"We'll protect your rights until your last penny is gone!"

Your weekly Clark and McCullough fix is here; Odor in the Court (1934), the most highly regarded film of what's left of their canon. Bobby is more of a dynamo in this film than ever before, if such a thing is possible, and Paul, after so many shorts where he barely speaks, suddenly has laughlines and loads of background throwaway gags. Clark and McCullough have often been compared to the Marx Brothers, a comparison you can take or leave, but it must be said that the Marxes were never, ever as aggressive and completely in-control as Bobby and Paul. Even in Duck Soup, the Marxes' most unbridled picture, Minnie's boys are still outsiders running riot in a world of oh-so serious adults. In Odor in the Court, as in many of their best pictures, Clark and McCullough are scheming insiders bending the world to their whims, no matter how bizarre. I'm particularly fond of the establishing shot of their thoroughly savaged office, destroyed as an unavoidable consequence of their desire to play horseshoes indoors.

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The Goat from Nowhere!

Here's your weekly dose of Clark and McCullough weirdness; Hey Nanny Nanny, released January 12th, 1934. Ben Holmes had just taken over the director's chair with the previous C&McC short, Snug In the Jug (11/2/33), while Mark Sandrich, who had handled Clark and McCullough from the beginning at RKO, had been moved on to features. He'd soon direct Wheeler and Woolsey's two greatest pictures, Hips, Hips, Hooray and Cockeyed Cavaliers (both 1934). He also directed something called The Gay Divorcee and another something called Top Hat. At least visually, Mark Sandrich's promotion marked a decided step down in the quality of the Clark and McCullough series. From the looks of things there may have been budget cuts, but Holmes' rather rote directing doesn't help. Nonetheless, there were still some real gems to come along with what is considered to be Bobby and Paul's finest moment in film, Odor In the Court (1934). Hey Nanny Nanny is a by-the-book C&McC outing featuring all the requisite elements: Bobby and Paul brazenly posing as something they most certainly are not, in this case masseurs and/or magicians, a High Society Party, and a goat.

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Jitters the Butler

Released December 20th, 1932, Jitters the Butler is another wonderful Mark Sandrich-directed Clark and McCullough weirdfest. Again, we have Jimmy Finlayson in there doing his thang ("DOOOO'H!!!"), but this time around it's Robert Grieg who acts as Bobby and Paul's foil. Starting with his role as Hives in Animal Crackers (1930), Robert Grieg made a comfortable Hollywood career for himself playing butlers, valets, and manservants. I doubt he ever had another role quite this... unusual. Aside from being just generally strange, Jitters enjoys, and I mean really enjoys, being kicked in the ass.. hard.. and repeatedly. And he isn't the only one! Oh, those pre-Code comedies! Despite Joe Adamson's characterization of Grieg as "an actor who confuses playing a part with reciting dialogue", his deadpan strangeness is extremely funny here. Other nice bits include Bobby and Paul converting their streetcleaning uniforms into panama suits, and, my favorite, simply sitting on a couch, tossing firecrackers into a hat, and erupting with genuinely unrestrained glee with each explosion.

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"Never a help! Always a hinderance!"

In answer to Kevin's C&McC post, for the next few weeks I'm going to post examples of the good, bad, transcendent, and just plain bizarre from Bobby and Paul's series for Radio Pictures. I'm starting things off with The Iceman's Ball, which definitely, for me, falls into the "transcendent" category. The Iceman's Ball was released by RKO on August 12th, 1932, and is the earliest Clark and McCullough short I've seen so far. Like most of the C&McC's that Mark Sandrich directed, it stands in contrast to the later Ben Holmes-helmed shorts in that its story is decidedly straightforward and Bobby and Paul are pretty much allowed to shoulder the short's weirdness on their own. No bagpipe-playing pigs here! Instead, we're presented with a Clark and McCullough who carve their own bizarre path through a fairly recognizable Jazz Age world. And they didn't get better support later on than they do here; we have Jimmy Finlayson doing his takes to the camera, Fred Kelsey as a cop (what else?), and Vernon Dent as a heavy (what else?). Goldwyn Girl Shirley Chambers plays Dorothy Lee to C&McC's W&W, and a very young Walter Brennan rounds out the cast in a thankless minor role. Anarchist, licentious, and thoroughly anti-authoritarian, The Iceman's Ball is an exhilarating example of pre-Code comedy and "Exhibit A" for the argument that Clark and McCullough could have handled features with flair. Bobby: "It's women like you who make men like me make women like you make men like me!"

