Gary Johnson wrote:It's not too surprising that McCullough was the dominant partner at first. They were boyhood friends and Paul was 5 years older than Bobby. That's a big age difference when one is young. But I bet it didn't take long for them to realize who had the most talent, which may be what helped drive McCullough to that fateful barber's chair eventually....
It's a surprise in the context that Paul McCullough does absolutely nothing in the team's films together...he's not a straightman, he's not a love interest, he doesn't sing. McCullough is a funny-looking character in a funny-looking getup, so the uninitiated viewer expects him to eventually do something funny. Instead he usually just stands around and runs after Bobby Clark. It's as though McCullough's mere presence is some kind of unfunny in-joke itself. One would imagine that McCullough had some comedy chops after all those years in burlesque, vaudeville, musical comedy...but it doesn't come across in any of their films that I've seen. The closest I've seen McCullough come to life is in a fleeting Movietone outtake where he and Clark do a stage rehearsal of the Gershwin number "Mademoiselle from New Rochelle." One could easily envision Clark starring solo in their RKO shorts with very little changes made to the films' scripts. Clark often ends up talking to himself, anyway.