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Part 4 |
Comedy Films Abbott and Costello:
The Comic Duo - Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin:
One of their better films was Artists and Models (1955) with Martin as a comic book cartoon artist and Lewis as his idiotic room-mate with imaginative dreams. Jerry Lewis made his first solo film, The Delicate Delinquent (1957), and was able to create a successful career for himself. In the early 1960s, Lewis' unique brand of humor was exhibited in his directorial debut film titled The Bellboy (1960) - a series of vignettes about a nearly-mute, spastic bellboy at Miami's Fountainbleau Hotel, where the "real" Jerry Lewis (in a cameo) appeared as a guest of the hotel. The film was made in homage to Jacques Tati's classics Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953, Fr.) and Mon Oncle (1958, Fr.). Although often detested for his over-the-top style of comedy, Lewis' best film was a variation of the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde story, titled The Nutty Professor (1963) with Lewis as a chemistry professor named Julius Ferris Kelp whose potion converted him into swinging extrovert Buddy Love (resembling Rat Packers Frank Sinatra and/or Dean Martin) - loveably irresistible to Stella Stevens. Lewis also starred in the 'fractured fairy tale' Cinderfella (1960) as a male 'Cinderella.' Lewis' The Patsy (1964) was a satire about Hollywood star-making, and in the slapstick-ish The Disorderly Orderly (1964), the zany comic starred as a hospital orderly employed in a nursing home. In The Family Jewels (1965), he portrayed seven characters (mostly named Peyton). By the mid-to-late 1960s, he broke away from his nerd roles, and starred in more traditional romantic comedies, such as Three on a Couch (1966) opposite Janet Leigh, and in the war comedy Which Way to the Front? (1970).
British, Italian and French Comedy: European Entries Some of the most celebrated, intelligent comedies from Britain after World War II were produced by Michael Balcon's anti-authoritarian Ealing Studios - termed "Ealing comedies." They included the following four films that starred Alec Guinness:
Similar to The Ladykillers, Italian writer/director Mario Monicelli's fast-paced caper spoof Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) starred Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni and a young Claudia Cardinale, with its story of misfit criminals orchestrating a jewelry heist of a pawn shop on Madonna Street. Italian director Vittorio De Sica's Marriage, Italian Style (1964) (an imitation of Pietro Germi's black comedy, Divorce--Italian Style (1962)) was a farcical and sexy romantic comedy about modern marriage featuring womanizer Marcello Mastroianni and his busty, statuesque mistress/wife Sophia Loren (her fourth film with De Sica). British comedies usually combined deft wordplay, sophisticated wit, character impersonations, and high-low brow contributions to the genre. Cartoonist Ronald Searle's work inspired director Frank Launder's rollicking British comedy The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954) - a slapstick story about devilish students with get-rich-quick schemes at a British all-girl's school, and Alastair Sim (in a dual role as the school's headmistress and as her twin brother bookie Clarence). Peter Sellers impersonated three different individuals (one of his trademarks) - a prime minister, a grand duchess, and a military officer of the small European Duchy of Grand Fenwick in The Mouse That Roared (1959). And The League of Gentleman (1959) was another classic British caper film with Jack Hawkins as the disgruntled leader of a group of disgraced ex-soldiers plotting a complex raid on a bank.
Zany comedies also emerged from France, especially the works of comic actor/director Jacques Tati, such as Jour de Fete (1949) - his debut film about a bicycle postman named Francois, and his Monsieur Hulot films including the virtually-silent cinematic gem Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953), about the tall Frenchman on a seaside resort holiday in Brittany, and the comedy satire Mon Oncle (1958) with numerous sight gags - the recipient of the Best Foreign-Language Film Academy Award. The Series of Carry On Films: A highly successful, saucy and interminable series of almost 30 British comedy films were popular over a period of 20 years, from 1958-1978, from Carry On Sergeant (1958) to Carry On Emmanuelle (1978). They were mostly crude slapstick farces composed of double entendres and larger-than-life characters that became increasingly sexier as time progressed. The naughty films full of sexual innuendo were set in various locales to target various institutions - the Army, a hospital, a British school, a police station, an employment agency, and more. Since there wasn't one major star, the performers were more like a repertory group of actors, and included names such as Kenneth Williams, Sid James and Charles Hawtrey. In the early 90s, there was a disastrous attempt to revive the series with Carry On Columbus (1992). 50s Comedy: Sexual comedies were successively enhanced by the appearance of Marilyn Monroe at her prime in The Seven Year Itch (1955) as a Manhattan apartment dweller, and as the lead singer in an all-girls band in director/co-writer Billy Wilder's hilarious and subversive adult comedy Some Like It Hot (1959) - a ribald spoof of gangster films. The Pink Panther Films Franchise (1964--):
Other Comedies in the Late 50s and 60s: The rise of television and its increasing popularity had a damaging effect on film comedy. Screen comedies declined in number and quality in the 1950s, contributing to the rise of TV situation comedies ('sitcoms') and variety shows, and stand-up comedy routines/sketches. There have been only a few comedy films since the 1950s with the innovative vigor and creativity of the classic era of film comedy.
Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (1970) was an irreverent, anti-war black comedy set during the Korean War (although the film was a caustic criticism of the Vietnam War) about the stressed lives of surgeons and nurses (Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Sally Kellerman, etc.) at the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. It spawned a long-running TV series of the same name with Alan Alda, Loretta Swit, Harry Morgan, Jamie Farr, and Gary Burghoff, among others. The comic mismatched pairing of Walter Matthau (as slob Oscar Madison) and Jack Lemmon (as neat Felix Ungar), their second film together following Billy Wilder's The Fortune Cookie (1966) was skillfully demonstrated in Neil Simon's adaptation of his Broadway play - director Gene Saks' buddy comedy The Odd Couple (1968). As with M*A*S*H, the storyline was adapted into a popular early-70s TV sitcom of the same name starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. |
Another
popular comedy film team of the 40s to the early/mid 50s, Bud Abbott and Lou
Costello, were a variation on the Laurel and Hardy team. Tall, slim, fast-talking,
self-important con man Bud Abbott played the straight man to the short, stubby,
cowardly, stupid and childish Lou Costello. They made a number of witty, humorous
pictures - their first, successful feature film was set in an Army base, Buck
Privates (1941). Other earlier films were Hold That Ghost (1941) and In Society (1944). 
Their most well-remembered comedy sketch is entitled "
Abbott
and Costello were succeeded by wacky, childlike comic Jerry Lewis with his
crooning, handsome, straight-man partner Dean Martin. While they had both
failed as single performers, they were much more successful as a team. The film debut of the comic duo of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis was in My Friend Irma (1949), followed the next year by the team's only sequel, My Friend Irma Goes West (1950). They made a total of sixteen movies together between
1949 and 1956, breaking up after their last teaming in the comedy/musical Hollywood
or Bust (1956). 
The
Best Picture winner from director Tony Richardson, Tom Jones (1963) was a bawdy comedy and rambunctious adaptation of Henry Fielding's novel about
an 18th century womanizing playboy (Albert Finney) and his ribald adventures. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) skewered the medieval King Arthur
legends with graphic violence and quirky, manic comedy. Monty Python's
Life of Brian (1979) irreverently attacked all forms of religious hypocrisy
and zealotry. The high-grossing British, adult romantic comedy Four Weddings
and a Funeral (1994) featured Hugh Grant as an uncommitted, confirmed
bachelor at the weddings of his single friends. The widely-popular British
comedy The Full Monty (1996) exhibited the strip-tease talents of a
group of unemployed, middle-aged and overweight Yorkshire mill workers. 
There
were 50s comedies as well - usually squeaky-clean, formulaic, courtship romantic
comedies exemplified by the Rock Hudson/Doris Day films. Their best classic,
witty and light-hearted 50's sex comedy was Pillow Talk (1959). Other
memorable romantic comedies of the 1950s include George Cukor's Born Yesterday
(1950) about the tutoring of a racketeer's uneducated girlfriend (Judy
Holliday), and director Vincente Minnelli's family wedding comedy 
The
series of Pink Panther films, mostly from writer/director Blake Edwards,
featured Peter Sellers as archetypal Inspector Jacques Clouseau, animated
credit sequences, and Henry Mancini's recognizable score. [The Pink Panther
refers to a rare diamond.] The screwball comedy films in the series were well-known
for their slapstick physical comedy, with Sellers (with a strange French accent)
experiencing numerous pratfalls, clumsiness (or klutziness), and some brilliant
crime-solving nonetheless. The earliest Panther films (in the 60s)
were the best, before Sellers just became an outright buffoon. Eventually,
there were nine sequels to the first film and a popular TV cartoon. Not all
of the films had the name "Pink Panther" in the title:
As
a result of Best Director-winning Mike Nichols' 60s classic