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Love and Nighties

by Kevin Kusinitz

It’s no secret that the ringmaster of this site is a major Clark & McCullough aficionado. Although Aaron has freely admitted that C&McC are an acquired taste and boast a less-than-perfect resume, he nonetheless admires the sheer energy and anarchy they put into their work. If they’re playing political advisers, they have no problem slamming a desk drawer into their client’s crotch. Invited to a party under false pretenses, Bobby wrestles a guest to the ground for no good reason. Chaos for the sake of chaos is their M.O.

Or so I gather. The biggest problem with assessing C&McC has been the near-unavailability of their work. Movie fans have had to rely on mavens like Aaron or Leonard Maltin for the lowdown. So when I started burning my way-too vast VHS library to DVD – we’re talking a collection going back over 20 years – I was delighted to discover two C&McC shorts: Love & Hisses and The Gay Nighties. Not having seen them since I originally taped them off PBS in the ‘80s, I couldn’t remember what I thought of them the first go ‘round. So I watched them, along with the short Aaron posted the other day, In a Pig’s Eye. And I still don’t know what to make of them… other than that they possess, well, energy and anarchy. Maybe a little too much of both.

In fact, as I watched Love & Hisses, I recalled a friend’s comment upon watching it with me the first time: “Why are they acting that way? What’s their motivation?” As if they were supposed to huddle with Lee Strasberg between takes. He also had a typical complaint about Bobby Clark: “He’s too much like Groucho.” (I give Bobby a pass on that one – vaudeville was lousy with cigar-smoking, fast-talking comics.) My friend didn’t bother with The Gay Nighties: Clark & McCullough had proven a grave disappointment.

Along with the anarchy, there’s also a predilection, it appears, toward stories that hinge on one, ridiculous plot point – a sleepwalking countess, a guy positively orgasmic over watermelons, a pig addicted to mints. Monte Collins, the guy with the flexible scalp, is a regular in their movies as well. Bobby’s line, “File this for future reference” seems to be a running gag, as does Paul McCullough’s nasal laugh. Which brings up something else. Of the three shorts I’ve seen, Love & Hisses is the only one where McCullough has more than a handful of lines. The other two, where he does little more than chuckle appreciatively at his partner’s jokes, feature a writing credit by Bobby Clark. Coincidence?

Paul’s laughter during Love & Hisses feels like cues to the audience. Other than one or two risqué bits of dialogue with a maid, the boys seem to be relying on mania alone to justify two reels of film. I understand what one of their directors meant when he said their vibrancy on the soundstage didn’t translate to film. Indeed, I got the feeling that it would’ve played pretty well in a Broadway farce, even with the same material – watching this lunacy live would’ve been literally breathtaking. No wonder heavyweights like George S. Kaufmann and the Gershwins worked with these guys: they sold the material as if working on 200% commission. I just wasn’t sure I was in a buying mood.

So I approached The Gay Nighties with trepidation. Aaron warned me via e-mail that this was one of their weakest shorts. Bobby’s reading of the line “Couldn’t they have used bows and arrows?!” exemplified, he told me, the mediocrity of the whole enterprise. Still, I decided to view it along with my wife and 11 year-old daughter. (The latter is a Laurel & Hardy fan and would appreciate the appearance of James Finlayson.) This proved to be a wise move, because the presence of an audience can shift one’s perception of a comedy. In other words, we laughed. Silly laughter, perhaps, along the lines of I can’t believe that desk-drawer in the crotch bit, but laughter nonetheless. Bobby Clark would’ve understood.

