of cleaning fluid, which I then shake over the application hole in the TCC, hard enough to make some of the fluid actually drip out, but gingerly enough not to whack the bottle into the cassette and wreck it. That takes fifteen minutes. Merely. Holy-mother-o'-hump-a-diddling-Pope-John-on-rubber-crutches.

Yeah. Finally. TCC ready to go. Shit yeah. I pop it in the VCR. I press PLAY. The next 30 seconds sound like a cow's tongue licking the scab off a skin graft.

But suddenly the TCC ejects. I pop my movie back in. It's beautiful. A picture as pristine as when the tape was new, probably back in the 80s. It's playing, and it's beautiful, I tells ya! And I'm missing the beginning – I run to grab my sandwich and soda and establish my supreme comfy place on the futon. All that shit just may have been worth it.

Get your own copy of "The Professionals." It is, after all, one of the truly great westerns. I recommend it on DVD.