Currents of Comedy on the American Screen: How Film and Television Deliver Different Laughs for Changing Times PDF
Preview Currents of Comedy on the American Screen: How Film and Television Deliver Different Laughs for Changing Times
Currents of Comedy on the American Screen This page intentionally left blank Currents of Comedy on the American Screen How Film and Television Deliver Different Laughs for Changing Times N L ICHOLAS AHAM McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London Nicholas Laham is also the author of The American Bombing of Libya: A Study of the Force of Miscalculation in Reagan Foreign Policy (McFarland, 2008) LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA Laham, Nicholas. Currents of comedy on the American screen : how film and television deliver different laughs for changing times / Nicholas Laham. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-4264-5 softcover : 50# alkaline paper 1. Comedy films—United States—History and criticism. 2. Television comedies—United States—History and criticism. I. Title. PN1995.9.C55L24 2009 791.43'6170973—dc22 2009012371 British Library cataloguing data are available ©2009 Nicholas Laham. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover photograph: Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in the 1942 Pardon My Sarong(Universal Pictures/Photofest) Manufactured in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com To Haydee, Carmelita, and Ma. Ella, with love and appreciation This page intentionally left blank Table of Contents Preface 1 Introduction 5 ONE. Laughing During Troubled Times: The Art of Screwball Comedy 25 TWO. Film Comedy Highlights the Dark Side of American Life 50 THREE. Film and Television Comedy Takes a Feminist Perspective on American Life 77 FOUR. The Ultimate Reality-Based Television Sitcom? The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited 151 FIVE. The Resurrection of Suspense Comedy Since the 1980s 174 Chapter Notes 187 Bibliography 201 Index 203 vii This page intentionally left blank Preface This book is about the art of film and television comedy. Comedy is perhaps the easiest genre of film and television to explain—simply put, it is about making people laugh. But comedy is also perhaps the most difficult artistic endeavor to explain—because we have no idea what makes people laugh. Among those who have written about the art of film comedy, John McCabe is certainly a pioneer. McCabe wrote the first biography of the leg- endary comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy—Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy—published in 1961. Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy established the criti- cal reputation of the legendary duo as ranking among the greatest comedi- ans in the history of entertainment—a point which is taken for granted today but was not prior to the publication of the biography.1 McCabe is the only Laurel and Hardy biographer who had the oppor- tunity to interview Stan; obviously this opportunity was lost to subsequent biographers when Laurel, who survived his partner by seven years, died in 1965. In one interview, Laurel, who left his own rich legacy of laughter through the ninety-five films—seventy-two shorts (forty-one in sound) and twenty-three feature-length movies—he and Hardy starred in during their long and illustrious career in Hollywood, made the following remarkable, though perfectly logical, admission to McCabe: “Don’t ever ask me what comedy is, or what makes people laugh. I don’t know, and I bet ... no one else knows either.” McCabe could not agree more with Laurel: “Surely, Stan was right. No one has ever satisfactorily explained what laughter is, and ... no one likely ever will.”2 As a boy growing up during the 1960s, I kept my own copy of Mr. Lau- rel and Mr. Hardy on my bookshelf. I was captivated by the comic artistry of Laurel and Hardy through my viewing of endless reruns of their sound shorts, which Hal Roach produced from 1929 to 1935, regularly broadcast on local television in Los Angeles during the 1960s. I was not the only baby- 1
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