Film Clowns Of The Depression

Author : Wes D. Gehring
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786483520
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Film Clowns of the Depression written by Wes D. Gehring and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-11-21 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1930s are routinely considered sound film's greatest comedy era. Though this golden age encompassed various genres of laughter, clown comedy is the most basic type. This work examines the Depression decade's most popular type of comedy--the clown, or personality comedian. Focusing upon the Depression era, the study filters its analysis through twelve memorable pictures. Each merits an individual chapter, in which it is critiqued. The films are deemed microcosmic representatives of the comic world and discussed in this context. While some of the comedians in this text have generated a great deal of previous analysis, funnymen like Joe E. Brown and Eddie Cantor are all but forgotten. Nevertheless, they were comedy legends in their time, and their legacy, as showcased in these movies, merits rediscovery by today's connoisseur of comedy. Even this book's more familiar figures, such as Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, are often simply relegated to being recognizable pop culture icons whose work has been neglected in recent years. This book attempts to address these oversights and to re-expose the brilliance and ingenuity with which the screen clowns contributed a comic resiliency that was desperately needed during the Depression and can still be greatly appreciated today. The films discussed are City Lights (1931, Chaplin), The Kid From Spain (1932, Cantor), She Done Him Wrong (1933, Mae West), Duck Soup (1933, Marx Brothers), Sons of the Desert (1933, Laurel and Hardy), Judge Priest (1934, Will Rogers), It's a Gift (1934, W.C. Fields), Alibi Ike (1935, Brown), A Night at the Opera (1935, Marx Brothers), Modern Times (1936, Chaplin), Way Out West (1937, Laurel and Hardy), and The Cat and the Canary (1939, Bob Hope).

Author : Wes D. Gehring
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476626928
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Movie Comedians of the 1950s written by Wes D. Gehring and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-10-27 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1950s were a transitional period for film comedians. The artistic suppression of the McCarthy era and the advent of television often resulted in a dumbing down of motion pictures. Cartoonist-turned-director Frank Tashlin contributed a funny but cartoonish effect through his work with comedians like Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope. A new vanguard of comedians appeared without stock comic garb or make-up—fresh faces not easily pigeonholed as merely comedians, such as Tony Randall, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. Some traditional comedians, like Charlie Chaplin, Red Skelton and Danny Kaye, continued their shtick, though with some evident tweaking. This book provides insight into a misunderstood decade of film history with an examination of the “personality comedians.” The talents of Dean Martin and Bob Hope are reappraised and the “dumb blonde” stereotype, as applied to Judy Holliday and Marilyn Monroe, is deconstructed.

Author : Wes D. Gehring
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786456655
Total Pages : 235 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Forties Film Funnymen written by Wes D. Gehring and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelve classic comedy films examined within these pages are distinguished by an equal number of defining comic performances. Ranging from The Great Dictator (1940) to A Southern Yankee (1948), each film focuses on the most central theme of "clown comedy": Resilience, the encouragement or hope that one can survive the most daunting of life's dilemmas--even during the war-torn 1940s. And each film can be regarded as a microcosm of the antiheroic world of its central clown (or clowns). Among the performers represented are Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, Abbott and Costello, Jack Benny, Eddie Bracken, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, the Marx Brothers, Harold Lloyd and Red Skelton. This lavishly illustrated work includes an introduction by noted film critic and historian Anthony Slide.

Author : Wes D. Gehring
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476688990
Total Pages : 243 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Kinds of American Film Comedy written by Wes D. Gehring and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-02-23 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking film study begins with a survey of American print humorists from eras leading up to and overlapping the advent of film--including some who worked both on the page and on the screen, like Robert Benchley, Will Rogers, Groucho Marx and W. C. Fields. Six comic film genres are identified as outgrowths of a national tradition of Cracker Barrel philosophers, personality comedy, parody, screwball comedy, romantic comedy and dark comedy. Whether it is Mark Twain or a parody film involving Steve Martin, comedy is most often about blowing "raspberries" at the world, and a reminder you are not alone.

