The Gazeeka Box!

Perhaps you've already noticed the obtrusive white widget midway down the sidebar but, if not, let me introduce the Third Banana's "Gazeeka Box", a new feature that will allow us to more easily share music and OTR with you. All of the files listed therein can be downloaded to your desktop (click the blue arrow on each file listing) or can be played through the widget itself. As a Yuletide gift to you, the box is currently full of holiday-themed goodies from Jerry Lewis, Abbott and Costello, Ed and Keenan Wynn (and many others on the Blue Network Christmas special), Phil Harris and Alice Faye, Jack Benny, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, Eddie Cantor, The Three Stooges, as well as a few ancient 78s. Enjoy!

Olsen and Johnson at Republic

by Paul Castiglia

I recently got the two films that Olsen & Johnson made for Republic in the mid 1930s, Country Gentlemen and All Over Town on DVD. These films were made after their initial stint in movies at Warner Brothers, where they made a few films trying to "find their feet" as movie comedians (having already conquered the stage); and made before their legendary and innovative Universal classics like Hellzapoppin' and Crazy House, which went on to influence later comedy such as TV's Laugh-In.

The Republic O&J films, while a bit more madcap than Abbott & Costello movies (I've never felt like Lou's character was insane the way I know Chic Johnson's is), are more standard in general from O&J's later fare and to my eyes, they seem to have foreshadowed (and maybe even had a hand in influencing?) the energy of the A&C films of the '40s, especially those where A&C find themselves having to use their wits to con or be conned (Hit the Ice, In Society, Here Come the Co-Eds, The Noose Hangs High). The Republic O&J's really reminded me of those A&C films, despite the over-the-top zany touches.

This isn’t to say that other comedians of the ‘30s didn’t deal with con men and shady gangster types. The Stooges came up against such adversaries a lot, and Laurel and Hardy had their share of run-ins, too. But these encounters were almost always against characters who were exaggerated and played to comic effect, as opposed to being played “realistically,” which would render them believable threats. One notable exception in the 1930s is Laurel and Hardy’s classic Our Relations, featuring some real, unnerving hoods. The Marx Brothers and Wheeler and Woolsey vacillated between antagonists who played it straight and those who were decidedly tongue-in-cheek, but played against the Marx’s level of surrealism and Wheeler and Woolsey’s unbridled lunacy, the “serious” threats rarely registered.

For the most part, the Abbott and Costello canon is loaded with dramatic rather than comical villains (with the exception of some comic relief henchman). In the 1940s, away from Hal Roach Studios and under the aegis of Fox and MGM, Laurel and Hardy would start rubbing shoulders with “real” threats; more than likely a result of their new studios’ response to Abbott and Costello’s winning formula.

If you have a chance, watch Olsen & Johnson’s ‘30s films. They are readily available on the cheap from various public domain DVD outfits like Alpha Video. You'll notice that they breeze through these films with the same confidence and energy that Abbott and Costello will display just a few short years later in their initial batch of films, especially Hold That Ghost and Who Done It. They even exchange in some lively double-talk banter that holds up to the best of Abbott and Costello’s verbal exchanges. Consider this transcript of a scene in Country Gentlemen wherein Olsen & Johnson are interrogated by police detectives:

DETECTIVE: Where were you the night of June the 10th?

OLSEN: Out with a beautiful blonde.

DETECTIVE: Where were you on the night of June the 11th?

OLSEN: I was out with a beautiful brunette.

DETECTIVE: Where were you on the night of the 12th?

OLSEN: I was out with a beautiful redhead.

OTHER DETECTIVE: Keep it up Harry, we’re getting somewhere – he’s confessing.

JOHNSON: He’s not confessing, he’s just bragging!

There are other exchanges that are reminiscent of Bud and Lou – watch this scene and imagine Bud doing Ole’s lines and Costello making Chic’s quips, and you’ll know what I mean:



"You wouldn't hit a man with glasses, would ya?"



Despite the odd choice to make Olsen a romantic love interest during Country Gentlemen, there is a lot to like in this short offering. And All Over Town throws in a delightful bonus: perennial Laurel & Hardy nemesis James Finlayson in a major role! As if that weren’t enough, there’s also a scene of Olsen and Johnson sharing a roller coaster ride with a seal that is one of the most laugh-out-load punchlines I’ve ever enjoyed. I won’t give the joke away; you really owe it to yourself to seek these films out. They offer an interesting look into both Olsen and Johnson’s development as well as their influence on (as we learn in their still-to-come classic Crazy House) “Universal’s #1 comedy team.”

