JUST GIVE ME A GOOD LAUGH NOW AND THEN
One of the funniest sight gags I ever saw was in a Bob Hope-Bing Crosby movie back in the 1940’s.
As a tad, it probably didn’t take much to make me laugh, because the aging process had not yet presented life’s back-stories to me.
Anyhow, in this Hope-Crosby Road movie, Hope has pulled off his shoes and is ready to go to bed. Note that Hope and Crosby always slept together, as did Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and a lot of other comic teams. Anyhow, Bob Hope’s toes are showing through the ends of his socks, when Bing says something like, “Better get some shoe polish to cover that up.”
May not sound like much to you, but this was exactly the kind of humor a six-year-old could grasp, and it opened the door to many more sight gags that other comedians would make me laugh out loud over: Abbott and Costello enter a restaurant when the headwaiter says, “Walk this way!” meaning “follow me to your table.” Of course, Costello walks with the same snooty sway as the headwaiter. Now, that was easy to understand and very funny to me and my friends.
Back then, before a theatrical movie began , we’d be entertained by a cartoon, a serial chapter, some previews, and–wonder of wonders–what we called a “Pete Smith Short.” In one of those brief Pete Smith movies, a bus stops, a woman gets off and walks through a shallow mud puddle, then the man behind her disembarks and sinks into the same puddle over his head. Again, how could life get any funnier than that?
The most beautiful sight gag I ever saw was Red Skelton, at the practice bar with several ballerinas, getting ready to place one unbent leg straight out to rest on the bar, which he does. Then, in an astounding act that looked as logical as any six-year-old’s idea of logic can become, Skelton raises the OTHER unbent leg to place it on the bar at the same time. Now, it happened so fast, in those days before slow-mo’ photography, that you just knew for a split second that it would work. Of course, it didn’t, which makes it funny to this day, in my mind. Even later, when Ed Wynn did the same thing, it again seemed logical.
Now, there are worse things than being brought up watching Bob Hope and his contemporaries do silly things on the silver screen. I needed those funny folks to get me through the tough times, and I grew to expect them to be there when I needed them.
And they always were.
Before you send me to the nursing home to languish away my final days, put a stack of old movies in my lap in the wheelchair, and let me watch them. Bring on all the Benny Hill, Mr. Bean, Jerry Lewis, Johnny Carson, Bob & Ray, Laurel and Hardy, Trevor Noah, Red Skelton, Steve Allen, Chris Rock, Soupy Sales, Mort Sahl, Henny Youngman, Phyllis Diller, Jon Stewart, Samantha Bee, Groucho Marx, Clevon Little, Jacques Tati, Stan Freberg and company stuff you can afford and let me sit there chuckling at the guys and gals who got me through to this age.
If I’m lucky, I’ll take the chuckles and the sight gags with me.
Thanks for the memories
(c) 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed