Whole Thoughts From A Half-Wit

by Nick Santa Maria

Hello there fellow comedy buffs. It's me, Nick Santa Maria, star of stage, screen, and now, blog. Since Aaron Neathery is a good friend, and since I was originally supposed to be a regular contributor to this blog (although I can't fathom why my bathroom habits would be of anybody's concern), I decided to jump into the fray and put in my 25 cents worth (allowing for inflation). With your indulgence I'm going to supply some recent random thoughts about some of the stuff I've been exposed to of late.

I recently purchased Harry Langdon's Three's a Crowd and The Chaser, now available from KINO. Langdon directed these two features and, in my opinion, did a fine job. There are shots that don't match very well, and there were some harmful cuts made to Three's a Crowd which makes it a bit confusing at moments, but all in all it is much better than I was led to believe. I will say, though, that The Chaser seems more like a bloated two-reeler than a fully fleshed out feature. It resembles Saturday Afternoon in substance, but it veers in that Harry is really a carouser. And he really seems to have some sexual appeal to the women in this film. Regardless of content (these films have been written about to death), I always welcome a chance to watch Harry. At one point he tries to figure out how to get an egg out of a chicken. It sounds simple, and it is, but in Harry's hands it's hilarious. He is absolutely fascinating. There is nothing like him. Nothing. There is a scene in The Chaser where Harry believes he drank a glassful of poison when in actuality he has downed a heaping glass of castor oil. He lays down on the kitchen floor and covers himself in a blanket to await his impending death (he's committing suicide). He waits. And he waits. And he waits. He waits for what seems like a freakin' hour! Then he jumps up with the realization that he desperately needs to be in a bathroom, bolting up the stairs in a panic. I've never seen anything like it. No wonder his audience abandoned him. I can picture a table of silent comedians, who'd made it successfully into the sound era, shaking their heads and saying, "Poor Harry... I told him to play to the audience. But no. He had to have his own way. He was too different!". And that was the trouble. There was nobody like Langdon. And I believe that he confused the hell out of audiences back then. Hell, he confuses them now. What a brave, talented, sad little artist.

I've become addicted to What's My Line. I set my DVR to record it every night off of the Game Show Network. And as I watch everyday I ask myself the same question, "When did we all get so stupid?". This is sophisticated, witty, and multi-syllabic entertainment at it's best. The people are so polite and nice to one another. It's such a far cry from today's TV world where the comedy comes from the pleasure of humiliating people. Where else can one see Fred Allen on a semi-regular basis on the wasteland he wrote so eloquently about, TV? As a part of the panel (Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, and Dorothy Kilgallen) Allen seems uncomfortable and unable to give full rein to his wit. He begins many a joke but is forced to pull back as if he was interrupting someone at a dinner party. When he does get the spotlight he is very, very funny. This was Allen's last regular gig in a medium that held little use for him. He seems a bit tired and a bit befuddled, but he's always sardonic and funny. And when Fred Allen doesn't assume the number two chair position, Steve Allen is there in his place (no relation, other than the great wit). Watching this ancient game show has led me to re-assess the talented Mr. Allen. Steve Allen was so ubiquitous in my youth that I admit to taking him for granted. Now I see why I was drawn to him in the first place. He's a master wit of the first order. (I had the pleasure of auditioning for him once back in 1983. He was producing a small production of his show, Sammy Glick is Alive and Sick. Coincidentally, I did an imitation of Fred Allen during my piece and made him laugh. I didn't get the job, though, and he hired an upstart by the name of Bill Maher instead.) And let me tell you, the mystery guests alone are worth watching for. I don't think I can remember seeing Herbert Marshall, Ed Wynn, Edgar Bergen, Liz Taylor, and Bob Hope all in one week....on a game show! I've already gotten a few of my friends hooked , and if you start to watch you'll be hooked, too.