This scene from All Over Town affords us a rare glimpse at Chic and Ole's musical skills, the foundation of their original vaudeville act:



This clip from the PBS series Matinee at the Bijou features a mid-50s trailer for a re-issue of Country Gentlemen. That's Rudy Vallee singing the MATB theme:

Biffle Diffle!

by Geoff Collins

Abbott and Costello? They don't need our help. After so many years of derogatory sniping in standard film histories to the effect that "The Golden Age of Movie Comedy ended in 1940 with the decline of Laurel and Hardy and the arrival of Abbott and Costello", Bud and Lou are being reappraised and their vast output revalued. Even in sleepy old England their Universal features have been reissued two at a time in sparkling new prints, revealing, if nothing else, their superb photographic quality - especially true in the case of Keep 'Em Flying. Details are on www.coolroom.com. Check it out (I haven't!).

After all these years, how do these vintage sausage-factory products hold up? Well, let me explain first that there's a tendency in this country - and it may also be true in the US - for "amusing" e-mails to circulate amongst office workers with too much time on their hands, pointing out the stereotypical differences between men and women. Such junk is invariably boring and obvious. My friend Rosie receives more than her fair share of this stuff and deletes it without even bothering to read it. The "movie equivalent" of this is that women generally don't care for Laurel and Hardy. They prefer romance and escapism; what's the fascination in two unlovely middle-aged men behaving like babies? They get enough of this at home with their husbands!

Without this in mind, Rosie and I sat down the other night to watch Ride 'Em Cowboy. Why not? British television at the moment is especially idiotic; we both enjoy jazz, and I knew that this movie contained the earliest appearance of Ella Fitzgerald; and I hadn't seen it before (although I have a distant memory of watching the chase sequence, an 8mm print projected onto a sheet in a tent at our school sports day forty years ago, with the boys, pursued by Indians, driving their little car into a river. Completely submerged and surrounded by fish, Lou waves a cup around and "has a drink of water". If Keaton had done this, it would be considered a priceless gag. Lou Costello? Not a chance.)

Twenty minutes into the beautiful new DVD print, and I could see that Rosie wasn't happy. I mentioned that I could do without Dick Foran and the silly romantic plot, and she said "I could do without Bud Abbott and Lou Costello!" To be fair, dear readers, it must be said that Rosie's no "stereotypical woman". She appreciates old movies (and really enjoyed Sons of the Desert, which sort of disproves the "women don't like Stan and Ollie" argument). And Ride 'Em Cowboy is far from being Bud and Lou's best - but they made five movies in 1941. How could they all be good? I should have showed her Hold That Ghost.

Included amongst this treasure trove of A and C reissues is a passable, and probably the best available, print of One Night in the Tropics (reissue title sequence, scratchy soundtrack). Bud and Lou's first movie has been seen so infrequently that Chris Costello, in her affectionate biography Lou's On First, completely mis-remembers its content - although she's exactly right about one point: the plot, such as it is, has been completely shot to pieces in order to ram in several A and C routines, including a lamentably truncated "Who's On First". Nevertheless it's pure joy to see Bud and Lou perform even three minutes of this in nineteen-forty. They're young and fresh, and it's frustrating to have to sit through the dire Allan Jones - Nancy Kelly - Robert Cummings plot (I didn't; I used the fast-forward button) before they appear again and give us "Jonah and the Whale" and "Mustard" and the "deductions for lunch hours and holidays" routine.

After his baby son drowned in 1943, Lou's inner warmth seemed to vanish. You can see it in his eyes. For me, Lost In a Harem is almost unwatchable because Lou is so obviously heartbroken, and this is apparent even in the production stills. To borrow a phrase from John Osborne, he was "dead behind the eyes". He was never the same again; the magic had gone, and it's from this point that we get the legend of Lou the sadistic bully, throwing tantrums and behaving like a prima donna. Why else would guest star Errol Flynn, in the Colgate Comedy Hour of January 13 1952, stamp on Lou's leg? By this time all of Lou's little-boy-lost quality had vanished. He shouts his way through the entire thing; Bud is exhausted and subdued, not even bothering to keep Lou on track any more. That sharp classic-straightman discipline just isn't there. God knows what the rehearsals must have been like; Flynn's burst of unnecessary violence, during the "Niagara Falls" routine, is scarcely comedy. It looks more like revenge.

