Greenbriar Comedy Team Discussions

This forum is nearly identical to the previous forum. The difference? Discussions about comedy from the SOUND era.
Richard M Roberts
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Greenbriar Comedy Team Discussions

Postby Richard M Roberts » Thu Oct 08, 2015 8:41 am

Well, since no one seems to want to bother discussing comedy over here, we've been having some good discussions over at John McElwee's wonderful Greenbriar Picture Show blog of late:

Here's one on Laurel and Hardy's forties films, THE BULLFIGHTERS in particular:

http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot. ... t-for.html

and one on Abbott and Costello's HOLD THAT GHOST:

http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot. ... ehind.html



RICHARD M ROBERTS

Gary Johnson
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Re: Greenbriar Comedy Team Discussions

Postby Gary Johnson » Thu Oct 08, 2015 3:07 pm

Oh no you don't! You're not going to sucker me into a dead end conversation (re: argument) over the alleged quality of L&H's wartime flicks.
I suffered through them growing up. I would watch everything The Boys made back then on a weekly endless loop - even the FOX & MGM debacles. Maybe that's too strong a word. Those films are tired and sad. And that's how The Boys look in them. And that is how they make me feel when I re-watch them. So I try not too.

That has been my opinion my entire life and it has never wavered -- not even when Scott MacGillivray's book came out. In fact, it just reinforced my stance. I thought that book tried too hard to argue it's case through circumstantial opinion. (He thinks Stan directed a few scenes in the later films. Can't he at least back it up with some production notes?).
I did get a kick out of the way the Greenbriar thread begins. Everyone blames past film books for forming public opinions on which films we should all dislike. But now they can proudly state that they love those very films......thanks to Scott's book.
That's some Pythonesque circular logic, right there. "You are all individuals" "YES! We are all individuals!".

Richard M Roberts
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Re: Greenbriar Comedy Team Discussions

Postby Richard M Roberts » Fri Oct 09, 2015 3:44 am

Gary Johnson wrote:Oh no you don't! You're not going to sucker me into a dead end conversation (re: argument) over the alleged quality of L&H's wartime flicks.
I suffered through them growing up. I would watch everything The Boys made back then on a weekly endless loop - even the FOX & MGM debacles. Maybe that's too strong a word. Those films are tired and sad. And that's how The Boys look in them. And that is how they make me feel when I re-watch them. So I try not too.

That has been my opinion my entire life and it has never wavered -- not even when Scott MacGillivray's book came out. In fact, it just reinforced my stance. I thought that book tried too hard to argue it's case through circumstantial opinion. (He thinks Stan directed a few scenes in the later films. Can't he at least back it up with some production notes?).
I did get a kick out of the way the Greenbriar thread begins. Everyone blames past film books for forming public opinions on which films we should all dislike. But now they can proudly state that they love those very films......thanks to Scott's book.
That's some Pythonesque circular logic, right there. "You are all individuals" "YES! We are all individuals!".



Hmmm, looks like Gary wants to be a textbook example of what the whole discussion was talking about.

No one was saying Scott MacGillivray brainwashed everyone into loving the formerly maligned films, they were saying Scotts book was the first major indictor that the thinking about those films was finally changing, and that was a good thing. Nobody said they completely agree with Scott either (he loves AIR RAID WARDENS after all).

So get that over-emotional nonsense out of your voice Johnson, oh, your poor virgin eyes, can't stand to see Laurel and Hardy getting old and tired, take` em out in the pasture and load the shotgun! Comedians aren't allowed to age!

Old and tired is right, Stan and Ollie were basically--------------like-----THE AGE WE ARE NOW-------when they made the Fox Films. How can anyone be allowed to make movies when they get to that dotage.

You don't lose your Sons of the Desert membership by saying these films are more entertaining than general prevailing attitude wanted one to believe, we're also allowed to like Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon talkies these days too (oh, except you, because you have that Columbia Comedy snobbery thing going, don't ya?). The God of Comedy does not strike you dead for laughing from time to time at these films. I'll watch them all again several times before I'll watch anything made by Carl Dreyer or Michelangelo Antonioni, or that other pretentious non-starter in the laugh department, Jacques Tati.