I've recently discover Big Hearted Arthur Askey. TCM showed three of his films back to back to back and I'm now a fan. What an irreverent little pain in the arse. He's like a good natured pitbull. His modus operandi in relation to the other characters in the films seems to be, "LOVE ME OR I'LL BADGER YOU INTO THE GROUND!". I thought Groucho, Robert Woolsey, and others of that ilk were brazen and unyielding... well, Arthur gives them all a run for their money. He's tiny, he's kind of feminine and he's a riot. He works with a "partner" who goes by the name of Richard "Stinker" Murdoch. I remember my dear second wife saying to me once, after watching an Abbott and Costello film, "Abbott doesn't do anything. Lou's the whole show.". Well, despite her totally uninformed opinion, it made me realize that if Lou Costello were living in England in the 40's Abbott would have been in the same boat as "Stinky" Murdoch, or Jerry Desmonde (who apparently died penniless and alone). Murdoch is an equal partner to Askey in no uncertain terms. In fact they would have worked beautifully as an official team. Murdoch is tall and handsome where Askey is short and goofy looking... Murdoch can get the girl, play straight, and even act... Askey is more freakish by nature. What was with English comedy performers? Will Hay dumped Moffatt and Marriott and paid dearly. Tony Hancock dumped Sid James and Kenneth Williams and we all know where Mr. Hancock ended. So, it is with slight discomfort that I watch the Askey films, but not enough to consider the films anything but delightful. If you get the chance check out, Band Waggon, The Ghost Train, and Charley's Big Hearted Aunt, by all means do.

I was recently having a meal with the still lovely Ann Jeffries, and knowing full well that she was not only the best Tess Trueheart in the movies, and co-star to Lugosi and Atwill, not mention star of the Topper TV series, but she worked in a few films with those Third Banana wannabes, Brown and Carney! So, being me, they were the first ones I wanted to know about. Well, as expected, she didn't have much to say other than, "They were very nice, and very talented, but they weren't a team. We knew it, they knew it, and the audiences knew it.". It reminded me of the time I approached AMC's long ago host, Bob Dorian (back when AMC almost rivaled TCM as a classic film station). The first thing I asked him was, "Why don't you show more Wheeler and Woolsey movies?". He looked at me like I had just landed from the planet Zoomar, and he said, "You like them?". I answered in the affirmative and he replied, "Then there must be something very wrong with you.". I guess he didn't collect their films.

Oh... and if you dig really hip and intelligent comedy, give a listen to Aaron Neathery's Electromatic Radio. It's brilliantly funny.

That's all for now. I'm going to watch What's My Line. I wonder who the mystery guest will be? Wally Brown, perhaps?

Medium Rare

The Old Time Radio Researchers have, via archive.org, bestowed upon us a marvelous bounty; their much coveted Singles and Doubles Collection, an Astonishingly Ample Aggregation of Audio Aberrations.. a collection of radio programs for which only one or two episodes remain. While this isn't entirely accurate (a glance at J. David Goldin's indispensable radiogoldindex.com will show that there are many shows in the SADC for which more episodes exist), it's more often true than not, and who the hell am I to nitpick? SHAME ON ME! We're talking about some museum-worthy material here: a joint radio interview with Orson Welles and H. G. Wells (Orson is clearly in awe, and H. G. gives him a pitch for the yet to be released Citizen Kane!), radio broadcasts from the 1920s, etc. etc.. I've uploaded a sampling of the available programs to my box.net account for you (see sidebar), concentrating on comedies for The Gazeeka Box and comic strip-themed shows for the "limited-edition" Four Color OTR player. Box.net limits files to 10 MB for cheapskates like myself so (for now) I had to leave out such gems as The George O' Hanlon Show (!!!!!) and Bert Wheeler starring on The Fresh Up Show (!!!!!!!!!), but there are still plenty of goodies left. Of particular interest (to me) are Tim and Irene Ryan's appearances on Circus Night in Silvertown (1935), and subbing for Jack Benny on the Jell-O Program (1936). Tim Ryan's Ted Healy-isms are much more pronounced here than in his later appearances in Monogram musicals, helping him to rise above some pretty godawful material, but Irene is just as much an unlikable cross between Gracie Allen and Cass Daley as she ever was before her Beverly Hillbillies days. Also of note is the closed-circuit broadcast of the first episode of The Morey Amsterdam Show with Morey in excellent form. This series would go on to become an early television hit on CBS and DuMont, giving a young Art Carney a solid start to his TV career. His future comedy partner is represented here by a 1944 episode of The Jackie Gleason-Les Tremayne Show, much funnier than you'd except (Les Tremayne??). Less successful by far is a 1946 starring vehicle for Phil Silvers, "20th Century-Fox's Brilliant Comedian", that foreshadows not even faintly the later brilliance of Sgt. Bilko. And perhaps most fascinating of the lot is an episode of Living 1949 in which Fred Allen examines American humor ("The average radio comedian is a mouth that speaks the words of others' brains.") and the hellish grind of his own career. As for the comic-themed shows:

Smilin' Jack, 12/18/39 or 2/13/39. The only complete surviving episode of this Mutual series based on Zack Mosley's bizarro aviation strip. Features the beloved shirt-button-popping Fat Stuff, and precious little of Jack himself. An on-air audition, the announcer invites listeners to write in and tell them what they like and don't like about the show. I imagine that a key complaint from kids would have been that virtually nothing happens in the show.