The story – C&McC frame a political rival by trying to photograph him with a woman other than his wife – lends itself to a few more risqué bits, including Bobby actually trying to get in bed with the aforementioned countess. (The wife is always astonished by pre-Code situations like this.) Paul gets to play a pivotal role for a change, dressing up in Bo-Peep drag in order to entice Finlayson. The jokes never stop, the sight gags get more outlandish, so by the time Bobby utters his deathless “bows and arrows” line, my wife, daughter and I didn’t just laugh, but laughed out loud. Like slapping the armrest of the couch loud. My wife even repeated the line, out of the blue, the next day. Take that, Mr. Clark & McCullough fan!

Still, I wonder: is The Gay Nighties the exception to the Clark & McCullough oeuvre? I know it’s unfair to judge a comedy team’s output by just three movies. I mean, imagine someone unfamiliar with Laurel & Hardy watching only Berth Marks, Twice Two and The Big Noise. Luckily for us, several of their movies are for sale at the Columbia Shorts Department. However, considering their hit/miss ratio so far, I think I’m going to wait for them to be posted on YouTube by some rabid fan. And you know who you are.

File that for future reference.

"Dinner at eight or tea for two, by me it's always waffles!"

Typical of Clark and McCullough's RKO shorts, In a Pig's Eye (1934) is a game of Mad Libs edited into a situation comedy. Pig and waffle-loving tailors Crotch and Blodgett steal a Scotchman's clothes and are mistaken by an inventor (Bud Jamison) for his Scottish financier, "the Laird of Loch Loo", and his "confidential advisor". At the inventor's home, Crotch and Blodgett's pet pig Ajax, which lives on a diet of milk and peppermint wafers, is accidentally, and rather inevitably, fed one of the inventor's highly explosive "Destructo" wafers. Oh no! Severe bizarreness ensues. Spoiler: the short ends with the pig playing the bagpipes. Love them or hate them, one thing is certain; during the 1930s, no one made weirder comedies than Clark and McCullough. Favorite moment: Ajax, through the miracle of motion picture editing, inexplicably running around and around a doorway, squealing bloody murder. Everyone panics and flees at the sight and I, for one, can't blame them. Second most favorite moment: Monty Collins reading Popeye in the newspaper: "Hee hee hee hee!! "Arf arf arf!""

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Clark and McCullough On the Air!

I recently discovered this mind-crogglingly rare C&McC radio appearance in an episode of NBC's 30 year retrospective series Recollections at Thirty. Broadcast in 1956, the show featured excerpts from NBC's archived transcription discs and even took requests from listeners. The problem is that the vast majority of these historic clips were introduced in the vaguest possible terms. This one, from the 7/4/56 episode, is simply introduced by host Ed Herlihy as being "Clark and McCullough's first radio broadcast" without giving a date or program title. Unless this recording predates the 1926 Friars Club testimonial dinner to the team that was broadcast on WGBS, I have to doubt it. It's still a fascinating clip. Clark and McCullough perform under their own names, and Bobby refers to Paul as "Mac", a nickname I've never heard or read anywhere else. Paul is especially fun here, giving an extremely lively performance that indicates that, before Broadway, the partnership was a little more balanced.

As a bonus, here's another clip from the same episode of Recollections at Thirty that they at least pin down for us. The aforementioned Tom Howard and George Shelton were the resident comedy team of The Rudy Vallee Show in 1935, taking over that duty from the aforementioned Olsen and Johnson. Rudy clearly liked his comedy low and loud. In this excerpt from the July 4, 1935 show, Howard and Shelton do the old "I'll bet I can make you say "Oh no I haven't"" routine. They're not bad, but they're not nearly as good as they later were on It Pays to be Ignorant.

