Who were the great hams of the classic era?

Jerry Lewis, Lou Costello, and of course the Horowitz brothers (The 3 stooges).

I actually think Charleton Heston is both hammy and wooden. But when he's good he's fantastic, and perhaps the only actor who could have made a career out of playing biblical types.


Lawrence Olivier was quite hammy but aged in to a brilliant character actor, who liked attention. He could still command the screen even with the smallest gestures.


Richard Burton is another great Stage actor who was terribly " big" and scenery chewing in his early roles. I have read that he credits Elizabeth Taylor with teaching him to act on film.


Lionel Barrymore never strikes me as hammy, but John Barrymore? Pure pork. In On the Twentieth Century and Dinner at Eight he's playing  men of the theater and the hamminess is part of the character. He balances it with brilliant small moments as when Larry Renault checks the lighting on his famous profile before laying down for the last time. Even in the Hammiest scenes there is such brilliance, such fluency and command, as in Twentieth Century when he's blocking the scene where Lombard screams, acting out all the parts. It's manic, but the timing is dead accurate. Garson Kanin , who directed Barrymore in The Great Man Votes, tells of a conversation about Macbeth in which Barrymore wonders about a really Scottish Macbeth in Braid Scots, and drops into a speech of Lady Macbeth's, a perfectly serious , excellent reading without a trace of camp. Wouldn't you have killed to get him off booze so you could see that fabulous facility on stage or film?