Dan Dunn, Secret Operative #48. Two episodes are all that remains of this syndicated 1930s series adapted from Norman Marsh's incredibly poorly drawn Dick Tracy knockoff. Not a bad show, but unremarkable.

That's My Pop, 7/29/45, based on one of Milt Gross's many brilliant strips. It's a crime that this is the sole surviving episode. While devoid of Yiddish, it's Milt Gross through and through. Shiftless Pop makes a few bucks for himself by turning the house into a sleazy dive while his family is away on vacation. One surprising, and very Gross (literally), gag involves Pop's mother-in-law stomping a giant mosquito to death. The wonderfully wet crunch that results is hilarious. The audience audibly squirms. Beautiful stuff. Aired on CBS.

Moon Mullins, 1/31/47, CBS. Frank Willard's classic strip isn't particularly well-served by this somewhat plodding audition, a pity as the strip and its colorful cast lends itself well to radio. While the material here is weak, Sheldon Leonard is perfectly cast as the scheming lowbrow Moonshine. Another audition for this series exists, dating from 1940.

Bringing Up Father. The date on this file is dead wrong. From the sound of it, and the quarter-hour runtime, I'll bet that this brisk, charming adaptation of George McManus's strip was recorded no later than 1932. It's pretty nifty hearing Maggie and Jiggs speak with their appropriate Irish brogues. This particular episode is, I believe, based directly on a McManus Sunday page. Syndicated by King Features. I wonder if they gave any of their other strips the quarter-hour treatment.

For the flipside, a comic strip based on a radio comedy success, check out the wonderful Charlie McCarthy strips over at Allan Holtz's Stripper's Guide.

".. a mere chant of the mediocre"

"... your report on the reaction to my life interview doesn't surprise me. i am afraid that it doesn't take much to arouse a torrent of opinions at the hillcrest round table. berle's opinion doesn't bother me. it must be someone else's that he is using secondhand. berle is the moron's messiah - a mere chant of the mediocre - a sorry mime who mistakes gusto and thyroid condition for talent and ability. he has been around for twenty years and has never been first in anything. if he is first in television, either our standards have disappeared or there is something wrong with television."

- Fred Allen to Groucho Marx, July 14, 1949

Treadmill to Oblivion

by Kevin Kusinitz

There was a time when Fred Allen was among the biggest names in radio comedy. His flat, nasal delivery could be gentle (as when spoofing small-town America) or bitter (network executives, Hollywood producers and overbearing sponsors were his biggest targets). And although he was clearly aiming at a more intellectual audience than most comedians of the day, it was said that he appealed to both college professors and truck drivers. So why is Fred Allen forgotten by all but the most rabid old-time radio buffs while the names of Jack Benny and Bob Hope live on?

I’ve got a couple of theories. First, he never made a successful transition to television, a medium he despised. Second, much of his humor is topical, thus making some punchlines obscure. Third, his type of topical humor, utterly unique in the 1940s, is de rigeur today.

Having collected old radio shows years ago, I’ve got a fourth, heretical theory: he – or, more to the point, his program -- just isn’t that funny anymore. I mean, I get the jokes, I appreciate his snarky humor, but time and again I wonder, Why aren’t I laughing? And why do I find Jack Benny far, far funnier? It took me years to realize that Benny’s humor – and that of his radio/TV regulars – was based on character. Fred Allen (like Bob Hope and, indeed, most comedians of the day) just told jokes, period. Sure, Fred aimed for a higher IQ, but that doesn’t mean he’s any funnier. For my money, his best material can be found in his essays, letters and excerpts from his two memoirs, Treadmill to Oblivion and Much Ado About Me, where his wit can flow freely, without the “necessary” conventions of comedy found in radio at the time. In other words, he was funnier just being himself than the jokes he wrote for himself. Certainly his ad-libs are better than what today’s comedy writers are paid top dollar to grind out.

As with TV, he never made it in movies, either, with the roles in his handful of features either guest shots or supporting characters. (With his baggy eyes, large cheeks and chipped teeth, he never exactly had a face for the camera, another strike against him). His sole leading role, as Fred Floogle in It’s in the Bag!, made in 1945 at the height of his radio success, was his last chance at stardom other than movies. The story’s simple enough: Fred Floogle, flea-circus owner, comes into his uncle’s $12-million inheritance. Unfortunately, most of the money has ripped-off by the uncle’s lawyers; all Floogle has coming to him is a pool table and five chairs. It’s only after he sells the chairs to an antiques dealer that he discovers one of them has $300,000 hidden inside. Floogle has to track the chairs down to their new owners to get the money.

It’s in the Bag! starts off promisingly, with Fred Allen (as himself) addressing the audience, making sardonic comments about the cast and crew throughout the credits. One of the names, though, gives one pause: Alma Reville, aka Mrs. Alfred Hitchock. What’s the writer of Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt and The Paradine Case doing writing a comedy? Good question, and one of I haven’t figured out. Allen must have realized the final cut needed a bit more humor – especially since the movie is filled with murders either attempted or successful (thanks, Alma!) so he adds voice-overs to several scenes while the actors continue to speak their dialogue. (This must explain Morrie Ryskind’s credit for his “special contribution.”) He even does this during the comedy scenes when the dialogue turns sluggish. The results range from disconcerting to confusing to, ultimately, aggravating. More than once you feel like shouting, Shut up! I’m trying to watch the movie!

The producers must have been nervous about Allen’s potential box-office, since he’s surrounded by a bunch of guest stars from radio. In what was clearly a favor to his friend, Jack Benny plays his stereotypical cheap self, but with material far more heavy-handed than his own writers ever provided. (Look, his apartment has a hatcheck girl and cigarette machine!) Minerva Pious is Pansy Nussbaum, a regular from Allen’s show. (Her dialogue is all but obliterated by Allen’s voice-over. I bet she loved that). Jerry Colonna, on the other hand, scores as a psychiatrist, while Don Ameche and Rudy Vallee’s witty, understated performances contrast with Allen’s often-sledgehammer delivery.

Great character actors abound. Sidney Toler (sounding an awful lot like his Charlie Chan alter ego) as a cop. John Carradine as one of the evil lawyers. Byron Foulger as a theatre manager, Robert Benchley as an exterminator, Ben Weldon as a bookie and, best of all, William Bendix as a gangster. Old pros, all. It’s in the Bag! a veritable time capsule of the entertainment world of its day, with one of the biggest names of all in the lead. Yet, in the end, it’s as much of a chore as it is a comedy. Too much plot, too little story and, if it’s possible, too many jokes. It was probably ahead of its time then; perhaps it still is.

No matter what people thought of It’s in the Bag!, they still loved Fred’s radio series, at least for another four years, when it was cancelled by NBC. He had already taken a year off a decade or so earlier for hypertension, and did so again. Upon his return, all he could get was a semi-regular gig on Tallulah Bankhead’s radio series, The Big Show. A TV version of his radio series using marionettes in place of real actors failed. Trying to play to his strengths, he floated the idea of spending 30 or 60 minutes a week simply chatting with guests, but, in those pre-Tonight Show days, was greeted by network executives with a big Hunh? At one point, he was reduced to hosting a talent show, for God’s sakes, called Judge For Yourself. You get an idea of what he thought about it when plugging it on the Today show. “As you know,” he tells host Dave Garroway, “there is nothing new under the sun, and we’re out to prove it.”

His best TV gig was his stint as a panelist on What’s my Line? during the last two years of his life. Various episodes floating around on the web and video show Fred at his best: relaxed and witty while never feeling the pressure to actually playing to win. He still looks healthy in the first year or so. By mid-1955, though, he’s suddenly looking older: his face is thinner, the skin hanging off him, and he’s wearing glasses. His delivery is slower. Narrating a radio documentary of W. C. Fields for NBC’s Monitor series finds him barely connected to the material he’s obviously reading off someone else’s script. He died of a heart attack on March 17, 1956, while on a stroll through his beloved Manhattan, three months shy of his 62nd birthday. The Monitor episode aired not long afterwards.

Like Ted Healy before him, Fred Allen blazed a comedic trail later traversed by comedians unlikely ever to have listened to or even heard of him – David Letterman, Bill Maher, the cast of Saturday Night Live – all of them and more do Fred Allen, only with more empty sarcasm than genuine wit. Johnny Carson, notorious for stealing from his betters, took Fred’s “Mighty Allen Art Players” segment for his own “Mighty Carson Art Players.” Allen’s influence reached as far as the UK, too, where his show was heard via shortwave. One group of comedians in particular was especially taken by his frequent use of the word “goon.” So much so, in fact, that Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe named their own series The Goon Show. (Their short-lived TV series, Telegoons, used marionettes as Fred’s did.) Mel Brooks must have remembered It’s in the Bag! from his youth. Although Fred Allen is credited with screen treatment, the story itself goes back to a Russian novel, The Twelve Chairs, which Mel Brooks filmed in 1970. Two gags featured in It’s in the Bag! – the voice of the late uncle speaking to his nephew via a 78 rpm record and the cast marching toward the camera at the finale – are repeated in the outtakes on the Young Frankenstein video.

