Movie Comedy Teams

by Leonard Maltin

Vintage paperback

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

373 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1970

About the author

Leonard Maltin, is an American film and animated-film critic and historian.

Maltin began his writing career at age fifteen, writing for Classic Images and editing and publishing his own fanzine, Film Fan Monthly, dedicated to films from the golden age of Hollywood. After receiving a journalism degree at New York University, Maltin went on to publish articles in a variety of film journals, national news-papers, and magazines, including Variety and TV Guide.
Maltin in 1990

As an author, Maltin is best known for Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, (some editions titled as his ...Movie and Video Guide), a compendium of synopses and reviews that first appeared in September 1969 and has been annually updated since October 1987. (It was published under the title TV Movies until the 1990s, and in 2005 spawned a spin-off, Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide, limited to films released in 1960 and earlier to allow the regular book to cover a larger number of more recent titles.) He has also written several other works, including Behind the Camera, a study of the art of cinematography, The Whole Film Sourcebook, Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia, Our Gang: The Life and Times of the Little Rascals, and Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons.

Since May 29, 1982, Maltin has been the movie reviewer on the syndicated television series Entertainment Tonight. He also appears on the Starz cable network, and hosted his own syndicated radio program, Leonard Maltin on Video, as well as the syndicated TV show Hot Ticket with Boston film critic Joyce Kulhawik (originally E! personality and game show host Todd Newton). He currently hosts a television show entitled Secret's Out on ReelzChannel movie network. He also spearheaded the creation of the Walt Disney Treasures collectible DVD line in 2001,[4] and continues to provide creative input and host the various sets.

He appeared on Pyramid twice as a celebrity player, in 1987 on the CBS $25,000 version and in 1991 on the John Davidson version. He appeared on Super Password as a celebrity guest in 1988.

In the mid-1990s, he became the president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and is on the Advisory Board of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum. For nearly a decade, Maltin was also on the faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City. He currently teaches in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.

In 1998, Maltin settled a libel suit brought by former child star Billy Gray, of Father Knows Best fame, whom Maltin identified as a drug addict and dealer in his review of the film Dusty and Sweets McGee for the movie guide book. The statement appeared in print for nearly twenty-five years before Maltin publicly apologized for the error.[5]

He currently hosts "The Maltin Minute" for DirecTV customers. Maltin also teaches at the University of Southern California.

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good enough for what it is. Thankfully didn't gush too much over Martin and Lewis, but then was surprisingly tepid on Abbott and Costello. And Maltin has a serious hate-on for Zeppo, who never hurt anyone.

It caused me to add a bunch of stuff to my watchlist.

[Jeffrey Bloomfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leonard Maltin is a well known movie critic, who was recently the host of Channel 13's Saturday night movie selections until replaced by Neil Patrick Gabler. This book actually was written back in the 1970s, but this particular edition was published in the 1980s. My comments will basically be based on this edition.

Maltin is examining the major film comedy teams that flourished between the silent films and the 1970s. Many of them are not well remembered. The ones that are remembered are Laurel & Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Abbott & Costello, Burns & Allen, the Three Stooges, and Lewis and Martin. Maybe for baby boomers one can stretch this to include Rowan and Martin. The defining connecting link was the number of films (short subject comedies and feature films) that these performers produced during the lifetime of their partnerships. Most of these partnerships died when one of the partners passed on (like Oliver Hardy dying in 1957, eight years before Stan Laurel did), but some collapsed due to internal pressures within the partnership (most notably Jerry Lewis breaking with Dean Martin, as Martin wanted to show his own strengths (which he did) on his own as a singer and actor; fortunately Lewis was able to flex his own muscles as a comedy director genius afterwards too). The chapters each deal with one team and then another, though a final chapter dealt with the really lesser teams (Remember Marshall & Noonan? They made around six films together, none to write home about, but both men did better by themselves than as a team: Tommy Noonan is remembered as Marilyn Monroe's boyfriend in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and as Judy Garland's close friend from her band career in "A Star is Born", and the handsome Peter Marshall eventually became famous on television as a game show host).

