SilentComedyMafia.com

Dear all,

a question from film restorer Werner Petrell: what's the origin and earliest instances of the banana peel gag? There are some online texts like this, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/31135/how-did-slipping-banana-peel-become-comedy-staple, that sound like they might ring true, one of the also mentions BY THE SEA as an early instance of the routine, but could it not have popped up in, say, in earlier Keystones before 1915? I don't recall it from any early French or Italian comedies I've seen.

Uli

The mentalfloss article is surprisingly accurate as far as it goes, but this is another one of those things like the mirror routine that would most likely be impossible to pinpoint "definitively" a first time use of the gag. Vaudeville will be the start, if not earlier, and I seem to recall at least one 1900's film using the gag even if titles immediately do not come to mind. We watched Dave Glass's restoration of PLAY SAFE last night and there is a good Hal Roach-like use of the gag in that.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

I hadn’t seen it since I was a little kid, but I recalled this bit in a Bizarro World Superman comic book.
Chaplin + banana peel = high comedy
Says it all in a single panel

I think this is how some Gen Z' ers do react to Chaplin and Silent Comedy today......certainly Langdon.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

As DC was, and is, located in NYC, it's not surprising that there's a reference to Shock Theater in that Bizarro panel. Folks from my neck of the woods will remember that as the first big package of classic horror films on tv in the late 50s and 60s.