No doubt Fred Allen would have appreciated the tributes. He would have appreciated not voicing puppets or playing host to amateur singers, too.

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!

Funny Faces on the Films - Part Two

by Geoff Collins

As Ted Healy often remarks during the course of Beer and Pretzels, here I go with another load. Not a load of old rubbish, though. Far from it: for this is part 2 of Funny Faces on the Films (or, if you like, Comic Countenances on the Kinema; I'll have a job topping that one), that wonderful four-page photo section within my beloved Film Fun Annual 1939. Legends mingle with obscurities; but if I recall correctly, I promised you that for our second episode, four out of the five comedians would be Third Bananas - and I'll stand by that statement. The first two are comedy legends; but hardly anyone's heard of Will Hay in the States; and W. C. Fields isn't that well-remembered in Britain. How's that? Did I get away with it?

Will Hay. Our readers in the UK will be smiling now as they think of Will Hay, the only comedian to make British music-hall comedy work well on the screen in Britain. (Chaplin and Laurel, let's not forget, made their films in Hollywood) Will Hay? Our American readers will be saying "Who???" so let me explain. Will Hay dominated British film comedy in the late 'thirties. It's a curiously British trait to recognise, accept and tolerate managerial inefficiency and petty bureaucracy. We've been "led by donkeys" for centuries; our most effective weapon is mockery. We've all known a Will Hay, a prosaic buffoon who's attained a position of minor authority through deviousness and trickery. In his movies, Will's wily enough to get the job but ultimately he's just too incompetent to do it properly. Unlike Robb Wilton's bumbling, good-natured variation on the same character, shifty-eyed Will is fully aware that he's useless and has to use all his cunning to disguise the fact. Consequently his employees, usually disrespectful fat boy Graham Moffatt ("Albert") and senile, crafty octogenarian Moore Marriott ("Harbottle") have this power over him. They spend much of the films' running time arguing and bickering, as they weave convoluted solutions to essentially minor problems. Oh, Mr. Porter! is the accepted masterpiece, but in my opinion Ask a Policeman is funnier as it gets to the main course straight away; it's my favourite comedy of all time.

The Full Monty, I seem to recall, was advertised as "the funniest British comedy since Four Weddings and a Funeral". So what? It was the only British comedy since Four Weddings and a Funeral. Now if they'd called it the funniest British comedy since Ask a Policeman.... that would be something.

After Will Hay, another scoundrel who devotes much energy to covering his tracks: W. C. Fields. Bill essentially played two characters: the desperately-henpecked husband with a monstrous family, who fights back in his own small way by muttering vaguely blasphemous asides, until the worm finally turns and he regains his self-respect (It's a Gift, You're Telling Me, The Bank Dick); and the much more extrovert pompous windbag, down on his luck in some seedy backwater of showbiz, always just one step ahead of his creditors (Poppy, The Old-Fashioned Way, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man).

Fully aware of posterity and the chance to make an easy "authorship" $50,000, Bill rarely missed an opportunity to include fragments of his stage sketches in his movies; so one is always aware of a discreet sense of familiarity and repetition. He also used his films to express revenge over long-harbored grudges. Supporting characters are often based on, or named after, real people who'd pissed him off in the past, including his own estranged son Claude who's usually represented - by such as Grady Sutton - as an unpleasant, blubbery, indolent wimp.

Some of Bill's sketches, and his blustery "sporting gent" characterization, bear a strong resmblance to the work of the British music-hall comedian Harry Tate; and there's a reason for this, which we'll discuss at a later date. In the meantime, all you Fields admirers are strongly advised to have a look at Tate's sketches on [yes, he's going to mention it!] www.britishpathe.com.

Bill Fields a Third Banana? Hardly; but in Great Britain you'd have to struggle to find any of his work on DVD; and that's not fair.

