Tonight's Episode: The Awkward Squad or Shell Mock

It's great to be back!  My time in the last few months has been occupied with health issues, an ill-fated romance, and professional study.  But now, my friends, it's time to get back to the comedy.

I just finished reading Hal Erickson's Military Comedy Films.  This is a comprehensive work that provides insightful commentary on a wide variety of military comedies.  My favorite chapter was "Abbott and Costello Meet the Ripoffs," in which Erickson describes the attempts of various studios to mimic the success of Universal's Buck Privates (1941).  I have to admit that I was unaware that Jackie Gleason was cast as a Lou Costello clone in Columbia's Buck Privates variant, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1942).

Of course, I read the book with a special interest in the gags and routines.  The main purpose of the classic military comedies was to lampoon military life, but they also allowed funnymen to reintroduce old stock gags into a new setting.  Take, for example, this gag from Sailor Beware (1952).  Erickson appropriately dubs this the "human sieve" gag.

The most persistent routine in military comedies was the drill routine.  The routine can be traced to the nineteenth century minstrel shows, in which the black Civil War regiments were a prime target for satire.  A popular routine known as "I'm One of the Black Brigade" (1864) involved black soldiers ineptly making their way through the manual of arms.

At first, vaudeville comedy was as much centered on Irish stereotypes as minstrel show comedy had been centered on black stereotypes.  It was only a matter of time before vaudeville funnymen would adapt the drill routine into a vehicle for the standard Irish caricatures.  But additional inspiration came along with the rise of ragtag ethnic neighborhood militias in New York City during the 1870s.  John Kendrick wrote in Musical Theater: A History, "These local 'guard' units were little more than uniformed drinking clubs sponsored by local politicians."  After overindulging in the free beer provided by the politicians, the militia units paraded drunkenly through the streets of the Lower East Side in their ill-fitting uniforms.  In 1873, Edward Harrigan & Tony Hart poked fun at these figures of folly in a skit called "The Mulligan Guard," which debuted at Broadway's Theatre Comique.  Jon W. Finson, Professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina, noted that much of routine came down to the comedians "trying to make their way through the manual of arms without impaling themselves on bayonet or saber."  The skit was soon expanded into the play The Mulligan Guard Picnic, which became a steadfast hit and went on to spawn four sequels.

The drill routine was also popular in the English music hall.  An 1877 British pantomime, Dick Whittington and His Cat, featured a comic drill scene.

Harold Lloyd directed raw army recruits in a comic drill in Luke's Prepardedness Preparations (1916), which may be the first time that the routine was ever recorded on film.  But the routine came to prominence with film audiences when it was performed by Charlie Chaplin in Shoulder Arms (1918).

The routine showed up fairly regularly after Shoulder Arms.

Clyde Cook in The Misfit (1924)

 

Stan Laurel in Smithy (1924)

Snub Pollard in The Doughboy (1926) 

Jack Haley in Salt Water Daffy (1933)

Laurel and Hardy can be seen performing a variety of bungled military exercises in Beau Hunks (1931), Pack Up Your Troubles (1932), Bonnie Scotland (1935), The Flying Deuces (1939) and Great Guns (1941). 

 

Here is an exceptionally funny scene from Pack Up Your Troubles.

Mishap often occurred in drill scenes when the drill sergeant had the soldiers count off.  This is demonstrated in Beau Hunks.

The Three Stooges put their own unique stamp on the routine in Boobs In Arms (1940).

The most memorable drill scene was no doubt provided by Abbott & Costello in Buck Privates (1941).

Marching into the wrong direction.  Tripping over his own belt.  Getting the butt of a rifle slammed down on his foot.  Asking the drill instructor, "Why don't you make up your mind?"  It had all been done before.  But Abbott and Costello were still able to make this material seem fresh.  Costello managed, through his exasperated reactions, to make the routine more relatable than it had ever been before.  Also, he kept the audience on their toes by throwing in the occasional non sequitur ("What time is it?").  Costello was at the peak of his charms at the time and the audience was with him all the way.  But Abbott contributes significantly to the routine as well.  Totally unique is Abbott's forceful and calculated strategy to get Costello moving in the same direction as the other soldiers.  Abbott, who baffled Costello with his many mathematical equations, was the most calculated straight man in movie history.

 

After Buck Privates, other comedians paled at their attempts to perform the drill routine.

Bowery Battalion (1951)

It's a Grand Life (1953) 

Cartoon characters even got into the act.  The following clip is from Donald Duck  Donald Gets Drafted (1942).

Neil Simon, king of wordplay, proved that the conflict between a raw recruit and a drill instructor can be expressed comically without a single pratfall. 

