Willie, West & McGinty Get Plastered

[post 395] 

The carpenter gag or construction gag is a staple of physical comedy: large lumber merely missing unsuspecting heads; tools flying; wet concrete welcoming any descending pratfall. Classic stuff.

Circus star, teacher, and historian Judy Finelli recently wrote me asking if I had a copy of the legendary Willie, West & McGinty carpenter routine, and specifically their sound short Plastered. Being the great physical comedy expert that I am, I had never heard of it. The best resource was, not surprisingly, vaudeville and silent film historian Trav S.D., who did a nice blog post about them that you can find here.

The act itself spanned sixty years, though with different performers, originating in British music hall around the turn of the century and still being seen in the early days of the Ed Sullivan Show. IMDB lists five appearances on Sullivan, the last in 1958. It was a top vaudeville act but apparently didn't show up in the movies until the sound era. Plastered (1930) is probably the fullest version available, and we must presume film allowed them to do far more than they could have done on stage.

Plastered was in fact on YouTube but has since been removed. I was able to track down another copy, and here it is, plus a bonus. [WORD TO THE WISE: If you see a video you love online, make a copy of it. Links disappear!] What I find most remarkable is their precisely timed comic business. Characterization plays second fiddle to the action. They play everything pretty much straight-faced, indestructibly carrying on with the task at hand, barely phased by the non-stop disasters. The camera is always in full frame, favoring the gag mechanics at play over close-up reaction shots.

As Judy wrote, "They are carpenters who have no idea what they are doing and make the kind of mistakes anyone might make but one mistake will cause a chain reaction of other ones. So smooth and you don't see a thing. Zero calculations. All dealing with the props, which mess them up. The timing is amazing and you can't not laugh."

And here's Trav S.D. with similar admiration: "The act lay in the smooth, non-stop flow of the gag choreography. It worked almost like a Rube Goldberg cartoon, one gag after another, until every single prop and situation onstage had been used for a gag. No hammer, nail, saw, board, shovel of dirt, ladder, window, brick, etc etc etc that made it onstage with Willie, West and McGinty would be left out of the mayhem. And like cartoon characters, the three men would bounce back after every gaffe and simply return to work and the inevitable mishap that was only seconds away."



The trio made appearances in other movies, including The Big Broadcast of 1936 (released in 1935; see the full movie here). They make four appearances by way of the "Radio Eye," a sort of early television that is central to the movie's ludicrous plot. Here's a composite of all four segments, worth watching as it's not just a repeat of Plastered.

Click here for a blog post on Willie, West & McGinty by Aaron Neathery.
Click here for a Ringling Brothers construction gag.

Book Report: Chain of Fools

[post 376]

Chain of Fools
Silent Comedy and Its Legacies
from Nickelodeons to YouTube
by Trav S.D.

Trav S.D. —oddly enough named after his gritty home town in the middle of South Dakota's Badlands — is a so-good-he's-bad vaudevillian: a performer, producer, historian, popularizer, and blogger whose popular blog Travalanche is a must for the variety arts fan.

I remember when I first came across his book, No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book that Made Vaudeville Famous. I couldn't help but think "do we really need another history of vaudeville?" Then I read the book and discovered that the author was a really good writer, a prodigious researcher, and had a fresh slant on his subject matter. When I heard he was publishing a book on silent film comedy, I couldn't help but think "do we really need another history of silent film comedy?" Then I read the book and... yep, you guessed it.

Trav S.D.

A lot of people read book reviews but don't read books, but if you're just the opposite and are already zoning out then let me cut to the chase and simply say that if you're reading this blog (on purpose) then you'll probably find Chain of Fools highly entertaining and informative.


Here's just a few of the things you will like about it:

• I highlighted something on almost every page. It's just chock full of info that was new to me and very interesting.
• He writes very lively and conversational prose, the kind I like to write but don't always succeed at. Nothing pedantic here. He searches for and almost always finds an interesting way to say what he has to say.

• He's very good at context. You really get the feeling what the work and artistic environment must have been for those creating this new medium.