So turn your nose down Johnson, I've noticed you seem to like a lot of modern comedy dreck that makes JITTERBUGS look like BIG BUSINESS in comparison, when you figure out that error of your ways, then perhaps you can claim the sort of connoisseurism that forces you to shield your orbs from forties Laurel and Hardy.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

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Re: Greenbriar Comedy Team Discussions

Postby Pasquale Ventura » Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:10 pm

Richard M Roberts
Hmmm, looks like Gary wants to be a textbook example of what the whole discussion was talking about.

No one was saying Scott MacGillivray brainwashed everyone into loving the formerly maligned films, they were saying Scotts book was the first major indictor that the thinking about those films was finally changing, and that was a good thing. Nobody said they completely agree with Scott either (he loves AIR RAID WARDENS after all).

So get that over-emotional nonsense out of your voice Johnson, oh, your poor virgin eyes, can't stand to see Laurel and Hardy getting old and tired, take` em out in the pasture and load the shotgun! Comedians aren't allowed to age!

Old and tired is right, Stan and Ollie were basically--------------like-----THE AGE WE ARE NOW-------when they made the Fox Films. How can anyone be allowed to make movies when they get to that dotage.

You don't lose your Sons of the Desert membership by saying these films are more entertaining than general prevailing attitude wanted one to believe, we're also allowed to like Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon talkies these days too (oh, except you, because you have that Columbia Comedy snobbery thing going, don't ya?). The God of Comedy does not strike you dead for laughing from time to time at these films. I'll watch them all again several times before I'll watch anything made by Carl Dreyer or Michelangelo Antonioni, or that other pretentious non-starter in the laugh department, Jacques Tati.

So turn your nose down Johnson, I've noticed you seem to like a lot of modern comedy dreck that makes JITTERBUGS look like BIG BUSINESS in comparison, when you figure out that error of your ways, then perhaps you can claim the sort of connoisseurism that forces you to shield your orbs from forties Laurel and Hardy.


For myself, I never had an issue with these comedies, I grew up watching regular broadcasts of the Fox features (their shorts too) throughout the 1960's where I fell in love with Laurel and Hardy. Most of my childhood memories watching Laurel and Hardy are from these later features years before reading books on the team criticizing them, which bewildered me at the time. Never understood the naysayers "oh they are bad, don't watch cuz' Stan and Ollie are too old" Forming opinions from books before ever watching the movie is really nonsense. Please! Like you say Richard, where did this rule comedians are finished when they turn 50. Is this written in a book as well? Actually we are several years beyond that age now.

There isn't a Laurel and Hardy comedy that isn't enjoyable. Got to admit a fondness to AIR RAID WARDENS. It's a breezy short feature, not even over an hour. THE BIG NOISE, THE DANCING MASTERS and THE BULLFIGHTERS are three solid features. GREAT GUNS and A HAUNTING WE WILL GO, NOTHING BUT TROUBLE aren't bad either, with HAUNTING and TROUBLE a bit more interesting. In NOTHING BUT TROUBLE their scenes with Mary Boland are excellent. She works so well with Laurel and Hardy. Hell, I enjoy watching them all

So glad I can enjoy Langdon, Keaton sound comedies, they are well crafted comedies containing many clever bits of comic business and gags.

Too many comedy fans limit themselves to just SONS OF THE DESERT, THE MUSIC BOX, WAY OUT WEST, THE GENERAL and THE STRONG MAN. They are not comedy fans. Poor fellows don't know the wealth of comedy material they are missing in celebrating all these comedians entire career of work.
More for us to enjoy.

Pasquale Ventura
Last edited by Pasquale Ventura on Fri Oct 09, 2015 8:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Richard M Roberts
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Re: Greenbriar Comedy Team Discussions

Postby Richard M Roberts » Fri Oct 09, 2015 1:51 pm

Pasquale Ventura wrote:

For myself, I never had an issue with these comedies, I grew up watching regular broadcasts of the Fox features (their shorts too) throughout the 1960's where I fell in love with Laurel and Hardy. Most of my
There isn't a Laurel and Hardy comedy that isn't enjoyable. Got to admit a fondness to AIR RAID WARDENS. It's a breezy short feature, not even over an hour. THE BIG NOISE, THE DANCING MASTERS and THE BULLFIGHTERS arechildhood memories watching Laurel and Hardy are from these later features years before reading books on the team criticizing them, which bewildered me at the time. Never understood the naysayers "oh they are bad, don't watch cuz' Stan and Ollie are too old" Forming opinions from books before ever watching the movie is really nonsense. Please! Like you say Robert, where did this rule comedians are finished when they turn 50. Is this written in a book as well? Actually we are several years beyond that age now.
three solid features. GREAT GUNS and A HAUNTING WE WILL GO, NOTHING BUT TROUBLE aren't bad either, with HAUNTING and TROUBLE a bit more interesting. In NOTHING BUT TROUBLE their scenes with Mary Boland are excellent. She works so well with Laurel and Hardy. Hell, I enjoy watching them all

So glad I can enjoy Langdon, Keaton sound comedies, they are well crafted comedies containing many clever bits of comic business and gags.

Too many comedy fans limit themselves to just SONS OF THE DESERT, THE MUSIC BOX, WAY OUT WEST, THE GENERAL and THE STRONG MAN. They are not comedy fans. Poor fellows don't know the wealth of comedy material they are missing in celebrating all these comedians entire career of work.
More for us to enjoy.

Pasquale Ventura



Absolutely Pasquale! (and it's Richard, BTW)

I was first introduced to Buster Keaton, Bert Lahr, Groucho Marx, George Burns, Jack Benny, many others when they were in their elder years and still working on television, and found them funny and didn't think of their age as being any issue or hindrance to whether I laughed at them or not (same with Ben Blue, he was just as unfunny old as he was when he was young). I wasn't concerned with whether they had total control of whatever they were performing, were performing a bit they had done better in 1932, or chalking up a list of their films in the order of quality, I was too busy laughing.

As I mentioned over at Greenbriar, the first Laurel and Hardy film I ever saw was GREAT GUNS, and what I found there were two funny men there I wanted to see more of, and what I found just kept getting better and better.

In a World these days where there are film buffs who can't watch musicals because they're "too happy", and what passes for comedy in modern moviemaking depresses me, ANY laughs engendered by these greats are precious, and putting blinders on to be able to watch ONLY the prescribed and blessed by the historian/critics canon of classics just limits one from too damn many laughs. Heck, you cut Harry Langdon's filmography by more than half by denying "post-Capra", and several of my favorite Langdon films are talkies.

And for the analytical film historian in me, I find it fascinating watching a major comedy talent being forced to work in less than perfect circumstances, this is how you discover what their real talents are for making things work when they are thrown curves they wouldn't have thrown themselves. I find JITTERBUGS so interesting for this reason for it gives us one of those rare opportunities to see Stan and Babe playing characters apart from their norm, and they rise to it wonderfully, so what if it's not THE MUSIC BOX, they did THE MUSIC BOX, I can watch that too.

When you are comedy fans at the silent comedy mafia level, any time you can spend with these comics is quality time, do we abandon our real-life friends when they get "too old?" Perhaps much of American Society does do this to our elderly, and we pay dearly for that in losing an awful lot of experience and wisdom (well, at least if we assume that much of American Society these days actually manages to learn something as they age, sometimes I'm not so sure). The only advice I can give anyone watching vintage film is to watch everything, believe very little you read about film, and expect nothing more out of what you watch than an evening's entertainment, then you can get as close to the original moviegoing experience (especially if you're in an audience) as you can get, and you enjoy a lot more movies.


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Re: Greenbriar Comedy Team Discussions

Postby Gary Johnson » Fri Oct 09, 2015 2:43 pm

Oh no you don't! I'm wise to ya. I know you're a sneaky bastard, Roberts. You're trying to goad me into one of those hoary AIMS - Silent Comedians diatribes that go on for eternity where I'm suppose to admit that I don't know what I like. You can't sucker punch me. You can't get me to say that it's not just that The Boys are getting on, it's that I find all of the comedy in those films rather lackluster - in my virgin eyes.
(Those eyes of mine were suppose to had been deflowered when I turned 18 but the left eye got cold feet at the last minute and backed out, making it impossible for the right eye to follow through and do the dirty deed. You see, they come in pairs, you know. When pressed, Blue-eyed Lefty confessed he was afraid he would come down with cataracts if he went through with it........)