This is why the 1940-42 A and C movies, with all their tiresome, dated faults, are especially treasurable : they capture Lou's happiness before his world caved in on him. Bud and Lou should never be ignored. Even though they didn't originate much of their material (and the Pathe website shows Collinson and Dean performing their routines ten years earlier; Bill and Alfie were On First!) they preserved a vast chunk of American burlesque comedy. Bless 'em.

And incidentally, continuing with our theme of "who originated this routine?", consider this: Lou Costello, on his first, unsuccessful trip to Hollywood in 1927-28, is visible as an extra in the boxing-match audience during the first reel of The Battle of the Century, a sequence lost until the 1970s. Lou, not surprisingly, is the shortest one in the front row, sitting next to the young guy with the open-neck shirt; a comparison of this movie with the slim "Lou in his early twenties" photo between pages 86 and 87 of Lou's On First confirms that it's him. With its satirical swipe at the Dempsey-Tunney "long count" of September 22 1927 - a corrupt referee taking his time to count out Noah Young, but doing a swift "2-4-6-8-10!" when Stan hits the canvas - it's unquestionably a forerunner of Lou's boxing match in Buck Privates, thirteen years later. Did Lou remember this and recycle it? I think so.

Let's argue!

And why is this article called "Biffle Diffle"? Well, you'll have to watch One Night in the Tropics to find out - or better still, use fast-forward. You know it makes sense!

The Third Banana One Year Anniversary/100th Post/Halloween Spectacular!

One year! One-hundred posts!! Halloween!!! And that all spells one thing!

HANS CONRIED!!!

Well, it does.. when you think about it. And so I'm happy to present (courtesy These Records Are BenT!) Hans' 1959 monster-themed novelty album Monster Rally. This album must have taken only days to record and Hans was probably in the studio for only one of those. The tracks are actually split between Hans, an RCA studio vocal ensemble billed as "The Creatures", and the nasal-voiced Alice Pearce. Pearce is best remembered today as the original Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched ("ABNER!!! LOOK!! On the Stevens's roof!!"), but was once an acclaimed Broadway and nightclub comedienne in her own right and even had her own TV variety show on ABC in 1949. The album is really just an excuse to have Hans sing Sheb Wooley's "Flying Purple People Eater", the original recording of which was number one for six weeks the previous year, but the rest of his tracks are just as much, if not more, fun.. especially "Not of This Earth", a smooth lounge ode from Hans to his extraterrestrial lover.

Her lips are formed with tempting grace.
I only wish that they were on her face.

Hans gets the science fiction-themed songs while Alice gets the horror stuff.. and, for some reason, it all seems very appropriate. You'll find Monster Rally here.

And dig this, hepcats.. The very first cartoon Hans ever contributed voice work to, Dick Lundy's Sliphorn King of Polaroo (1945). Funny or not, the Walter Lantz studio was far and away the jazziest cartoon studio of the 1940s (the Fleischers held the mantle during the 1930s with contributions from such talents as Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong). Jack Teagarden himself is responsible for the trombone solos in Sliphorn King. Conried was at Lantz for just a short while, contributing voice work to this and one Woody Woodpecker cartoon, Woody Dines Out (1945) before being drafted.



And why stop there? It take it back that a first anniversary/100 posts/Halloween just spells Hans Conried! It also spells

ADMIRAL HALSEY!!!

And, to a slightly greater degree

BELA LUGOSI!!!