Biloxi Blues (1988)

Costello's struggles with a hammock in In the Navy (1941) was another stock military routine.  The routine showed up in many silent comedies, including Miss Jackie of the Navy (1916), Ship Shape (1925), Jolly Tars (1926) and Shore Shy (1926).

Overall, I enjoyed Military Comedy Films and recommend it to comedy fans.

Birds of a Feather

The Gale Storm Show episode "Singapore Fling" (1957) starts out with cruise ship chief, Captain Huxley (Roy Roberts), assigning his cruise director (Gale Storm) to teach his mynah bird to talk.  Storm becomes exasperated when hours of coaching fail to elicit a single word from her feathery charge.  She insists that the captain has given her an impossible task.  "Captain Huxley is off his rocker," she complains.  To her surprise, the mynah bird finally breaks its silence by repeating the phrase.  The bird cries out the phrase again and again, sending Storm into a panic. 

Storm visits a pet shop to replace the bird.  She is ready to leave the shop with a lookalike mynah bird when the new bird, in mimicry of the captain's bird, suddenly squawks, "Captain Huxley is off his rocker!"  The scene ends with all of the birds in the shop screeching, "Captain Huxley is off his rocker!"

This story will no doubt sound familiar to fans of the Car 54, Where Are You?, which made use of the same storyline for one of its most memorable episodes.  The Car 54 episode, "I Hate Captain Block!" (1962), starts out with Captain Block (Paul Reed) asking Officer Toody (Joe E. Ross) to take care of his beloved parrot while he is away on vacation.  The captain tells Toody that it has always bothered him that he has never been able to get the parrot to talk.  This gives Toody an idea.  If all goes as planned, he will be able to surprise the captain by teaching the parrot to talk before he returns from his trip.  But the bird fails to pick up on any of the phrases that Toody is trying to teach it until it overhears Toody say, "I hate Captain Block!"

"Singapore Fling" was written by Larry Rhine and Bill Freedman.  Rhine was a prolific writer in radio and television.  He worked on Mister Ed for four seasons, producing scripts for 52 of the series' 143 episodes.  In addition, he received Emmy nominations during his longtime tenure on The Red Skelton Show (1962 to 1971) and All in the Family (1975 to 1979).  Freedman had little television experience at the time that he worked on "Singapore Fling," but he went on to work as a staff writer on My Favorite Martian and The Brady Bunch.

You Got to Have Friends

Ever since I wrote The Funny Parts, I have remained fascinated with the free manner in which creative works are often recycled.  Lewis Gilbert's 1971 teen romance film Friends has more than a little in common with Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom.  A neglected boy (Sean Bury) runs away with an orphaned girl (Anicée Alvina).  The couple escape together into the wilderness in the hope of creating a life away from the unhappy adult world they inhabit.  As soon as they get settled, the boy and girl strip down to their underwear and experience a sexual awakening.  Eventually, they become separated by police responding to a missing persons report. 

 Friends (1971)

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Of course, Anderson brought his own unique style to the project.  He invested the story with his patented brand of quirky, deadpan humor and made use of fantastical fairy tale imagery to convey the couple's adventures from a child's perspective. 

 

Simple Plots are Always the Best

Woodley

Australian comedian Frank Woodley has brought his affection for silent film comedy to the fore on his new television series, Woodley.  The series, which involves a newly divorced man trying to cope with the rejection of his wife and maintain a relationship with his young daughter, manages to be both funny and sentimental at the same time.  In the following scene, Woodley gives up on a suicide attempt because he suddenly remembers he is supposed to attend his daughter's musical recital.

Woodley took many gags directly from classic comedies.  Take a look at this gag performed by Charlie Chaplin in The Idle Class (1921).

Now, we have the same gag performed by Woodley. 

Frankly, Woodley's version of the scene pales in comparison to the original.  Chaplin wickedly upended expectations to expose the callousness of his character, a pampered fool with no regard for his wife's dire concerns over his drinking.  This gag does not work as well with Woodley as his character is truly broken up by his wife's departure.  However, Woodley does well with most of the other gags.  Here is Harold Lloyd in Bumping into Broadway (1919).

Woodley repeats this gag when he and his daughter Ollie (Alexandra Cashmere) have to sneak into a fashion show.

Larry Semon in A Pair of Kings (1922)

Woodley

Harold Lloyd in Number, Please (1920)

Woodley

Woodley also introduces gags that are entirely original, including a clever toaster gag that opened the series.

Even though his routines are largely silent, Woodley often provides sound effects as punctuation to gags.  The toaster scene was no doubt enhanced by the various sound effects, including the squeak of the toaster lever and the roar of the flames.  Key sound effects can also be found in the following scene.  

The final shot of the scene would not be as funny without the sound of the baby crying or the sound of the nurse cutting through the tape.

Silent comedy often involved comedians being confused or misled by optical illusions.  Here is a scene in which sounds and images combine to create a misunderstanding.