Author : Wikipedia contributors
Publisher : e-artnow sro
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 1976 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Focus On: 100 Most Popular Vaudeville Performers written by Wikipedia contributors and published by e-artnow sro. This book was released on with total page 1976 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Wikipedia contributors
Publisher : e-artnow sro
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 1328 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Focus On: 100 Most Popular English Male Comedians written by Wikipedia contributors and published by e-artnow sro. This book was released on with total page 1328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Wes D. Gehring
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476616302
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Chaplin's War Trilogy written by Wes D. Gehring and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-09-17 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book examines Charlie Chaplin's evolving perspective on dark comedy in his three war films, Shoulder Arms (1918), The Great Dictator (1940), and Monsieur Verdoux (1947). In the first he uses the genre in a groundbreaking manner but yet for a pro-war cause. In Dictator dark comedy is applied in an antiwar way. In Monsieur Verdoux Chaplin embraces the genre as an individual in defense against a society out to destroy him. All three are pivotal films in the development of the genre in film, with the latter two movies being very controversial for their time.

Author : Scott Balcerzak
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
ISBN 13 : 0814339662
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Buffoon Men written by Scott Balcerzak and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film scholars and fans have used distinctive terms to describe the Classic Hollywood comedian: He is a "trickster," a "rebel," or a "buffoon." Yet the performer is almost always described as a "he." In Buffoon Men: Classic Hollywood Comedians and Queered Masculinity, Scott Balcerzak reads the performances of notable comedians such as W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello through humor and queer theory to expose a problematic history of maleness in their personas. He argues that contrary to popular notions of Classic Hollywood history, these male comedians rearranged or, at times, rejected heteronormative protocols. Balcerzak begins by defining the particular buffoonish masculinity portrayed by early film comedians, a gender and genre construct influenced by the cultural anxieties of the 1930s and '40s. In chapter 1, he considers the onscreen pairing of W. C. Fields and Mae West to identify a queered sexuality and drag persona in Fields's performance, while in chapter 2 he examines the two major constructions of Fields's film persona-the confidence man and the husband-to show Fields to be a conflicted and subversive figure. In chapter 3, Balcerzak considers the assimilation and influence of Eddie Cantor as a Jewish celebrity, while he turns to the cross-media influence of Jack Benny's radio persona in chapter 4. In Chapters 5 and 6, he moves beyond the individual performer to examine the complex masculine brotherhood of comedy duos Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey. Buffoon Men shows that the complicated history of the male comedian during the early sound era has much to tell us about multimedia comedic stars today. Fans and scholars of film history, gender studies, and broadcast studies will appreciate Balcerzak's thorough exploration of the era's fascinating gender constructs.

Author : Wes Gehring
Publisher : Indiana Historical Society
ISBN 13 : 0871953552
Total Pages : 397 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Red Skelton written by Wes Gehring and published by Indiana Historical Society. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than twenty years, Hoosier comic Red Skelton entertained millions of viewers who gathered around their television sets to delight in the antics of such notable characters as Freddie the Freeloader, Clem Kaddiddlehopper, Cauliflower McPugg, and Sheriff Deadeye. Noted film historian Wes D. Gehring examines the man behind the characters—someone who never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Gehring delves into Skelton's hardscrabble life with a shockingly dysfunctional family in the southern Indiana community of Vincennes, his days on the road on the vaudeville circuit, the comedian's early success on radio, his up-and-down movie career with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and his sometimes tragic personal life.

Author : Wes D. Gehring
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476636214
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Hitchcock and Humor written by Wes D. Gehring and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery has been described as "a kind of Rear Window for retirees." As this quote suggests, an analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's methodical use of comedy in his films is past due. One of Turner Classic Movies' on-screen scholars for their summer 2017 online Hitchcock class, the author grew tired of misleading throwaway references to the director's "comic relief." This book examines what should be obvious: Hitchcock systematically incorporated assorted types of comedy--black humor, parody, farce/screwball comedy and romantic comedy--in his films to entertain his audience with "comic" thrillers.