Bela was, of course, every comic's favorite straightghoul during the 1940s and early 50s. Always grateful for work, Bela was more than happy to lampoon his horror image, ultimately closing out his career with a comedy revue at the Silver Slipper in Las Vegas in 1954 (four shows a night!!). In movies, he appeared most famously opposite Abbott and Costello in 1948, but he also made appearances with the East Side Kids (twice), the Ritz Brothers, Brown and Carney (twice), Mitchell and Petrillo, Jack Haley, Arthur "Old Mother Riley" Lucan, and, whether you consider him a comedian or not, Kay Kyser. It has to be said that Lugosi was much better suited to self-lampooning than Karloff whose performances never left any doubt in your mind that he was an actor through-and-through.. from London, no less. Lugosi's dark looks and exotic accent, given a further boost from the spooky tall tales he delighted in telling reporters about his dark Hungarian past, gave Lugosi an air of mystery that Karloff simply lacked. For many, it really did seem as though Bela had a touch of the grave about him and so, under the best of circumstances, the lampooning automatically had a bit of an edge to it. But that's under the best of circumstances. Unfortunately, Bela probably returned to that particular well a few too many times. It was as if Richard Nixon not only did the "sock it to me!" gag on Laugh-In!, but came back the next season as a regular castmember. At any rate, Lugosi had it both ways on radio, doing the vampire shtick alongside Fred Allen and Abbott and Costello and turning in solid performances on Suspense and Crime Does Not Pay. His greatest opportunity in radio was Bela Lugosi's Mystery House which sadly never made it past the audition disc. Recorded sometime in the late 40s, Bela Lugosi's Mystery House is like a "Monogram Studios of the Air" and even features John Carradine in support! The story, "The Thirsty Death", was announced to be the first of a series of adaptations of plays from the Grand Guignol in Paris, although I have serious doubts that it's a genuine Guignol play. Nonetheless, Lugosi is absolutely terrific, turning in a wonderful blood-and-thunder performance that is well suited to the material. You can listen to Bela Lugosi's Mystery House here. And if funny Lugosi is more your speed, here he is on the Fred Allen Show in 1943. And get a load of this 1949 clip of Bela with Milton Berle on the Texaco Star Theater! Bela is clearly having a blast! If Ted Healy had been alive, he would have sued Berle for stealing his personality.

And can anyone establish the provenance of this 1950s snapshot of Bela? Is this a shot from the Dragnet spoof from the aforementioned Bela Lugosi Revue? In its own way, this is the scariest image of Bela ever to see print. Never forget, folks.. Comedy is where the real terror is. Happy Halloween, everybody!

Oi!!

Before Monty Python, The Goon Show, Benny Hill, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Beyond the Fringe and the 1960s Satire Boom, two of the greatest names in UK comedy were Flanagan and Allen. Bud Flanagan, real name Chaim Weintrop, was the team's capital "C" comic, complete with rubbery features, Cockney accent, catchphrase ("Oi!"), and crushed straw boater while handsome, well-dressed, and highly-animated Chesney Allen played straightman. In the 30s and 40s, F&A were the UK's most popular comedy team (short of Laurel and Hardy), and their reputation was entirely justified. Flanagan and Allen's routines are lightning fast and their characterizations, in sharp contrast to most American comedy teams (again, besides Laurel and Hardy.. and Laurel is from Ulverson), are warm and personable. Also quite unlike most American comedy teams of the era, F&A were almost as much a musical act as a comedy one, releasing hit records one after the other for years. Flanagan in particular was blessed with a knack for composing catchy melodies, and while neither would have qualified for Grand Opera, as a duet their weaknesses seemed to cancel each other out. Bud Flanagan composed the team's signature tune, "Underneath the Arches", and its charming happy-go-lucky-while-down-and-out lyrics do much to cement the team's wistfully nostalgic image, an image they worked hard to project from virtually day one of their teaming in 1926. So sentimental and nostalgic were Flanagan and Allen, in fact, that by the time the team had reached their Autumn Years, the nostalgia seemed redundant. Flanagan and Allen reached new heights of popularity during WWII with songs like "Run, Rabbit, Run" and "Hang Up the Washing on the Siegfried Line", but illness brought on by overwork entertaining the troops forced Chesney Allen to split the act at the war's close. Flanagan and Allen would, however, repeatedly re-team for appearances until Bud's death in 1968.