So you just might as well accept the fact that I know what I like and I like who I know and never the Mark Twain shall meet.

Good thing this didn't turn into an argument, eh? I might not had been able to follow it.
(BTW, I find the THE BULLFIGHTERS passable. Did I mention that before? High praise indeed...)

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Re: Greenbriar Comedy Team Discussions

Postby Richard M Roberts » Fri Oct 09, 2015 4:08 pm

Gary Johnson wrote:Oh no you don't! I'm wise to ya. I know you're a sneaky bastard, Roberts. You're trying to goad me into one of those hoary AIMS - Silent Comedians diatribes that go on for eternity where I'm suppose to admit that I don't know what I like. You can't sucker punch me. You can't get me to say that it's not just that The Boys are getting on, it's that I find all of the comedy in those films rather lackluster - in my virgin eyes.
(Those eyes of mine were suppose to had been deflowered when I turned 18 but the left eye got cold feet at the last minute and backed out, making it impossible for the right eye to follow through and do the dirty deed. You see, they come in pairs, you know. When pressed, Blue-eyed Lefty confessed he was afraid he would come down with cataracts if he went through with it........)

So you just might as well accept the fact that I know what I like and I like who I know and never the Mark Twain shall meet.

Good thing this didn't turn into an argument, eh? I might not had been able to follow it.
(BTW, I find the THE BULLFIGHTERS passable. Did I mention that before? High praise indeed...)



Johnson, we know you know what you like, you just don't know what you're talkin' about..........

And God Forbid a discussion might break out around here! Somebody might actually learn somethin' or change their mind from some ridiculous pre-conceived notion they've carried for years, not like that happens anywhere else like Facebook or other movie discussion groups like........hmmmmm.......who might we be thinking of?


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Re: Greenbriar Comedy Team Discussions

Postby Gary Johnson » Fri Oct 09, 2015 4:24 pm

I agree with you totally on that point Richard, but I just feel after all these years that you're not about to change your mind on anything.

That's OK. Stay the way you are......cute and cuddly.

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Re: Greenbriar Comedy Team Discussions

Postby Richard M Roberts » Fri Oct 09, 2015 4:27 pm

Gary Johnson wrote:I agree with you totally on that point Richard, but I just feel after all these years that you're not about to change your mind on anything.

That's OK. Stay the way you are......cute and cuddly.



Oh, I change my mind on any number of things all of the time, better hope I don't change my mind about you one of these days.


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Pasquale Ventura
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Re: Greenbriar Comedy Team Discussions

Postby Pasquale Ventura » Fri Oct 09, 2015 9:31 pm

Richard M Roberts
Absolutely Pasquale! (and it's Richard, BTW)


Oops, pardon me, was typing too fast. It's been corrected.

In the many past years of a life long love with silent and early sound comedy, one thing I have always made a strong effort was make up my own mind about comedies and comedians and never pay attention to what's written in books critically or folks opinion's, which turn out to usually be just that, worthless personal assumptions who claim to know it all.

I really enjoy watching everything, all these comedians are so worth watching because they come from a incredible time when each of these comedians were so uniquely different from one another with a personal distinctive approach to comedy all their own. Gags may seem familiar but the way Lupino Lane did them would be drastically different from how Billy Bevan or Larry Semon execute it.

After years of reading how lousy ATOLL-K was and see the many photographs of how Laurel and Hardy appear in the movie I finally got a video of it, lucking out with a transfer from a good clean print was used. What I experienced was a delightful comedy with a rather unusual topic for Stan and Ollie. Not bad, I laughed at Laurel and Hardy doing what they do best, physical comedy. It has a European feel to it and of course it should, it's a European produced movie.

Watching Red Skelton every week in our household, I never knew he made movies in the 40's and 50's. Wasn't at all concerned he was older. He was just a funny guy. I didn't see his features until way into the 90's when TCM started.

Even the Three Stooges kept popping up on various TV show throughout the 1960's. Hey, who's that funny little guy in the Milk Duds, many other commercials, and frolicking on the beach with Annette and Frankie performing those sight gags? I would ask....Buster Keaton my Mom answered.

Pasquale Ventura


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