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
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