Flanagan and Allen were also highly successful in films, not only in their own starring vehicles, but also as two-sixths of the mega-comedy team The Crazy Gang, which also featured the talents of Nervo and Knox and the Stooge-like Naughton and Gold. While frequently compared to the Marx Brothers, the Crazy Gang is more of a music hall tag team, a gaggle of proudly low-brow clowns who barge into rooms in order to unload as many stale puns as possible as quickly as possible (funny if you're in the proper mood). The original Gang appeared in four features between 1937 and 1941 before Chesney Allen retired from performing to become the Gang's business manager (shades of Zeppo Marx). After the war, the Crazy Gang, now headlined by Bud Flanagan as a solo and supported by "Monsewer" Eddie Gray, reunited for a long series of West End stage revues and a fifth and final feature, Life Is a Circus (1958), to which Chesney Allen contributed a nostalgic cameo appearance.

Often referred to on this side of the pond as the UK's answer to Abbott and Costello (an answer that preceded the question by a decade), Flanagan and Allen do bear more than a passing resemblance to the American duo, especially in regard to their team dynamic and choice of material. Bud Flanagan's impulsive, childlike character is a close relation to Lou Costello's, while Chesney Allen, like Bud Abbott, plays a reproachful father figure, albeit one far more prone to giving mild shoves rather than Abbott-style slaps. At the time, F&A's brand of high-octane verbal sparring was more common to American comedy teams than their much milder British cousins and the likely answer is that Flanagan and Allen's act was the result of some interesting cultural cross-pollination. Although born in London, Bud Flanagan started his stage career in New York where, at the age of 13, he appeared in a low-rent imitation of Gus Edwards' famous School Days act before forming a double act with straightman Dale Burgess. With Bud having received his training in American vaudeville, perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising that the comedy of Flanagan and Allen has a decidedly American flavor to it (in fact, when Bud was previously teamed with straightman Jack Buckland, they were billed as "Harlem and Bronx"!). In particular, the crosstalk routines the team specialized in were common in American burlesque, and their funniest, "The Whistle Routine" (seen in A Fire Has Been Arranged (1935)), is a definite rival to A&C's famous "Who's On First?".:

Ches: I've got two whistles. (hands Bud whistle) You've got one and I've got one, too.

Bud: What?

Ches: I said, I've got one, too.

Bud: You've only got one!

Ches: I know I've only got one.. and you've got one, too!

Bud: (examines hands) Well, where's the other one?

Ches: What other one?

Bud: The other one I've got?

Ches: You've only got one, and I've got one, too!

etc..

Music "sharity" seems to be all the rage (RAGE!!) at the moment so I suppose this is as good an opportunity as any for me to throw my two cent hat into the ring. I've uploaded Underneath the Arches: Flanagan and Allen to the link you'll find in the comments. This is one of the better of the various Flanagan and Allen compilations floating around, concentrating more on their music than their (frequently dodgy) comedy recordings, although it does include Splitting Up, which I consider to be their best. This backstage meta-skit by Bud about Flanagan and Allen splitting up their act vividly illustrates that F&A were, more than any other team I can think of, a comedy team obsessed with the idea of being a comedy team.

Geoff Collins Takes a Belt in the Back

I just had a quick look at that big fat lump of an MGM biopic The Great Ziegfeld which has recently become available on DVD here. It had to be a quick look, as I couldn't afford to take three days off work to watch all of it. Several things stood out, the most notable being: thank God for the fast-forward button. But it seems odd to me that the real Fanny Brice, a genuine Ziegfeld star in a rare movie appearance, has both her musical numbers annoyingly curtailed and interrupted by dialogue; while a fake Eddie Cantor does a complete, uninterrupted turn. This is great news for fans of faux-Cantor Buddy Doyle, who does a very good job, but why isn't the real Cantor in the movie? After all, it's an affectionate tribute to his much-loved former employer. Two possible reasons: (a) he couldn't do it as he was contractually tied to Sam Goldwyn; or (b) he asked MGM for too much money, so they told him to go away and replaced him with a lookalike.

Why do I suspect the latter to be the case? Am I just an old cynic?

I recently unearthed (in Newport Pagnell, in England!) a copy of the May 11, 1949 Variety. Have a look at the following article, and see if you reach the same conclusions.

click on the thumbnail for a full-sized image

Cantor did indeed perform the skit with Louis Sorin in Glorifying the American Girl. It's still there, in the movie, and a bit of it can be glimpsed in Michael Kantor's Broadway - the American Musical, episode 2. It has the feel of a classic routine, and in the hands of Cantor (much more New York Jewish than usual) and Sorin, it's very funny. But who wrote it?

