STUDY GUIDE – QUIZ #2
The 30s Clowns:
With the coming of sound, slapstick went into a bit of a decline. Visual comedy remained
strong throughout the 1930s, but now witty dialogue & verbal comedy were added.
Some of the great comedians or teams, including Laurel & Hardy, the Three Stooges, the
Marx Brothers, and Abbott & Costello, or individuals such as radio star Jack Benny, Eddie
Cantor, Joe E. Brown, W.C. Fields, & Mae West emerged
Laurel & Hardy:
One of the greatest & most-beloved of the comedy teams was the one of British-born
Stan Laurel & the fat-faced Oliver Hardy. Hal Roach Studios recognized their potential as a
team & capitalized on their contrasting, disparate physical differences (Stan: the ‘thin’ man &
Oliver, the ‘fat’ one – each with derby hats) and classic gestures (bewildered head-scratching, tie
twiddling, eye-blinking & baby-like weeping). They were precursors of the 50s team Abbott &
Costello.
The Marx Brothers:
Once talkies emerged, the most famous & popular comedy team was the zany foursome of the
Marx Brothers. They were the only real-life sibling comedy group in Hollywood history:
*Groucho (famous for his crouched walk, moustache, cigar, round glasses & leering eyes.
*Chico, (piano-playing, broken Italian-accented famous for distorted logic
*Harpo (the mischievous mute-pantomimist/harpist Harpo (with an old taxi horn & numerous
harp solos), known for chasing girls)
*Zeppo (the straight-man Zeppo (who left the other brothers in 1933 after his performance in
Duck Soup (1933), his fifth film)
Their comedy was a mixture of slapstick, sophisticated verbal comedy (often absurd &
risqué), zany anarchistic disrespect for the establishment, nonsensical action, and inspired
buffoonery.
W.C. Fields:
W.C. Fields is known for his recognizable raspy voice, pool cue, oversized bulbous nose & nasal
drawl, stove-pipe hat, flask of 100-proof whiskey & love of drink, caustic verbal wit &
wisecracks, and irritable disdain for small children, animals, upper-class snobs & bullying wives.
Fields usually wrote his own scripts & produced such classics and possibly his best film as The
Bank Dick (1940) Fields was a natural while portraying a hen-pecked husband, a phony, an
eccentric, a windbag, a non-conformist schemer, or a pompous charlatan.
Mae West:
Another contemporary, wise-cracking drawling performer was the bold, blowsy & flirtatious
Mae West who enjoyed titillating & shocking audiences with double entendre dialogue, sexual
innuendo & a desire for sex, especially before the advent of the Hays Production Code. She
appeared with Fields in their only film together: My Little Chickadee (1940).
Study Guide-Quiz #2
2.
Abbott & Costello:
Abbott and Costello Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were an American Comedy duo whose work
in radio, film & television made them one of the most popular teams in the history of comedy.
Thanks to the endurance of their most popular and influential routine, "Who’s On First"— whose
rapid-fire word play and comprehension confusion set the preponderant framework for most of
their best-known routines—the team is, as a result, featured in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Abbott as the devious straight man, and Costello as the stumbling, dimwitted laugh-getter.
. They were among the most popular and highest-paid entertainers in the world during World
War II. Their other film successes included Buck Privates, Hold That Ghost, Who Done It?,
Pardon My Sarong, The Time of Their Lives, Buck Privates Come Home, Abbott and Costello
Meet Frankenstein and Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man.
In 1942, Abbott and Costello were the top box office draw with a reported take of $10 million.
In the 1950s Abbott and Costello's popularity waned as their place as filmdom's hottest comedy
team was taken by Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis.
Lou Costello’s famous “HeeeeyyyyyAaaaabbotttt!!” when he’d get scared & Abbott wasn’t
around.
SCREWBALL COMEDY
There are many things that Hollywood makes comedy about. Any subject is fair game. A single
subject that persists—the battle of the sexes as presented in the Hollywood Romantic comedy.
Only in America can the story of destructive sexual passion be cultivated as a freewheeling
slapstick event laced with acid wit. Subject that in most cultures would be recounted as stark
tragedy.