Maltin obviously loves his subject matter, and picks out those best films to look at to see the best the teams had to offer their fans. So we see discussions of "Duck Soup" and "A Night at the Opera" in some depth in the look at the Marx Brothers. More than quickie dismissals of some of their later films like "Go West". Same with Stan and Ollie, where there are close looks at curious items in their filmography, like the odd early silent comedy, "Early to Bed" where Ollie, enriched by an inheritance, makes Stan his servant, and proceeds to torment him, "all in good fun". But "Way Out West", "Sons of the Desert", "The Music Bos" get fine write ups. So it goes for all the major teams, and the minor ones.

There are some curious rediscoveries: Most notably the forgotten gems by the Broadway comedy team of Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough. Clark and McCullough teamed together in vaudeville, and would jointly enhance some Broadway masterpieces of the 1920s (most notably the reworked book and musical of the Gershwin's anti-war cartoon, "Strike Up the Band". But they never made a feature. they left about twenty to thirty short features, and many are uproarious to this day (try their send up of the judicial system in "Odor in the Court"). But there's is a partnership that still has an enduringly sad mystery to it's end. In 1936, McCullough went into a barber shop in Connecticut, and when being shaved, grabbed the razor from the startled barber and cut his own throat. Officially the suicide was declared "while of unsound mind", but to this day people look at Bobby Clark about this. Maltin does not discuss this, but goes onto Clark's only feature appearance in a 1938 musical - one done alone, of course - and his great success in a series of revivals of famous comedies of the restoration period (he played a memorable "Bob Acres" in a revival of Sheridan's "The Rivals"), and as a lecturer on comedy at Columbia and other colleges. But in the excellent study of Broadway, called "Broadway" by Brooks Atkinson, the great theater critic mentions how people in the know had seen Clark berate and belittle his partner openly, and lord it over him. While no doubt Clark was a great clown on his own, if one looks at the early Clark & McCullough shorts, McCullough does show he shares in the humor. Not so in the later ones. It must have been terrible to Paul McCullough's fragile nerves and ego to suffer like that from an egotistical partner.

Also notable as a rediscovery is the equally forgotten team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey. They appeared in 20 or so feature films that were mostly disliked or dismissed by the critics, but loved by the public, from "Rio Rita" in t929 (which they did on Broadway's stage), through 1939, when Woolsey passed away from a serious kidney illness he had been suffering from for about four years. In films like "Hold 'Em Jail", "Diplomaniacs",. and "Cockeyed Cavaliers" they were quite funny, but the critics thought of them as a hold-over from Vaudeville (which surprises me - so were the Marx Brothers!). Bert Wheeler would continue as a solo performer in the nightclub circuit, and end up as a weekly regular on a television western in the 1950s. Today the Turner Network puts on their old movies, fortunately. Actually most of them are very funny.

Burns and Allen, of course, was the married team of George Burns and Gracie Allen. Performing in Vaudeville, and then on radio, they made a series of shorts, and then did a series of amusing films like "We're Not Dressing" (a modernization of James Barrie's "The Admirable Chrichton", sharing honors with Bing Crosby, Carole Lombard, Leon Erroll, Ethel Merman, and Ray (here Raymond) Milland, and possibly their best feature film, "A Damsel in Distress" with Fred Astaire, Joan Fontane, Reginald Gardiner, Constance Collier, and Montague Love. The latter is one of the few successful screen transplants of a P.G. Wodehouse story, and George and Gracie dancing honors with Fred, especially in the "Stiff Upper Lip" fun house sequence (a nicer use of a fun house for a film than the film noir use of it in Orson Welles' "The Lady From Shanghai" a decade later). With a sparkling Gershwin score (including, "A Foggy Day in London Town") it is one of the best musicals of the 1930s. Remaining on radio in the 1940s, Burns & Allan made an effortless transfer (and greater success to television in the 1950s, lasting for several seasons. One thing that George Burns (the creative side of the team) did as producer was to add a five minute segment at the end of each episode in which he and Gracie did a portion of their old Vaudeville act. So we have a kind of record of what they were like in the 1920s. Gracie retired in the late 1950s, and died in 1964. George would keep going along (he already did so by being the narration voice and commentator in the Paul Douglas-Judy Holliday comedy, "The Solid Gold Cadillac" in 1956), and eventually got an "Oscar" for his role as "Al Lewis" the partner of "Willie Clark" (Walter Matthau) in "The Sunshine Boys". While the chapter on Burns and Allen is interesting, I wish Maltin had analyzed the scatterbrain style of humor that George and Gracie worked out for Gracie. It is a magnificent example of logic turned on it's head.

