This bio-bibliography was designed to present a combined biographical, critical, and bibliographical portrait of the Marx Brothers. It examines their significance in film comedy in particular, and as popular culture figures in general. The book is divided into five sections, beginning with a biography which explores the public and private sides of the Marx Brothers. The second section is concerned with the influences of the Marx Brothers as icons of anti-establishment comedy, as contributors to developments in American comedy, as early examples of saturation comedy, and as a crucial link...
This bio-bibliography was designed to present a combined biographical, critical, and bibliographical portrait of the Marx Brothers. It examines the...
This book presents a combined biographical, critical, and bibliographical estimate of Laurel & Hardy's significance in film comedy, the arts in general, and as popular culture icons. Of the two, Laurel decidedly evolves as the central player in this duo biography. The reasons for this are several, but mainly stem from Laurel's role as team spokesman; his late life accessibility; media coverage given to his private life; and the fact that he outlived Hardy by eight years--from 1957 to 1965--a period in which the ever burgeoning public fascination with the team reached new proportions....
This book presents a combined biographical, critical, and bibliographical estimate of Laurel & Hardy's significance in film comedy, the arts in gen...
With the cooperation of Benchley family members, and using diaries and correspondence and much archival material, Gehring has written a fresh and lively biography of humorist Robert Benchley. Known for his development of the comic anti-hero in essays, columns, film scripts, as a screen actor, and on stage and radio, Benchley emerges as a fascinating individual whose significance as a pivotal American humorist is fully documented. Benchley's times and places--including New York's Algonquin Round-Table set of the 1920s and Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s--are colorfully depicted, and there are...
With the cooperation of Benchley family members, and using diaries and correspondence and much archival material, Gehring has written a fresh and live...
From Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Gehring presents a compelling theory of the black comedy film genre. Placing the movies he discusses in a historical and literary context, Gehring explores the genre's obession with death and the characters' failure to be shocked by it. Movies discussed include: Slaughterhouse Five, Catch-2, Clockwork Orange, Harold and Maude, Heathers, and Natural Born Killers.
From Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Gehring presents a compelling theory of the black comedy fi...
Parody is the least appreciated of all film comedy genres and receives little serious attention, even among film fans. This study elevates parody to mainstream significance. A historical overview places the genre in context, and a number of basic parody components, which better define the genre and celebrate its value, are examined. Parody is differentiated from satire, and the two parody types, traditional and reaffirmation, are explained. Chapters study the most spoofed genre in American parody history, the Western; pantheon members of American Film Comedy such as The Marx Brothers, W....
Parody is the least appreciated of all film comedy genres and receives little serious attention, even among film fans. This study elevates parody t...
Celebrated film director Frank Capra was a central architect of the feel good movie genre now known as populism, which celebrates people, families, second chances, and other traditional American icons such as small town or pastoral life and baseball. Capra developed his own brand of populism by interweaving traditional values of the genre with a younger, more vulnerable hero starting with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town in 1936. The result, Capraesque populism, has had a significant influence of American pop culture in general and forms a small but important variety of baseball movie. This book...
Celebrated film director Frank Capra was a central architect of the feel good movie genre now known as populism, which celebrates people, families, se...
As a young boy in the depths of the 1890s depression, Joe E. Brown had a job: making faces at the firemen on passing coal-burning trains so they would throw coal at him. As a child he also worked as a circus acrobat and newsboy. His inventiveness and spunk helped his family get through hard times but also fueled his fascination with entertainment, and he built up a repertoire of rubber-faced expressions and funny antics that would make his stage and screen work memorable. Baseball was a favorite pursuit in his life and thus a recurring theme in his films and skits. In this biography--the...
As a young boy in the depths of the 1890s depression, Joe E. Brown had a job: making faces at the firemen on passing coal-burning trains so they would...
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...
The 1930s are routinely considered sound film's greatest comedy era. Though this golden age encompassed various genres of laughter, clown comedy is th...
Famous co-stars such as Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant to Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, have made screwball and romantic comedies a big seller at the box office. These seemingly timeless genres are as popular today as ever This book takes a closer look at the precise meanings of the terms screwball and romantic. Film fans and scholars alike tend to lump film with laughter and love under a screwball/romantic umbrella and use the terms screwball and romantic interchangeably. In reality, there is a distinction; the screwball variety places its emphasis on "funny," while the more traditional...
Famous co-stars such as Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant to Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, have made screwball and romantic comedies a big seller at the box ...
Early in his Hollywood career, Leo McCarey honed his skills by working with some of the great names of comedy, including Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields, and The Marx Brothers, whose 1933 classic, Duck Soup, McCarey directed. Later, as a writer and/or director, McCarey was responsible for a number of classic films, including Ruggles of Red Gap, The Awful Truth, Love Affair, Make Way for Tomorrow, My Favorite Wife, and An Affair to Remember. McCarey's 1944 film Going My Way was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won seven, including the first triple crown awarded to the same person for...
Early in his Hollywood career, Leo McCarey honed his skills by working with some of the great names of comedy, including Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields...
