Post by Salzmank on Jun 20, 2017 1:58:41 GMT
Many thanks for these excellent observations, Doghouse, and so very much appreciated. (As they say--you oughta write a book, if you haven't already!)
I don't think I've ever spoken to anyone else before who also considers Bud "a highly skilled comic," so thanks for that, first of all. I'll be honest: though he's the straight man of the duo, I find him far funnier than Lou Costello, but then I was never all that fond of Abbott and Costello (...Meet Frankenstein notwithstanding) to begin with.
The Marx Brothers are indeed the surrealists sine qua non of American comedy, and I can't believe that I left them off my list. The distinctions you make between them and Fields are first-class. I particularly love this:
I can only add that Fields's "intimate and personal" surrealistic humor, as you accurately term it, derives from a break in realism (family drama; business with dentists, circus barkers, golfers, and shopkeepers), whereas the Marxes' humor (originally) has little basis in any kind of realism (the Marxes are pulling a con on the world, whereas the world is pulling a con on Fields).
The Marxes are creating their surreal fantasyland, then, and Fields has lived and is living in his: they act, and initiate the act, whereas he reacts to the world around him. That is not to say that the Marxes exist in any less "real" settings than Fields, but rather that their humor is not based on anything real. Still, whether it's action or reaction, both the Brothers and Fields use a surreal humor that shifts the accepted order of the world around them in favor of "a world where all commonplace things had gone just a little crazy," as John Dickson Carr put it in The Arabian Nights Murder. (Carr, by the way, was a huge fan of the Marx Bros., so it all connects, however indirectly!
)
As for screwball, we're in complete agreement, including the similarity with Justice Stewart's famous quotation.
Again, many thanks, as always!
I don't think I've ever spoken to anyone else before who also considers Bud "a highly skilled comic," so thanks for that, first of all. I'll be honest: though he's the straight man of the duo, I find him far funnier than Lou Costello, but then I was never all that fond of Abbott and Costello (...Meet Frankenstein notwithstanding) to begin with.
The Marx Brothers are indeed the surrealists sine qua non of American comedy, and I can't believe that I left them off my list. The distinctions you make between them and Fields are first-class. I particularly love this:
Groucho would make anyone his victim just for the fun of it, but Fields seemed forever in a quiet little war with the uncontrollable nature of life itself...
The Marxes are creating their surreal fantasyland, then, and Fields has lived and is living in his: they act, and initiate the act, whereas he reacts to the world around him. That is not to say that the Marxes exist in any less "real" settings than Fields, but rather that their humor is not based on anything real. Still, whether it's action or reaction, both the Brothers and Fields use a surreal humor that shifts the accepted order of the world around them in favor of "a world where all commonplace things had gone just a little crazy," as John Dickson Carr put it in The Arabian Nights Murder. (Carr, by the way, was a huge fan of the Marx Bros., so it all connects, however indirectly!
)As for screwball, we're in complete agreement, including the similarity with Justice Stewart's famous quotation.
Again, many thanks, as always!