List of Posts
This has had 10,000+ YouTube hits, so maybe you’ve seen it before but it’s here because this particular dog has clearly read my earlier post, Beating Yourself Up for Fun & Profit, and is no doubt channeling his inner Donald O’Connor, Michael Richards, and Rowan Atkinson. And why not? Fighting yourself has to be one of the quintessential slapstick gags: it’s physically difficult, it’s mime, it’s absurdist humor…. it’s barf-irrific.
I’ve already written about Abbott & Costello’s “Who’s on First” in this post, which is chock full of interesting stuff, but now I have three more takes on it to share with you.
Remember the excitement you all felt when you decided that, gosh darn it, we’re going to convert this run-down junk heap into a snazzy theatre and put on a show that will knock ’em dead? Well, that kind of enthusiasm no doubt predates Mickey Rooney by a few millennia, but he sure did come to personify it in all those MGM movies with Judy Garland. And what better representative of the eternal optimism of show business than Rooney? At 93, he was not only one of the last of the vaudevillians—having joined his parents’ act at the age of 17 months—but was even a veteran of the silent film era. Just a couple of weeks ago (!!) a print was found of Mickey’s Circus from 1927, in which he played the ringmaster of a kids’ circus.
“All fall down…”— as we like to say here on the All Fall Down blogopedia—so when I stumbled upon this slapstick music video of the 1995 Iron Maiden song Man on the Edge, based on the 1993 Michael Douglas movie Falling Down, I had to share it.
Here’s another gem from the Pathé vaults, again courtesy of Betsy Baytos, our Eccentric Dance quadruple threat (performer, teacher, choreographer, historian). I don’t know anything about these guys, but they’re a tap-dancing knockabout team with some sharp moves with chairs, hats, and one another. There’s no audience, so this was apparently filmed in the Pathé studios. Our gratitude to that unsung hero back at Pathé who had enough sense to get acts like these recorded on film.
All credit goes to Betsy Baytos, this blogopedia’s resident Eccentric Dance performer, teacher, and historian, for exposing us all to the work of George Campo. The first clip she unearthed was from 1932 and was shared in my post George Campo: Continental Eccentric Dancer, which got a very enthusiastic response from a ton of people. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out first. Right now!
Here’s the song classic “Baby It’s Cold Outside” done not once but twice with some nice physical comedy elements. Both are from the 1949 movie Neptune’s Daughter, for which it won the Best Song Oscar. The first version features Ricardo Montalban trying to seduce Esther Williams. The second version reverses the roles, with Betty Garrett putting the moves on none other than Red Skelton (Spanish accent and all).
Sure, you’ve all seen the “Naked Towel Dance” video that’s gone viral on YouTube, but do you know what’s behind it? Probably not, which is why you come to this here blogopedia for the full monty.
When I teach workshops for clowns I’m usually surprised how little they know about physical comedy. Same thing goes for what I see at clown festivals, and I’m talking about excellent and experienced clowns. I’m not saying that all clowns should have to do physical comedy, but when I see one capable of mining the old skills of the silent film comedian, I get excited.
Does that mean Your Spring Award? I’ve been studying Spanish, so I think so, though it may not be idiomatic. But after a tough winter it’s finally spring, gracias a Dios, so as a follow-up to your physical comedy Christmas Stocking Stuffer and your Valentine’s Day Chocolates, I honor 20 marzo with a grab bag of 20 physical comedy goodies. Gracias also to Chris Rozzi, Jim Moore, Greg De Santo, Trav S.D., David Rosenak, the Facebook Buster Keaton page, and whoever (ok, whomever) else I forgot about after stealing their posts. Enjoy spring! Click on any image to enlarge.
This is a project I’m producing this summer. It will involve nine or ten top teachers and a maximum of 20 students (10 in any class), and I think it will be excellent, exciting, and a lot of fun. It’s got its own web site at veryphysicalcomedy.blogspot.com, but here are the basics…
After my post on eccentric dancer George Campo’s incredible chair routine, which came by way of Betsy Baytos, I got a link by way of Ted Shapiro to a chair piece performed by James Thiérrée. Well, sort of a chair piece, because it’s about his near-futile efforts to get his rag-doll body to somehow ooze into a proper seated position on a chair. Turns out all he really needed was for a strong woman to administer a swift kick to the seat of his pants.
If you’ve ever taken a class with me, you know I’m fond of physical comedy involving chairs, tables, doors, stairs, etc., so you can imagine how happy I was to see this comedy chair piece featuring eccentric dancer George Campo. The clip is from a 1932 film, which Pathé lists as La Boite a Matalots, which I take to be a triple misspelling of La Boîte à Matelots (“Sailor’s Club”). I don’t know anything about Campo, but he does appear (if it’s the same performer) as a lead actor in the 1938 film Murder with Reservations and — 35 years after this clip! — doing a “vaudeville style act” on the Ed Sullivan Show (season 20, episode 25; Feb. 26, 1967).
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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