As much as I love Eddie Cantor, I just don't believe his version. Look what Lew Earn hearned for the routine: a couple of thousand dollars here and there, maybe a bit more from Ken Murray. What did Cantor get? $20,000 in one go, for doing the sketch in the movie, plus all the other payments earlier in the 20s.

It's a well-documented fact that Lou Costello crammed as many old burlesque/vaudeville routines as he possibly could into the Abbott and Costello TV show - which he owned - in order to gain ownership of all the old routines as well. We can't really complain about this; in doing so, he preserved the material. But was Cantor doing this as well? He didn't need the money; he must have been financially well ahead of Lew Hearn, who's now a totally obscure name (the archaeologists amongst you can find a silent clip of him on the Pathe website). Sorry Eddie, this wasn't your finest hour; you got the $20,000 and you're still prepared to sacrifice a friendship to get a bit more. You're a ba-aa-aad boy!

On this same subject, let's go back a few years, to London, 1943, and the first film appearance of the non-classic Northern double-act whose names are always spelled incorrectly: the correct spelling - and please, all of you, never get it wrong again - is JIMMY JEWEL and BEN WARRISS. The film, which, incidentally, gives Jimmy's name in the credits as "Jimmie Jewell", is Rhythm Serenade, a vehicle for whiny Forces' Favourite Vera Lynn, a popular singer of the time who appears, whether we want her to or not, in every 40s compilation going, and who reminds elderly Brits of the dark days of World War Two - mainly because her voice sounds like an Air Raid siren. She couldn't act either - I mean she really couldn't - and in the film the poor girl is woodenly pushed around from one inept dramatic situation to the next, with occasional "comic" relief from Jewel and Warriss. And what do they do ?

Jimmy says he doesn't like mustard (he pronounces it "moostered") and Ben browbeats him with a long tirade about little girls, thirteen, fourteen years old, slaving away day and night to "manufacture moostered". Sounds familiar? Didn't Bud and Lou do this same routine in One Night in the Tropics - and on their TV show? Elsewhere in Rhythm Serenade, Jimmy and Ben do a variation on Clayton, Jackson and Durante's "Wood Wood Wood"; and they were also famous for a Blackpool summer show "waterproof watch" routine (to prove its efficiency, pushy salesman Ben submerges would-be customer Jimmy in a huge glass water tank). Very amusing, but just a minute - didn't Milton Berle do this in Always Leave Them Laughing? And didn't Sid Caesar - and later Bert Lahr - do this on Broadway in Make Mine Manhattan? Poor Bert; he was always being ripped off. Most of the sketches in Always Leave Them Laughing were originally his (all he gets to do is a brief version of his old cop routine, and he lights up the entire film) and Berle also lifted his stock market sketch in New Faces of 1937. The list is endless.

The Pathe website [oh no! I mentioned it again] has examples of the excellent British double-act Collinson and Dean performing routines associated with Bud and Lou - but ten years earlier. They do a version of "7 x 13=28"; and there's another routine in which the ordinarily stodgy old straightman Bill Collinson displays wonderfully crisp mental agility as he invents all sorts of nonsensical "deductions" (holidays, lunch hours) in order to deprive employee Alfie Dean of his wages; so poor Alfie ends up with no wages at all for a year's work. Sounds familiar? Didn't Bud and Lou do this same routine in One Night in the.... Wait a minute - I said all that before. My God, it's contagious. I'm stealing material from myself!

Bill Collinson "wrote" their material; but the biographical details on a contemporary cigarette card provide the most likely solution to "how Collinson wrote Abbott and Costello's routines ten years before they existed". He'd toured extensively in American vaudeville in the 1920s; so he probably remembered all this great material (or if he was as crafty as I think he was, wrote it all down at the time) and recycled it for himself and Alfie.

This discussion could go on forever. I suppose we should be grateful that all these classic bits are on film and no matter who performs them, they're a pleasure to watch, and they remind us of the comedy of a bygone age. It all happened more than sixty years ago, and we'll never know the true authorship of much of it. But who did write "Belt in the Back"? Cantor? Lew Hearn? Some forgotten, neglected American burlesque comedian?

Or Bill Collinson?