• He makes a convincing case for silent film comedy as a unique art form and not just as a collection of funny performers.

• He doesn't pretend that every silent film comedy was wonderful.

• He's strong on the relationship between story and character.

• He appreciates what Paris and French culture meant to the arts and the growth of cinema.
• He makes Mack Sennett very interesting.
• He has fresh insights on many of the comedians; Harry Langdon and Lupino Lane, to name just two.


Any weaknesses, quibbles, reservations?

• It's sparsely illustrated, and the discussion of individual films will have much more value if you have them on DVD or can find them online. Since he can't assume you do, a lot of space has to be devoted to plot summaries. He handles them well, but exposition is exposition.
• His pre-cinema comedy history is sketchy and is missing some pretty clear links between the two eras.
• Physical techniques aren't discussed in any detail.
• Max Linder's feature films are given short shrift, and some of the comedians of the 40s and 50s (e.g., 3 Stooges; Abbott & Costello; Ritz Brothers; Jerry Lewis) are a little too summarily dismissed for my taste.
• There are a few errors I caught. For example, Keaton's pole vault in College is lauded, but this was actually performed by gold medalist Lee Barnes, and it was apparently the only time (at least in the silent era) when Keaton used a stunt double. That being said, there's no reason to doubt the overall accuracy of the work.

W.C. Fields in Sally of the Sawdust

Here are a few samples of his excellent writing:

I tend to think of Keaton as a verb; Chaplin as a noun.

This principle of ultimate action, of perpetual motion, was not discovered overnight, but came gradually, experimentally, in the same way Jackson Pollock arrived at drip painting or Charlie Parker came to bebop. It was a process of taking matters a little further, a little further, a little further over dozens of films until Sennett hit a new comedy dimension that looked like universal chaos.

There was very little precedent for what Sennett would now attempt. This would be the first time in history a studio head would endeavor to staff an entire company with absurd types. Sennett's comedians resembled human cartoons: fat men, bean poles, vamps, men with funny mustaches, matronly wives and mothers-in-law wielding rolling pins and umbrellas; geezers with canes and long beards, bratty children with enormous lollipops. Diminutive heroes; terrifyingly large villains.

Keaton's character may have a place in society, but he realizes that this is no guarantee of security or even tranquiity. What about the safe that may fall on your head? Or conversely, the wallet full of money that may miraculously fall into your hands. Rich or poor makes no difference. Fate makes playthings of us all. Man plans. God laughs. Keaton seems to feel no need to comfort us about this. No one emerges to make things better. The world is  cruel, capricious, barren of any special benevolence. It is this lack of faith or optimism perhaps that causes Keaton's comedies to speak more to our time than to his own, and made him a big hit with European audiences even as many Americans were scratching their heads.

______________________

You can buy Chain of Fools here.

History in the Making: Clown Summit & Vaudephone

Christopher Lueck
(Photo: Jim Moore)

[post 236] 

James Agee once wrote a famous book called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which was about tenant farmers who were in fact guys but certainly not famous, so I was going to title this post Let Us Now Praise Three Guys Who Aren't Famous Either but Should Be for All the Cool Work They do Promoting and Chronicling Clowns and Variety Artists — but that title was already taken.

The three guys in question are Christopher Lueck, Jim Moore, and Trav S.D. One of them I've never met, one I met three or four times, and the other I've known for 33 years and even performed with in a circus. Problem is I can't remember which is which. Yeah, just kidding. (I won't be that senile for another month or two.)

So let's start with Christopher Lueck, host of New York's monthly Downtown Clown Revue, now in its fifth season, and creator of the new instructional DVD Learn Slapstick: Get Physically Funny. That should keep Christopher busy enough, but he is also the mastermind behind Clown Summit, a series of audio interviews with contemporary clowns now in its second year. Last year's lineup featured informative chats with Chuck Sidlow & Mitch Freddes, Michael Christensen, Barry Lubin, Avner Eisenberg (Avner The Eccentric), John Gilkey, and David Kaye (Silly Billy).