Willkommen - Welcome - Bienvenue

Greetings to those of you who have been directed here from Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy! The aforementioned Clark and McCullough Database can be found at this link, and endless thanks to Mr. Maltin both for the kind write-up and the shocking revelation that Bobby Clark's final film appearance wasn't in The Goldwyn Follies after all, but in There's No Business Like Show Business in 1954! Indeed, director Walter Lang gives Bobby a very nice, and quite showy, cameo towards the end of the picture, being greeted by star Ethel Merman in a backstage scene. As you can see in the frames below, Bobby is perfectly recognizable in his greasepaint eyeglasses and is even wearing his late partner Paul McCullough's famous coat (said to be dogskin in contemporary news clippings). Clark had taken to wearing the coat by the late 40s, an affectionate gesture, no doubt, but one also tinged with some strange symbolic undertones. I also like the idea that Bobby just wandered around dressed like this in public. Interestingly, castmember Mitzi Gaynor had co-starred with Bobby in the off-Broadway production Jollyanna two years prior, and may have had some role in securing his appearance. I have yet more remarkable news about Clark and McCullough coming, so stay tuned folks!

"Omnia Cafeteria Rex"

At long last, I present the newly-renovated Clark and McCullough Database. I can't believe it has been seven years since I first opened the site on Geocities (before Yahoo! got their mitts on it). Also, I can't believe that I left those "speculation" and "assessment" essays unchanged since 1999. That's just embarrassing. In TC&McCDB v.4, you'll find:

• New essays about Clark and McCullough
• New images of Clark and McCullough
• Links to all my Third Banana blog entries about Clark and McCullough
• A complete history of Clark and McCullough by Paul's great-nephew Mike Brick
• A tasteful new index page... featuring Clark and McCullough
• and, most importantly, an off-site gallery I've set up featuring over 100 unimaginably rare photos and news clippings about Clark and McCullough culled from Paul's mother's scrapbook (courtesy Mike Brick)

And that's not all. Within the next few weeks, hardware/software problems pending, I'll be adding some actual Clark and McCullough shorts to the site, including Odor in the Court. If you like Clark and McCullough, you're in luck. If not... meh. Who knew?

On a related note, I recently realized that the George Shelton pictured among the cast of the Clark and McCullough-produced burlesque revue Monkey Shines is the same George Shelton who was a long-time panelist on It Pays to Be Ignorant, the 1940s radio gag quiz show hosted by vaudevillian Tom Howard (Joe Cook's bespectacled foil in Rain or Shine (1930)) and which I personally happen to find hilarious. As revealed in a review from the aforementioned scrapbook, Shelton, a long-time friend and former comedy teammate of Howard's, appeared in Monkey Shines alongside comic Al Tyler as Clark and McCullough imitators, performing routines C&McC had made famous. According to this page, Shelton once replaced Clark in a vaudeville act entitled "The Merry Wives of Windsor", of which I've seen no trace in these clippings. Anyway, Shelton is funny (in a very Joe E. Ross kind of way), and you can hear him here, for free, in six episodes of It Pays to Be Ignorant. "Mr. Shelton, a halfwit must have given you a piece of his mind!" "Yeah, and you're not gonna get it back, neither!"

addendumb 10/21: Refreshing my memory, I went back to Stanley Green's The Great Clowns of Broadway and noticed that "The Merry Wife of Windsor" (or "That Merry Wife of Windsor") was a skit written and performed by Clark in Michael Todd's Star and Garter (1942-3). I assume that the skit predated Star and Garter by many years and may have been one of Clark and McCullough's vaudeville turns. If this is the case, I find it more plausible that, rather than replacing Clark in this skit at any time, Shelton was allowed the use of it in vaudeville. Green notes that the skit involves Clark hiding in a trunk from Gypsy Rose Lee's jealous husband. A similar situation can be seen in C&McC's In the Devildog House (1934), in which Clark hides in a trunk from Dorothy Granger's jealous husband Tom Kennedy.. the same skit, perhaps?

Paul Was Here: Sleuthing on a Budget... or Why None of Us will Ever Have Any Privacy Again, Ever

My free time of the past several days has been spent cleaning up images from Paul McCullough's mother's scrapbook (courtesy Paul's nephew Mike Brick) in preparation for adding the best bits to the all-too stagnant Clark and McCullough Database. Among the newspaper clippings are many candid photos of Paul and his friends and family, undated and usually unmarked with no corresponding documentation, which unfortunately relegates a good many of them to the "unknown" file. But at least a few can be pinned down thanks to handy identifiers and landmarks in the photos themselves. Take for instance this snapshot of Paul, his mother, and assorted friends (and family?).