Screwball comedies were launched in the mid-1930s and established their place after the advent
of film sound & the social disturbances of the Depression. Screwball comedies were
characterized by social satire, comedic relief through zany, fast-paced & unusual events, sight
gags, sarcasm, screwy plot twists or identity reversals, and precisely-timed, fast-paced verbal
dueling & witty sarcastic dialogue—blending the wacky with the sophisticated.
Screwball comedies often took an anarchic tone or irreverent view of domestic or romantic
conflicts (‘battles of the sexes’), and usually aimed their barbs at the leisure-upper class. The
main feature of a screwball comedy was the total disruption of a hero’s ordered, unhassled life
by a heroine.
The term ‘screwball’ was applied to films where everything was a juxtaposition-- educated &
uneducated, rich & poor, intelligent & stupid, honest & dishonest, and most of all….male &
female. When two people fell in love, they did not simply surrender to their feelings, they
battled it out.
Study Guide-Quiz #2
3.
The hero & heroine were usually of different social, sexual & economic stratas, & thrown
together in ridiculous, improbable, unlikely situations & comic misadventures. Ultimately, their
antagonistic conflicts & class differences were happily resolved when they fell in love, were
reconciled together or married.
Some Characteristics of Screwball Comedy:
-reverse class snobbery
-skillful blend of sophistication & slapstick
-well-written scripts, laced w/barbed dialog, an overlapping style of delivery, with lines
tossed off in rapid fire
-an emphases on elegant clothes, cars & furniture
-the hero or the heroine living by his or her wits alone, though this is often balanced by a reliable
gainfully employed love interest.
-probably most important, supporting casts of first-rate character actors playing eccentric
types as well as a stable of familiar faces in leading roles
My Man Godfrey:
One of the most unusual screwball comedies - My Man Godfrey (1936), it begins at a garbage
dump along New York’s East River. People in evening clothes, taking part in a scavenger hunt
for a charity event, step out of a roadster to look for a ‘forgotten man’, a 30s term for the
unemployed & homeless—because of the Great Depression. A derelict, as it turns out, is also
from a rich family
The earliest screwball comedy was Lewis Milestone’s The Front Page (1931) although some
consider Hawks’ raucous Twentieth Century (1934)—with Lionel Barrymore & Carole
Lombard) the most definitive screwball comedy.
Frank Capra, directed It Happened One Night (1934) earlier the same year, featuring the
sparring of Clark Gable as a cynical, hard-times reporter & Claudette Colbert as a pampered,
runaway heiress. Capra’s 1934 film is the seminal example of this sub-genre and was the first
to win the top four Academy Awards Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor & Best
Actress.
Screwball comedy crested in the late 1930s. And with the increasing hostilities brewing in
Europe (pre WW II). The invasion of television and the dismantling of the Hollywood studio
system put an end to the classic Romantic comedy.
Study Guide-Quiz #2
4.
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
It Happened One Night (1934) for example, begins with a bad marriage between an heiress
(Claudette Colbert) and a playboy-socialite. It ends with the disruption and another false
marriage—the public ceremony in which the heiress and the socialite are scheduled to renew
their initial vows. And it then celebrates the “right” marriage” having fled the ceremony,
Colbert returns to the middle-class newspaper reporter (Clark Gable) with whom she is really in
love, and then marries him (after a hasty annulment of the initial, “wrong” marriage). This final
marriage is right not only because Colbert and Gable really love one another, but also because it
heals the divisions in society, establishing anew order through the symbolic marriage of
representatives of different social classes.
Class difference is most often represented in terms of professional status. Pretty Woman
(1990) brings together a corporate takeover specialist (Richard Gere) and a Hollywood hooker
(Julia Roberts).
In While You Were Sleeping (1995), a Chicago token clerk (Sandra Bullock) falls in love with a
wealthy lawyer (peter Gallagher) and when he falls into a coma, pretends to be his fiancée
(though she winds up with his brother in the end).
As Good As It Gets (1997) focuses on an unlikely romance between a cynical best-selling
novelist (Jack Nicholson) and a waitress (Helen Hunt). In each case the films rely on romantic
comedy to unite different social classes.
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