Comedy Is A Man In Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0816636575 ISBN 13: 9780816636570

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2000

Film

An enthusiast's look at American comedies and the physical comedians who made them great.

Legendary screen comedian Jerry Lewis once said, "The premise of all comedy is a man in trouble." The films that endeared Lewis and others to us hinged on the physical assault of their hero, the pie in the face or slip on the banana peel that reduced the movie star to the level of the audience. Comedy Is a Man in Trouble presents the legacy of physical humor from the performances of vaudeville actors and circus clowns-who coined the term "slapstick" by playfully and noisily beating each other with wooden paddles-to its ongoing popularity today in the films of Jim Carrey and the Farrelly brothers.

Alan Dale's personal and passionate tour of movie slapstick begins with an original assessment of the work of famed silent clowns Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton. Dale rejects the long-held notion that the talent of these comedians lies in their ability to combine comedy and tragedy and suggests that their riotous imaginations and their physical grace revealed greatness in comedy for its own sake. A decade later the Marx Brothers exploited the new technology of sound film in their fast-paced verbal exchanges-and, in doing so, invented a verbal form of slapstick later exploited by directors such as Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Jerry Lewis energetically revised and combined the physical and verbal humor of his predecessors for a new generation of viewers.

Comedy Is a Man in Trouble presents a lively, accessible, and lavishly illustrated look at a form of comedy that has its origins in ancient Greece and in American vaudeville and has been expanded and refashioned in film by everyone from W. C. Fields and Marion Davies to Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Here is not only an amusing look at film comedy history, but an insight into the human condition and what causes us to laugh.

Alan Dale worked at a Los Angeles talent agency before earning a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Translation Inquiries: University of Minnesota Press

About the Author:

Dale worked at a Los Angeles talent agency before earning a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University.

From Library Journal:

Slapstick has always been a film staple, and Dale (writing and American studies, Princeton) presents a history of cinematic slapstick, which he defines as an elemental aspect of existence...a fundamental, universal, and eternal response to the fact that life is physical. This is a selective, appreciative survey of the diverse masters of physical comedy, from Charlie Chaplin (with emphasis on his later Great Dictator), stone-faced Buster Keaton, all-American nice guy Harold Lloyd, the Marx Brothers, writer-director Preston Sturges, and French cult-favorite Jerry Lewis. Rejecting the notion that slapstick necessarily involves pathos, the author deftly combines criticism and biography, offering keen insight and lively prose. He notes that studio bosses believed that men rejected female clowns because they didn!t laugh at attractive women, yet Dale makes a compelling case for Katharine Hepburn as a breakthrough slapstick artist. This book is a fine addition to public and academic libraries, deserving a place next to Walter Kerr!s The Silent Clowns (Da Capo Pr., 1990. reprint) and other classics on film comedy."Stephen Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., PA
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