Leslie Henson. When I bought my Film Fun Annual 1939 at the age of seven (in 1963, not 1939, I hasten to add!) this photo of Leslie Henson jumped out of the page at me. The jumping analogy is apt: he looks like a frog! Many years passed before I located one of Leslie's records - Tell the Doc, from the stage version of Funny Face - and, wonder of wonders, he sounds like a frog as well. The total effect is astonishing. I've covered Leslie (in glory, I hope) in a previous article. His personality is so strong, even in photographs, that I've managed to accumulate a large collection of Hensonalia simply because he's instantly recognisable. You wade through a mass of bland, nondescript faces in old 1930s magazines, and POW! there he is again. It seems incredible that after World War Two he was considered so unamusing that the West End managers were reluctant to employ him, but that's what happened.

Stanley Holloway, his best pal, describes Leslie's decline very movingly in "Wiv a Little Bit O'Luck"; but we won't dwell on that. Let's just remember that in the 1930s, on the London stage, Leslie Henson was the Top Man. The Pathe website [oh, there he goes again!] has some fine examples, both silent and croaky, of his incredible range; and for your entertainment, here's my most recently discovered piece of Hensonalia.

click on the thumbnail yada yada...

Lupino Lane. Now we're talking. It always struck me as odd that these Film Fun Annual photos included two Lupinos, one of whom used Lupino as his first name. We'll get to Stanley Lupino in a later article, but for the time being....

Lupino Lane was born Henry George Lupino, and he was a member of the celebrated Lupino family of clowns, acrobats and dancers. He was distantly related to Stanley Lupino, whom we'll meet later; to untangle the genealogy would result in a long monologue along the lines of He's His Own Grandpa. To avoid this, we'll just show you the Lupino Family Tree (from Who's Who in the Theatre, 1946). It'll save a lot of time:

click etc...

It also seems odd that Lupino Lane has never received the acclaim he deserves. His career covered just about every aspect of showbusiness, and he excelled in all of it. In brief: he started in British music-hall as an acrobatic "boy comedian". He took the surname Lane as a tribute to his beloved maternal grandmother Sara Lane, and turned his real surname into a Christian name in order to retain his proud association with the Lupino dynasty; hence "Lupino Lane". His son, an equally gifted comedian briefly glimpsed in a decorating routine in A King in New York, and as the laughing fat man hit with a pie in Carry On Loving, was Lauri Lupino Lane.

"Lupino Lane" is a bit of a mouthful; mostly he was known as Nipper or Nip. He made a large number of American silent comedies in which his acrobatic skills are the equal of Keaton's. All that's lacking, and this is the thing, sadly, that matters most in terms of immortality, is a consistent comic characterization. During most of the 1930s he was a star of London stage musical comedies, notably Me and My Girl, which is still revived today. In this he finally found a comedy persona that worked for him: the little cockney Bill Snibson who inherits a Dukedom. This show also gave him the hit song The Lambeth Walk, and it took over his life. He did over a thousand performances, made the film version (The Lambeth Walk; it was long thought to be lost but apparently there's an extant print with French subtitles. It's an important movie; why isn't it being shown anywhere?) and he even took the Snibson character into other, similar shows such as Meet Me Victoria. The programme's cover art is a fine example of "a picture paints a thousand words"; here you have Nipper Lane exactly.

It'll take a longer article than this to do justice to Nipper. While you're waiting for myself or Aaron to get around to writing it, you may enjoy his talents on www.britishpathe.com. Pathe caught him several times, and often at his very best, including a couple of live performances. You haven't heard the last of Nipper.

Ned Sparks. Ned Sparks???? Oops. I seem to remember that I said I wouldn't reveal which of our five subjects wasn't a Third Banana; so in order to keep my promise, let's take a look at that versatile King of Comedy, mega-talented Ned Sparks.

All right, the jig is up. I lied to you. Canadian-born Sparks growled his mainly unfunny lines in a flat monotone, had glazed staring eyes and looked like a Keaton crossed with a zombie. He wasn't a comedian at all. He was a character actor with only one character, and although he starred in some late-silent Educational comedies, he was most often seen as a hard-boiled, pessimistic theatrical agent or stage manager - as in Forty-Second Street. Ned's inclusion amongst all these star comedians is probably due to his rare leading role in a 1936 British production, Two's Company. For a brief moment, in Britain at least, he was among the top names; and then it was back to the "stage managers".

"Radio's Fred Allen" - a Ned lookalike and soundalike if ever there was one - made his feature film debut in a "Sparks part" in Thanks a Million, and did so with such wit, sparkle and immaculate comic timing that he turned a routine Dick Powell musical into a delightful experience. That's the difference.

Well, that's about it, readers. In part three we'll meet only two Third Bananas.

Don't go 'way now!