The many faces of movie comedy: a photo-album look at the great comics who have filled audiences' hearts with joy since silent film days

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 1998 by Wes D. Gehring

A photo-album look at the great comics who have filled audiences' hearts with joy since silent film days.

There is a tendency to jam everything comic under one overextended umbrella. I suggest that movie comedies can be examined best by breaking them down into five categories: screwball, populist, black, parody, and personality-driven.

In screwball comedy, the narrative is propelled by the humorous misadventures of people in love, usually fueled by the dominating eccentricities of the woman, as in "What's Up Doc?" (1972). In a populist comedy like "Field of Dreams" (1989), the story is rooted in the Frank Capra-like world of hope, celebrating the people's inherent goodness. A black comedy, such as "Catch-22" (1970), does just the opposite, portraying an absurd world with a self-centered, mean-spirited population. In a parody like "Young Frankenstein" (1974), the genre being spoofed--in this case, the horror movie--is the star.

Any competent performer could be cast for this quartet of movie types. In the personality comedy film, though, only one person--a Groucho Marx, Robin Williams, or Jim Carrey--can carry that picture, since it is tailored to that actor's persona. Such pictures are not theme-driven, like other comedies, but, rather, clown-directed.

There are three basic components to the personality comedian approach, besides whatever specific schtick one associates with a favorite clown. First, American comedy always has placed a high premium on physical and/or visual comedy. Besides the obvious pratfalls or sight gags one would associate with comedy giants who came out of the silent era, such as Charlie Chaplin or Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, personality comedians often simply look funny.

Through costume, makeup, shape, or fluid contortions of face and body, clowns telegraph the message that this will be a comedy. Their funny appearance is a key in the clown genre, even when the comic personality might be more linked to verbal humor. For example, while the machine-gun patter of Groucho is famous, it is more than a little dependent upon the visual. Lillian Roth, the young heroine of "Animal Crackers" (1930), in her 1954 autobiography, I'll Cry Tomorrow, best described the total Groucho visual package when she explained why she kept giggling into retakes of a scene they had together: "The line itself wasn't so hilarious, but I knew Groucho was going to say it with the big cigar jutting from his clenched teeth, his eyebrows palpitating, and that he would be off afterwards in that runaway crouch of his; and the thought of what was coming was too much for me."

Another characteristic of clowns is that they generally are underdogs who frequently exhibit comically incompetent behavior. The frustrated clown's inadequacies often are showcased in some basic physical task, such as Laurel and Hardy trying to put a radio antenna on a roof; Woody Allen's bumper carlike attempts to drive an automobile in "Annie Hall" (1977); and Steve Martin relearning how to walk while his body is being inhabited by the spirit of Lily Tomlin in "All of Me" (1984).

A final clown trait is that, as outsiders, they frequently are nomadic. Fittingly, cinema's greatest clown, Chaplin, is linked closely to the picaresque through his alter ego as a wandering tramp and the celebrated imagery of him shuffling down life's highways. Not coincidentally, the inspired teaming of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby was evidenced in a series of "Road" pictures in which the duo comically wander about the globe. Regardless of the comedian, travel allows the clown to find humor in new places and people, be it Harry Langdon's cross-country walkathon in "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" (1926) or the quest to get home in the Steve Martin-John Candy "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" (1987). As the latter title suggests, the mode of transportation sometimes can become an end in itself. The machine-oriented Buster Keaton led the way with his own ocean liner in "The Navigator" (1924) and the ultimate nonstop train picture, "The General" (1927).

While personality humor depends upon a clownish lead, screwball comedy keys upon a romantic couple. Personality comedians have existed since the earliest days of cinema, but the screwball duo arose during the Depression. The old "boy-meets-girl" formula turned topsy-turvy generally presents the zany woman-dominated courtship of the American rich, with the male target seldom being informed that open season has arrived. It is as if to say that, in an irrational world--underlined at that time by the Depression--the only effective way to respond to love is in an irrational manner.

The definitive example is director Howard Hawks' "Bringing Up Baby" (1938), with Cary Grant playing an absent-minded professor-scientist and Katharine Hepburn a daffy Connecticut socialite. Grant, when not interacting with rich patrons of the arts to obtain contributions to his museum, is busy assembling the giant skeleton of a brontosaurus. The latter detail is pivotal, since it symbolizes the lifeless future he faces as an academic engaged to a suffocating woman aptly named Swallow.