No documentation, although, from the clothes and Paul's appearance, it can be readily assumed to date from the early 30s. There are however many signs and distinctive buildings.

To the left, a building with a sign reading "Kress" and a tower with a peaked roof.. to the right, the "La Plaza Theatre" and a nice clock.

A quick Google search of "La Plaza Theatre" and "Kress" brings up a postcard on Ebay of Central Avenue, St. Petersburg, Florida. Here's a good one from the late 30s with three of our identifiers; the Kress sign, the peaked tower, and the clock. But what about the La Plaza Theatre?

Here it is to the far right of this mid-20s postcard. That marquee is much bigger than it seems in the candid photo! All four of our landmarks are here.

Here are two postcards of the La Plaza Theatre from the teens, before the huge marquee was added. According to the Cinema Treasures site, the La Plaza, located at 504 Central Ave. (now a parking lot), opened in 1913 and had over 2,000 seats. Perhaps Clark and McCullough played there at some point? And where, exactly, are Paul and company seated? GOOGLE KNOWS ALL!! GOOGLE SEES ALL!!

This 1935-6 postcard shows that they would be sitting under the red arrow, right in front of the Plaza Hotel (next door to the extremely strangely named "X-Ray Shoes" store). It's easy to assume that Paul and company were staying at the Plaza. Does anyone have any shots of the Plaza Hotel today? Does it still exist?

On to the next photo. This one is fairly simple. Again, this must be the early 30s. A Google search for "Buenaventura Mission" pulls up the Mission San Buenaventura in Ventura, CA. Paul is probably leaving the mission after Mass.

Here's the mission on a 1930s postcard.

Here's the mission today, restored to its much nicer 1782 appearance.

This one was tricky. Obviously, Paul and his friends are still in Florida, most likely the same trip that saw them in St. Petersburg. The building behind them is plainly a hotel, and it must be the Hotel Floridian (duh).

A Google search brings up a postcard on Ebay of a Hotel Floridian on Miami Beach as seen from Star Island. I couldn't find a better (or closer) image of the hotel than this. Further Googling reveals that the hotel is long since demolished.

Again, this must be the same early 30s trip. That's Paul in the middle accompanied by the thin and chubby fellows from the previous shot. Clearly they're in front of a bridge crossing the Suwannee River. Photoshop tinkering brings out the name of the bridge located above the plaque; Hillman Bridge. The Hillman Bridge, now abandoned, is located near Suwannee River State Park on old US Highway 90 in Ellaville, FL.. itself mostly abandoned.

Here's a postcard of the bridge from the late 40s.

Here's a recent shot of the Hillman Bridge (from the opposite end) that I found on Webshots. Jeez, that's depressing..

Happy Birthday Bobby!

In honor of Bobby Clark's 118th birthday, I'm posting these two images from the collection of Mike Brick, nephew of Paul McCullough, who has graciously consented to their use. These photos are taken from Paul's mother's personal scrapbooks of her son's career, and there's plenty more where they came from. A huge overhaul of The Clark and McCullough Database is now in the works so watch this blog for future announcements.

Clark (right) and McCullough (left), circa 1913, in their vaudeville act Much Ado About Nothing, a variation on their circus routine in which they attempt to put a chair on top of a table. Bobby and Paul had already been comedy teammates for thirteen years at this point! Bobby's greasepaint eyeglasses, of which you can seen an early variation here, had their origins as a part of his traditional clown's whiteface makeup. The putty noses and whiteface would be gone by the end of the decade.


Clark and McCullough as we know and love them, seen here in a publicity still from their RKO short Hokus Focus (1933).

"Never a help, always a hinderance!"