This year's cavalcade of stars, which can be heard starting the day after tomorrow, is equally stellar:

• Joe Dieffenbacher (Clown Conservatory)
• Sue Morrison (Institute of Canadian Clowning)
• Jesse Dryden (Circus Smirkus)
• Ronlin Foreman (Dell’ Arte School)
• Priscilla Mooseburger (Mooseburger Camp)
• Jango Edwards (Nouveau Clown Institute)

And it's all free! Just go to the Clown Summit web site to register and you will receive a link via e-mail to listen to the interviews, which will be available for streaming for 24 hours each — one a day from January 30th through February 4th. If you miss them, or want these as a part of your permanent collection, all the contents will be available afterwards on a reasonably priced CD or downloadable e-book. What's not to like?

Jim Moore

Next up are Jim Moore (not his real name) and Trav S.D., and their new collaboration, Vaudephone. Jim is an old friend whose work has appeared frequently on this blog. A former mime and street performer, Jim is a master photographer who has been documenting the eccentric arts for over three decades, most recently for his excellent Vaude_Visuals blog. Now that he's retired from his day job, he's put this work into high gear, if not overdrive. As I've joked more than once, if they hold a clown show in New York City and Jim's not there, does it still make a sound?

Trav S.D.

Trav S.D. is equally nuts. He actually thought the world needed yet another book on vaudeville, and then proceeded to write a best-seller on the subject, No Applause—Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous. I've read and enjoyed it and will be including it in my upcoming series of posts on variety theatre, tentatively slotted in for late 2010. (Okay, so I'm a little behind schedule.) He also does dozens of other things, as indicated by the subtitle to his encyclopedic blog. Travalanche: Being a web log for the observations of actor, author, cartoonist, comedian, critic, director, humorist, journalist, master of ceremonies, performance artist, playwright, producer, publicist, public speaker, songwriter, and variety booker Trav S.D. 

Vaudephone is producing video documentation of contemporary variety performance. Its name and its value both harken back to the old Warner Brothers Vitaphone film shorts of the early 30s that preserved some vintage vaudeville acts for posterity. Here's their intro:


The Vaudephone revives the old concept of Vitaphone vaudeville for the Vimeo age, presenting today’s hottest variety acts in a simple and attractive format for the discerning audience member from the convenience of your computer. Look here each Tuesday for a new installment from now through early 2012. 


Jim and Trav S.D. have been running around town shooting video of a wide variety of variety acts, placing the performers in a studio setting rather than in front of a live audience. What is lost in ambience and audience reaction is gained in proper lighting, crystal-clear audio, and optimal camera positioning. (It's very hard to get good video at a live show without extensive prep and some expensive equipment!)

Here's a more detailed explanation of the process from Trav S.D.:
"I've been going to Ron Hutchison's Vitaphone programs at the Film Forum for many many years. It occurred to me that there is a certain modular quality to them....something similar to the vaudeville bios I do on Travalanche and to the photo essays Jim does on Vaudevisuals. So it occurred to me that conceptually it would be a natural thing for us to collaborate on -- the joint content we create fits both of our blogs. I came up with the idea of distressing it to make it look like a Vitaphone and also came up with the semi-accurate format of the titles. I book all of the acts, determine the content, and coach them on the aesthetic we're going for (I've been producing vaudeville shows since 1995, so it's also a natural outgrowth of that.) I also secured theme music from Vince Giordano and (upcoming) Jerry Zucker, and also have a say in how the act is shot (i.e., framing composition -- there ain't much else!). Jim does all of the shooting, lighting, post-production, and works with a subcontractor on titles."

I can remember when we all discovered video in the 70s. We liked having copies of our shows (even if we all looked green and blurry), but no one appearing in a festival would let their work be videotaped by others, out of fear of their material being stolen. Now it seems everyone wants to be on YouTube, but often the production values are quite low and do a disservice to the performers. The growing Vaudephone archive remedies all that, so let's hope they continue to produce these nuggets well beyond "early 2012."

Good work, all three of you, and here are those links again:
Clown Summit
Vaudephone