The Three Stooges are shown through all of the changes in the cast structure from the 1930s to the 1970s. Originally created for the nightclub circuit by Ted Healey, a popular comedian of the 1920s, as "Ted Healey and his Stooges", by 1934 they had made several film appearances in feature in Hollywood (most notably in "Dancing Lady", a backstage musical from MGM with Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone, Fred Astaire, and Nelson Eddy), they broke with Healey, and went out on their own. It was to prove a good move for them (Healey was to die in 1936, while out celebrating the birth of a son by his new wife - apparently beaten to death after a drunken argument). The Stooges worked at Columbia, and were a favorite group of the studio head Harry Cohn. It is now generally agreed their best work was with Curley as the third Stooge, alongside Moe (his real life brother) and Larry. But a series of strokes in the late 1940s ended Curly's career, and he was replaced by his other brother Shemp. When Shemp died in the 1950s, he was replaced by well known comedian Joe Besser ("Stinky" the oversize "widdle boy" on the "Abbott and Costello" television show). Besser's shorts are usually considered the weakest of the team's work. He was replaced by "Curly Joe" DeRita, who would be lucky enough to join Moe and Larry in a final spurt of feature films, such as "Snow White and the Three Stooges" and "Four For Texas" (Sinatra and Martin liked the team and gave them supporting roles as bumbling house painters. Supported by good "heavies" such as Bud Jamison, Vernon Dent, and Emil Sitka over the decades, the team's popularity remains high due to continuous appearances of their short subject films like the take-offs on Hitler (perfectly done by Moe) in "I'll Never Heil Again" and "You Nazi Spy". One of the wonderful personal digs Moe added to his impersonation of the hated one was the so called Aryan frequently speaks Yiddish! (Moe, Curly, and Shemp Howard, and Larry Fine were Jews).

Abbott and Costello met in Vaudeville, but it was dying in the 1920s, so they switched to Burlesque at theaters like Minsky's. It says something about their popularity that while he forced the burlesque theaters out of New York in the 1930s, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia enjoyed Bud and Lou. In fact there is a still extant film of a public event where the "Little Flower" starts kicking Lou upstairs after a particularly seemingly stupid piece of repartee. By 1939, they were successfully on radio honing their best routines to perfect timing - and, of course, their most famous one (and the only comedy routine celebrated in a "Hall of Fame" - this one at Cooperstown) was "Who's On First!", their paean to baseball and language problems. Within a year they were in Hollywood, signed to a contract with Universal. And the beginning of a career of nearly thirty feature films until the late 1950s. They also would have a wonderfully funny television series, written and directed by Burlesque veteran and co-star Sidney Fields ("Mr. Fields has a brother....") that also had Hillary Brook taking a break from movie roles, Gordon Jones (as "Mike the Cop"), and (as mentioned above) Joe Besser. It is just possible, as Fields knew the boys strengths in Burlesque, that his series on television with them was the best work they ever did. To this day one can start chuckling thinking of a courtroom where an insistent Lou Costello says he is positive about what happened, and all of a sudden the chorus of ladies watching the case start saying, "He's positive, he's positive, he's positive, positive, positive" By the end of the sequence Costello is singing the statement out loud!! But pressures in the team broke it apart by 1957 (mostly due to an overly forceful Costello - again, like Clark, the so-called creative member of the team) and a weakening Abbott, with problems as an epileptic and drunk. Costello did one final film alone, "The Forty Foot Bride of Candy Rock", and some television, including a memorable serious part on "Wagon Train", "The Colton Craven Story". Dying of a heart attack in 1959 (Bud Abbott died in the middle 1970s), Costello's remains a speculative one. The big hit on Broadway was the musical "Fiorello" about LaGuardia, starring the highly capable character actor Tom Bosley. But in 1959 Mr. Bosley was hardly a household name (he'd become one only after television stints on "Happy Days" in the 1970s, and on "Murder She Wrote" in the 1980s). There was talk that "Fiorello" would be a vehicle for Lou Costello to show his talents in a major lead part. One wonders what he would have done with it.

