Anthony Balducci, 60, studied journalism at Baruch College in Manhattan and earned a criminology degree at the University of Florida. His first book, a biography of film comedian Lloyd Hamilton, was published by McFarland in 2009. The Funny Parts, a book detailing the history of gags and routines, was published by McFarland in 2012.
Walter Forde pretends to be a statue in Walter Makes a Movie (1922).
Dummy Ache (1936)
Stowaway (1936)
Dusty Ermine (1936)
Margaret Rutherford pretends to be a mannequin to elude police.
Maisie Was a Lady (1941)
A Life of Her Own (1950)
Poor But Beautiful (1957)
The Night Caller (1975)
Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
Without a Clue (1988)
Krama mig (2005)
A Compilation
Film sources:
Without a Clue (1988) Perry Mason ("The Case of the Crimson Kiss," 1957) Splendor (1935) Crimen (1960) Poor But Beautiful (1957) The Corpse Came C.O.D. (1947)
Harold Lloyd's influence is evident in this poster for the 2006 Greek comedy Pente lepta akoma (aka Extended Play). The man hanging off the clock is Vassilis Haralambopoulos.
Let me take this opportunity to revisit a few of my favorite past subjects.
Comedy writers learned to be creative with old gags. Take, for instance, Warren Foster's wild variation on the banana peel gag in the 1943 Bugs Bunny cartoon Falling Hare.
Let us now see if writers were able to be creative with other old gags.
The Revolving Door
I have discussed revolving door routines at length in two previous articles. You can read those articles by clicking here and here.
The Million Dollar Derby (1926)
Buster Keaton in The Cameraman (1928)
James Stewart and Joan Fontaine in You Gotta Stay Happy (1948)
A pair of ghosts spin a sheriff around inside a revolving door in the comic horror film The Frighteners (1996).
Film sources:My Sister Eileen (1955), The Tragedy at Midnight (1942) and Lady On A Train (1945).
Comedians performed a variety of chair acts on stage.
Crazy House
A variation of the "Crazy House" burlesque routine is featured in The Wrong Wrong Trail (1934).
The Oversized Set
Filmmakers found that they could make an actor appear far smaller than they actually were by surrounding them with oversized props and furniture.
In Hour of Glory (1949), an alcoholic man has a feverish nightmare in which he has shrunk down in size and is menacingly towered over by a bottle of whisky.
The Murphy bed
Robert Mitchum in Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1944)
Charlie Chaplin and Mack Swain in Gentlemen of Nerve (1914)
Stuck in an an Elevator
A previous article on "stuck" comedy can be found here.
The Handcuff Routine
The handcuff routine became a favorite on Nickelodeon sitcoms.
The Orange Years the Nickelodeon Story (2020)
The Timid Lover
Girl Without a Room (1933)
Edward Everett Horton reacts shyly to a seductive woman in Lonely Wives (1931).
Joe Besser faces a similar problem in Eadie Was a Lady (1945).
Shrub Disguise
A police officer disguises as a shrub in a Les Dawson sketch.
Sticky
Taffy proves as sticky as glue in Our Gang's A Tough Winter (1930).
The Mud Puddle
The sure-fire mud puddle gag surprisingly turns up in Raoul Walsh's epic Western The Big Trail (1930).
The Lion
A leopard gets loose at a club hall in the 1912 Pathé comedy Little Moritz Hunts Big Cats.
Lee Tracy and Eugene Pallette use a lion for a publicity stunt in The Half Naked Truth (1932).
A lion creates problems for June Allyson and Dick Powell in The Reformer and the Redhead (1950).
Adolphe Menjou is frightened by a lion in Road Show (1941).
The Bratty Child Actor
Let us take a look at the bratty child actor.
The Flying Car
Many of us are familiar with Fred MacMurray riding in a flying car The Absent-Minded Professor (1961). But I did not know until recently that MacMurray rode in another flying car sixteen years earlier in Where Do We Go from Here? (1945).
O. Henry's 1904 short story "The Cop and the Anthem" was an obvious inspiration for Archimède, le clochard (1959), which features Jean Gabin as a tramp who attempts to get arrested so that he can spend the winter in a warm prison cell.
The Ouija board
Helena Pickard uses a Ouija board in Saloon Bar (1940).
Ouija Craft (2020)
The Magician's Coat
The magician's coat routine, which originated with Harold Lloyd, is performed by Red Skelton in Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day (1941).
Dance Instructor Routine
Double or Nothing (1937) includes a risqué version of the Dance Instructor Routine. Martha Raye leads a group of dancers in an aquatic dance number. Raye, a former stripper, is unable to resist performing a striptease whenever she hears her old song "It's On, It's Off." The song is played by a man out to sabotage her show, at which point Raye removes parts of her costume and the other dancers reluctantly follow her lead.
Buster Keaton, Edward Brophy and Sidney Toler in Speak Easily (1932)
High and Dizzy
This 1905 film from Hungary, Kedélyes bohémek, is a very early "high and dizzy" comedy.
The Military Drill
Here is a brief supplement to my 2013 article "Awkward Squad."
Ray Bolger performs a one-man drill routine in Stage Door Canteen (1943).
A Soldier's Plaything (1930)
Bud Flanagan, Chesney Allen and Jimmy Nervo perform a comic drill in Alf's Button Afloat (1938).
Jack Oakie confuses his troop with his drill instructions in The Toast of New York (1937).
The last two scenes are included in this compilation. The compilation also includes a drill scene with Joe Besser. The picture quality is fuzzy to be honest, but I figured a fuzzy Besser is better than no Besser at all.
The Bridal Run
As I have discussed before, Edwin S. Porter's 1904 comedy How a French nobleman got a wife through the New York Herald personal columns is a seminal film comedy. The key action of the film is what has become known as the "bridal run." Many similar films followed, the most famous of which is Buster Keaton's Seven Chances (1925).
Seven Chances (1925)
Pathé Frères' 1905 comedy Dix femmes pour un mari (Ten Wives for One Husband), which I recently came across on YouTube, is a shot-for-shot remake of the Porter film.
Dix femmes pour un mari (1905)
A more surreal version of the bridal run can be found in a 1909 Itala comedy, Troppo bello! (English translation: Too good!). The "brides" (a bunch of men in drag) are in pursuit of a oddly charming gentleman (André Deed).
A scene from Emil and the Detectives (1931) has elements of the bridal run. A crowd of children pursue a sinister man who drugged and robbed a small boy.
A 1981 Swedish film, The Rooster, climaxes with a bridal run on bicycle.
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
The Bridal Path (1959)
The song on this video is "Le Grand Chase" written by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.
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