Currents of Comedy on the American Screen: How Film and Television Deliver Different Laughs for Changing Times

217 Pages·2009·6.137 MB·English

by  Nicholas Laham

Currents of Comedy
on the American Screen
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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
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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
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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