Martin & Lewis had been on the nightclub circuit in the 1940s, and then came to Hollywood at the tail end of the decade. It is surprising now (considering how big they were nationwide, due to their JOINT shenanigans on stage, and their future massive success together and apart, that the first film they did was "My Friend Irma", a comedy based on a popular radio show of the day, in which they are in support of the rest of the cast, in particular John Lund. I have nothing against Mr. Lund, a decent actor ("High Society" - he was "George Kittridge"; Billy Wilder's "A Foreign Affair" with Marlene Dietrich, and Jean Arthur; "Miss Tatlock's Millions" - Lund's best total comic performance), but he certainly did not deserve having Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis supporting him! However, it seems that the studio used the film to test audience reaction to the comedy team. If so, it paid off. Within a year Martin and Lewis blazed a trail of successful comedy work (with song interludes for Dino) that made them the hit team of the decade. That it could not last does not say anything bad of it's two members - both more than adequately proved themselves alone.

Other teams are in the book, such as the teams that Hal Roach tried to create as a female version of Laurel & Hardy, Thelma Todd with Zasu Pitts and later Patsy Kelly. It was a good idea, but it was not done with the gradual growth and care of how Stan and Ollie were brought together. Moreover, the tragic (and mysterious) death of Thelma Todd by carbon monoxide asphyxiation killed any real further development of the concept. Of the other major teams Maltin mentions, Olsen & Johnson certainly proved masters of site gags. especially in their films "Hellzapoppin'" (based on a Broadway show they did) and "Crazy House", but there is an unevenness to their work that prevents film buffs from fully putting them in the pantheon of the master teams. The same is true of "The Ritz Brothers", whom even Maltin says, you either love or hate. Among those who apparently loved their work (mostly stage work, by the way) were Danny Kaye and Mel Brooks. But their films leave much to be desired. I did mention Rowan and Martin earlier above as a team that baby boomers would recall best. Curiously they had two film features to their credit, the first a forgettable western comedy, and the second "The Maltese Bippy" (with Julie Newmar) that appeared in the 1960s at the height of their television comedy success in "Laugh-in". "Bippy" has some moments but not many. As for their show, it suffers from the fate of all shows based on topical humor (mostly political) that dates so quickly. It is best seen today by people with history degrees, and one can only bless the providence that enabled Goldie Hawn, Henry Gibson, and Lily Tomlin to become known, and gradually build up a really first rate reputation for themselves.

The Maltin book is first rate in learning of these teams and others, some abysmal by today's standards (the "Two Black Crows": Mack and Moran, a popular minstrel partnership in the 1920s and early 1930s). I thoroughly recommend it. I mentioned before that the original book was published in the 1970s. If possible try to find it as it included stills from many of the films that Mr. Maltin did not use in the 1980s edition (though it too is well illustrated).

[captain america · Rating 5 out of 5]

jesus, what normal 12 year old boy gives a shit about obscure movie comedy teams of the 1930s and 40s? i read and loved it in its first edition in 1972 or something and even wrote maltin a fan letter. he sent me a "thank you" postcard. i lost it.

[Ronald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most you've heard of and filmographies are included. Not the others. Biographies included. Illustrated. Pretty much goes up to and includes Martin and Lewis.

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

This perusal of the careers and partnerships of many famous comedy teams (and some whose fame has been clouded over with time) offers a good synopsis of origins, filmographies and dénouements in each case. Leonard Maltin provides descriptions of trademark scenes and dialogue which become vivid in those cases where the reader is familiar with the team’s work. Where the team’s work is unfamiliar, the reader has cause to wonder where one needs to go to watch some of those old two reeler films. (You Tube, provides some clips.) Thus, the material provides both a nostalgic glow and a yen to view anew.