Too funny for words : a contrarian history of American screen comedy from silent slapstick to screwball /
American silent film comedies were dominated by sight gags, stunts and comic violence. With the advent of sound, comedies in the 1930s were a riot of runaway heiresses and fast-talking screwballs. It was more than a technological pivot, the first feature-length sound film, The Jazz Singer (1927), ch...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Jefferson, North Carolina :
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers,
[2019]
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Table of Contents:
- Introduction: The history of the history of silent comedy
- Hey, down in front!
- Mack Daddy, Daddy Mack
- Irony and the fat man
- First things first, but not necessarily in that order
- Slapstick while black
- @RealCharlieChaplin
- Cruel and unusual
- Life, police and trouble
- Mutual appreciation society
- Serious business
- The other Chaplin
- Buster Keaton vs. the history of comedy
- Out the window backwards
- Eureka
- What, what no beer?
- Keaton international
- Fake news
- Why don't you say something to help me?
- Harold Lloyd 101
- Mustache, glasses and suit
- The sin of Harold Lloyd
- When Harold met Lucy
- Lucy vs. Lucille Ball
- Artists and models
- Duck soup
- Eat your apple after now
- The back of Joan Crawford's head
- Downton Valley, or Ruggles conquers the west
- The $30,000 question
- F.W. Murnau's comedy masterpiece
- Jean, Clara, bombshell and it
- Miscasting for fun and profit
- Girls! girls! girls!
- I won't back down
- The unexpected comedy stylings of Alfred Hitchcock
- Mr. and Mrs. Smith
- Divorce American style
- Magic pixie dream grampa
- Ernst Lubitsch forgives himself
- Sturges before Sturges
- The trouble with Mitchell
- Ginger Rogers, sad Saks of Fifth Ave
- The careless Cinderella
- Katharine Hepburn vs. herself
- Me vs. Capra
- Preston Sturges origin story
- The love song of Captain McGloo
- Sturges after Sturges (or, the Keystone Pipeline)
- Meet Charley Chase
- Modern love
- Meet Cary Grant
- The worst people in the world
- Slut fabulous.