Golden Era Anathema

[MisterCairo]

an army of mediocre singers with no perceptiple personality whatsoever, singing the kinds of joyless, mechanically-churned-out songs that wouldn't have been used to patch a broken window pane in Tin Pan Alley in the days of the Great American Songbook.

While I do enjoy certain entertainers from this sub-era, I fully agree that the overall tone of music from the time helped to birth the rock era (one I happen to enjoy; your mileage clearly varies). In much the same way, the "insipidinization" of rock after Elvis's conscription and Buddy Holly's death, the crooners and girl groups, helped to open the door for the Beatles and the British invasion, which saved rock from itself.

 

[1930artdeco]

I think that part of the allure of the comics back in the 30's at least was the fact of the depression. Anything to take your mind off not eating for days and living in your car.

But I agree, I can watch a few minutes of the stooges and that is about it. I love slap stick for the fact that it is physical and takes a lot of planning and coordination. I enjoyed the Laurel and Hardy scenes where they would crush or destroy a Model T and use it as a gag.

I know he is 'before our time' but I love Buster Keaton and all of the stuff/stunts he did.

Mike

 

[tmal]

Ah, the old days.............all I know is the older I get, the better I was.

 

[MisterCairo]

I think that part of the allure of the comics back in the 30's at least was the fact of the depression. Anything to take your mind off not eating for days and living in your car.

But I agree, I can watch a few minutes of the stooges and that is about it. I love slap stick for the fact that it is physical and takes a lot of planning and coordination. I enjoyed the Laurel and Hardy scenes where they would crush or destroy a Model T and use it as a gag.

I know he is 'before our time' but I love Buster Keaton and all of the stuff/stunts he did.

Mike

I actually enjoy slapstick comedy, well timed and placed it adds a comedic touch. However, when it is quite literally all they do, it wears thin, particularly as they used the same schtick all the time.

I love Buster Keaton, L&H and of course Harold Lloyd.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A good point to think about is that Keaton, L&H, and Lloyd always played characters, rather than caricatures -- they were figures you could root for and care about. The Stooges, although they were proficient in the slapstick style, never did this -- nor were they ever intended to do this. Their name says it all -- they were originally "stooges" in the pure vaudeville sense of the world, secondary comics for Ted Healy to slap and push around in his act. When they left Healy, Moe basically took over the Healy role himself and Larry and Curly/Shemp etc. became *his* stooges -- vehicles for gags, rather than for a story. You could imagine that Keaton or Lloyd's characters had an inner life, and motivations that made sense -- but you can't do that with the Stooges. They're basically live-action cartoons.

The Marx Brothers actually fall into the same type of category as the Stooges that way -- but the type of comedy they did in their best films had a specific satirical purpose: they were ridiculing the conventions of the typical Broadway "book musicals" of the twenties by pointing out how ridiculous those conventions were. (That, incidentially, is why Zeppo was the way he was -- he was a specific parody of the idiotically-grinning juvenile leads who figured in all those musical-comedy plots.) The Stooges, however, in most of their films didn't really have a satirical purpose beyond the general "disrupt society/authority figures" plot. And as a result, they wear thin fast.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The Stooges mainly appeared in short subjects for Columbia so it's understandable that character development was thin. There was one feature film before they left Healy, but, like roller coasters, you either love or hate the Stooges. They were forbidden fruit for so many of my fellow males as a kid (moms generally hated them, and watching them was often on the sly) that there's almost a male bonding element to liking them. There's a myth that women don't "appreciate" the Stooges, but I've met many who do.

 

[MisterCairo]

The Stooges mainly appeared in short subjects for Columbia so it's understandable that character development was thin. There was one feature film before they left Healy, but, like roller coasters, you either love or hate the Stooges. They were forbidden fruit for so many of my fellow males as a kid (moms generally hated them, and watching them was often on the sly) that there's almost a male bonding element to liking them. There's a myth that women don't "appreciate" the Stooges, but I've met many who do.

The flip side to the coin I tossed, that all guys like them is also a myth.

Naturally, one's taste in comedy (or in anything) is personal. That's the whole point of this thread - what is it about the era you can't stand, but that (many/most) others really like?

 

[MisterCairo]

Gone With The Wind, or as I call it - nearly four hours of my life I will never get back...

 

[vitanola]

Haven't watched it all yet, but interesting to see the wind-blowing-up-the skirt gag well before it Marilyn's famous effort.

It was old hat even then!

 

[Haversack]

Very interesting. It looks like that streetcar towards the end was a cable car. Not horse-drawn and no sign of a trolley or pantograph.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Cable cars had a brief vogue in NYC around the turn of the century, but it turned out that electric trolleys were cheaper and easier to maintain.

 

[Harp]

Cable cars had a brief vogue in NYC around the turn of the century, but it turned out that electric trolleys were cheaper and easier to maintain.

Very interesting. It looks like that streetcar towards the end was a cable car. Not horse-drawn and no sign of a trolley or pantograph.

My grandfather was a trolley car conductor. When I was a boy he'd take me out to 79th Street and stare at the
steel rails still embedded. And milk deliveries in Chicago were made by horse drawn wagons. I use to run out to
see and pet the horses. Fond memories.

 

[Fading Fast]

My grandfather was a trolley car conductor. When I was a boy he'd take me out to 79th Street and stare at the
steel rails still embedded. And milk deliveries in Chicago were made by horse drawn wagons. I use to run out to
see and pet the horses. Fond memories.

To this day in NYC, I'll look down and occasionally see old trolly tracks and/or cobblestones where a foot or more of layers of pavement above has been worn away. It happens more often than you think it would, but these streets get so much traffic and winter weather that they pavement is often being worn away.

 

[tonyb]

Ever seen one of those pavement scraping machines in operation? They make real short work of taking the top asphalt layer off a road in preparation for a fresh surface. In the older parts of Seattle there are brick roads (with imbedded streetcar track) hiding under the asphalt. Watching the pavement scraper reveal those old road surfaces is its own sort of entertainment.

 

[Edward]

The Three Stooges shtick was wasted on me when I was a kid, when it was on TV pretty much every weekday around the time kids had control of the viewing options — after school but before dad got home.

I was kinda baffled by what anybody saw in that brand of comedy until I got much older. I get it now in ways I didn’t then, which is not to go so far as to say I actually like it. But I get it. I understand why some people do.

Humour is incredibly subjective, but I think beyond what being funny being very individual, you also have to be at the right place for something... When I first saw Vic and Bob on TV in 1990, I just didn't get it. A few years later, I'd discovered dadaism and it clicked - I laugh like a drain at them now. I think a big part of it was that as a cynical sixteen year old, I wasn't receptive to their surrealist brand of slapstick and wordplay; a few years later, the ... for want of a better word, innocence of it really appealed as escapism. I love a good political satire, but sometimes you do want to switch off from the cold world as an adult.

OT, I'd love to be able to say 'racism', but that we still have with us in spades. Maybe legalised segregation, potently mixed with politics and conscription... From Jesse Owens to the Tuskagee Airmen, it never ceases to boggle my mind when we see the old period newsreels celebrating them as great heroes of a nation that didn't exactly treat them as a shining beacon of freedom might.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Mack Robinson comes to mind. He was a member of that same 1936 Olympic track team that showed up the Nazis in Berlin, but when he came back home to Pasadena after the Games, the only job he could get, as a Black man, was that of street sweeper. He wore his Olympic team jacket while pushing his broom around Los Angeles, as a gesture of contempt and defiance.

Mack Robinson was Jackie Robinson's older brother.

Jackie R., today, is as close as we have to a secular saint in American popular culture, but it's very interesting to go back and see how he was viewed by his contemporaries during his sports career. He was beloved by the fans in Brooklyn, of course, but elsewhere white Americans tended to view him as a surly pop-off, a man with a chip on his shoulder, who wasn't showing the gratitude he should have been showing for the "great opportunity" afforded him. The New York sportswriters, with the notable exceptions of Roger Kahn and Lester Rodney, couldn't stand him, and once the glow of desegregation had worn off, took every opportunity to run him down in print. Dodgers owner Walter F. O'Malley despised him. But in later life, you'd find few of them who'd admit to it, and their successors today are all "had we but lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have shared with them in stoning the prophets." And too often you'll see his legacy co-opted today by the same kind of people who, if they'd been around in 1950, would have been his most vocal detractors.

 

[Harp]

OT, I'd love to be able to say 'racism', but that we still have with us in spades.

Racism exists. I cannot attest its United Kingdom presence, but here in the United States it does dwell
openly and inside shadows of the heart. Pernicious? Of course. But the flip side of this particular coin is that
its currency has dwindled, and within the African American community problems exist that cannot be ascribed
to systemic Caucasian racism but usually are. The homicide rate, illegitimacy, crime here in Chicago defy
political excuse; while, most implausibly, racism now suborns the mantra.

 

[MisterCairo]

Citizen Kane is NOT the greatest movie ever made.

Prove me wrong.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It can't be, because "Diplomaniacs" is.

 

[MisterCairo]

It can't be, because "Diplomaniacs" is.

Looking up the film, I started researching the cast.

I ended up at this newspaper.

Look at one of the other stories, for an early reference to Henry Fonda.

The things one can segue to...

https://www.newspapers.com/image/?c...9.BNpYhxemCLPR2jufbWd7lwHt2staZaLlYp4jbd2IqJo