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This is an odd bit from the old Ed Sullivan Show, back in the days of early television one of the best places to see variety acts. If you think all partner balancing acts are the same, you might appreciate how the Maxwells underplay this one to comic effect. Not big belly laughs, but some nice subtle humor. I especially love the ending!
This one’s already gone viral, but I just found out about it from colleague, poet, and fellow world traveler Martie LaBare. In fact, I’d never heard the term flair bartending until a few minutes ago! Clearly I need to get out more instead of hiding at home, sad and lonely, staring into a bottle, nobody to talk to but my imaginary blog friends…
A few posts back we looked at Lou Costello taking a dance lesson. This time we see Martin & Lewis going at it. Yes, I know the world is divided into those who like Jerry Lewis and those who don’t, but whichever side you’re on I think you’ll enjoy the physical comedy moves in this piece from the old television show, the Colgate Comedy Hour. Dean Martin is the instructor, Lewis the oafish and slow-witted student. The first half is full of solo gyrations by Lewis, while the second half has some real nice partner work.
This video has a gazillion partner acrobatic tricks. I should know, I counted them. As is probably inevitable in such a fast-paced club act, the character comedy is a bit of a throw-in, sorta hit and miss, but on the other hand you get tons of terrific stuff. (One gazillion = several tons.) But who are they? This was put on YouTube by Show Pals International, but the performers are not identified, which is pretty odd if you’re trying to sell an act. Their web site is a dead-end, so maybe they’re out of business. If anyone knows, drop me a line!
In my previous post, The Fine Art of Impaling Oneself on Heavy Metal Objects, we saw knockabout artists from the past six decades knock into poles, pedestals, platforms, ladders, wire cable and, of course, the ground. This time we take a gentler approach, with a sampling of “quick-change” comedians who have found ingenious ways to get dressed in public and, in the case of a chap named Keaton, an actual reason to do so.
So here’s the idea: (non-comedic) acrobatic performers usually execute a series of graceful tricks in order of apparent difficulty. Comedy acrobats use many of the same skills, and may perhaps finish with a flourish of standard tricks, but their m.o. is to emphasize clumsiness or eccentric movement over grace, and indeed to transform whatever (heavy metal) apparatus they’re on into one big obstacle. That pedestal, that ladder becomes an excuse for missteps, pratfalls, and (hopefully mock) pain. Getting there is more than half the fun.
It’s not just you humans who perform physical comedy; your fellow mammals can do it too. One of the best examples is Gaylord Maynard’s drunken horse act, which I still remember laughing hard at when I was lucky enough to see this cross-breed duo perform in the Hanneford Circus in White Plains, NY in 1980.
When movies started to sound the death knell for vaudeville and burlesque houses, one fortunate by-product was the preservation of physical comedy routines on film. Performers and sketch writers transitioning to the latest media naturally made use of the bag of tricks they’d spent half their life crafting. Some of these films were slapdash affairs, hardly memorable as cinematic art, and seemed destined to be forgotten. But survive they did, thanks to the advent of DVDs and Netflix streaming, and it turns out there are diamonds to be found in these rough cuts.
I got an e-mail last week from Pablo Zibes in Germany announcing a new web site “intended as a free platform for contemporary professional clowns throughout the world.” The site is Clowns Online:
Think Abbott & Costello and you think Who’s on First? and other classic verbal routines from the heyday of burlesque. Lots of intricate wordplay, the comic effect multiplied by Lou Costello’s expressive reactions. While Bud Abbott stands there, calm and “reasonable,” his feet firmly planted, Costello’s takes and double-takes convulse his body, a quivering bowl of jello on the verge of spilling over. More robust movement — I’m talking dance, acrobatics, slapstick — is seen less often in their work, which is why I enjoyed the following piece so much.
I’m a semi-serious runner, so I’ve put in my hours on the treadmill, but I never had this much fun. This is OK Go performing Here It Goes Again (The Treadmill Video).
Enough of this artsy-fartsy stuff. This is a physical comedy blogopedia, and what could be more physical and more comedic than humping, er, I mean sex? If you have any familiarity with Pilates and/or humping, er, I mean sex, you might agree.
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Workshops & Other Events
My first book (1976)
My book Clowns has long been out of print, but you can borrow it for two weeks at a time from the Internet Archive. More information is available here.
My second book (2015)
Visual and verbal humor for the cognitively and artistically curious! Available here.
“A book to treasure!”
—Bill Irwin