(click for full-sized image)

John McElwee of Greenbriar Picture Shows sent over this bee-YOU-tiful two-page spread advertising Clark and McCullough's 1932-33 series for RKO-Radio Pictures. Despite the hyperbole of the ad copy, I wonder how much of a box office draw C&McC really were in 1934. Certainly, RKO didn't feel they had the drawing power needed for a feature, otherwise they would have starred in The Cuckoos, RKO's adaptation of their Broadway hit The Ramblers, rather than Wheeler and Woolsey. Unlike Bert and Bob who had wide appeal both in the cities and in the "sticks", Bobby and Paul were purely uptown comics and their RKO shorts, with their emphasis on big city life, trade heavily on that image. Acclaimed by New York critical circles and heralded as the worthy successors to the Four Marx Brothers on Broadway, Clark and McCullough even had a certain amount of snob appeal and would , as the ad suggests, "add glamor" to your bill.. given, of course, that your patrons knew or cared enough about highfalootin', citified Broadway comedians to feel that they were getting the equivalent of a $5.50 NY show.

Geoff Collins Revisits The Producers - and Says "What If?"

Further to my earlier ramblings on the subject, I feel the movie version of The Producers is such an excellent Broadway-to-Hollywood transfer that it would have been entirely at home in that early-talkie period when Hollywood was raiding the New York stage for something - anything - to turn into a movie musical. So here's a "What If". Please feel free to contribute to this.

Of course, in the late twenties, the hoped-for flop would have to be Springtime For Hindenburg.

What if The Producers had been a Broadway show in 1928, and a movie in 1930? Who would play Max and Leo? And to get you started, here are a few combinations to consider.

RKO Radio's version; Max : Robert Woolsey. Leo: Bert Wheeler. Now there's a controversial choice - but think about it; a good combination of brashness and innocence. It wouldn't be wonderful, but it would be funny and efficient.

Hal Roach's version; Max: Oliver Hardy. Leo: Stan Laurel. Now that would be sublime, but the movie would be five hours long. Forget it. How about...

Educational's version; Max: Joe Cook. Leo: Harry Langdon. Oh, for a time machine! Here's an even better one - and God knows which studio would put this out...

Max: Bobby Clark!! Leo: Eddie Cantor!!! Of course, to accomodate Paul McCullough there would have to be three Producers : Bialystock, Bloom and Blodgett.

Paramount's version; Max: W.C. Fields. Leo: Jack Haley. And it would have to be directed by Eddie Cline to become a cherished loopy classic.

Warner Bros.' version; Max : Ned Sparks (God help us!!!) ; Leo: Joe E. Brown, borrowing Bert Lahr's mannerisms (as usual).

Another, later RKO version; Max: Leon Errol. Leo: Fred Astaire. And (it goes without saying) Ginger Rogers as Ulla - recycling her Lyda Roberti accent from Roberta. Oh, and while we're still at RKO, how about the supporting cast? My personal choices: Edward Everett Horton as Roger DeBris; and Eric Blore as Carmen Ghia. (Paramount would use Franklin Pangborn).

And finally, the MGM version ("More Stars Than There Are In Heaven") [pause for an intake of breath]; Max: Ted Healy. Leo: Buster Keaton.

(Look, I know Speak Easily is very enjoyable, readers, but I just didn't have the heart to cast Jimmy Durante as Max; I just couldn't do it.)

Supporting cast: Greta Garbo as Ulla. El Brendel as her brother. Whaaattt?

Okay, that's enough. The van's arrived. The men in white coats are here. Take me awaaayyy....

Readers: over to you. Improve on this!

Clark and McCulloughpalooza!

At long last, I've added a minor slew of new images to the contributions page of The Clark and McCullough Database, going on six years (I think) as the world's only Clark and McCullough fan page. Who knew? There's a complete set of lobby cards for their best RKO short, Odor in the Court, a handbill for a burlesque revue they produced in the 'teens, and some other fun stuff. Again, if you or anyone you may know has any memorabilia or info related to Bobby Clark and/or Paul McCullough, please contact me at aaronneathery@gmail.com. One of these days, I may actually get that book written. Away, Blodgett!!