Funny on purpose

[supergee]

Satchel Paige said that his old teammate Cool Papa Bell was "so fast he could turn out the light and be in bed before it got dark." That story appears in most baseball histories; in many of the older ones, we are informed that actually the light was on a timer.

Try to imagine how someone could make a mistake like that. I cannot. I can only assume that the writers telling that dubious tale found it less implausible than the possibility that a simple cullid boy like Satch was actually being funny on purpose.

I'm reading Saul Austerlitz's Another Fine Mess, a history of film comedy arranged according to the names of those who did the most to make it funny. Recent events point me to one serious omission: Leslie Nielsen. (Though Austerlitz does have kind words for him in the entry on the Zuckers.)

Austerlitz mentions that there is a theory that Margaret Dumont never really appreciated that Groucho Marx was making fun of her in their many movies. That strikes me as another example of the idea that They cannot be deliberately funny, the way We can. Or has anyone suggested that the magnificently po-faced Nielsen (perhaps due to Canadian humorlessness) thought all along that he was still portraying a dramatic hero and couldn't understand why people kept laughing?

Comments

[oursin]

There is a story about someone who played the straight man in a number of Norman Wisdom movies who was praised for his po-faced composure in the face of Wisdom's ribtickling antics - some years after this phase of his career he admitted that he never found Wisdom funny, which is a view I am entirely on board with. (That Wisdom was frequently cringe-making and unfunny was not mentioned in any of the recent obits, ho-hum.)

But playing the straight/feed for the funny person is a skill in its own right - not corpsing, not being too knowing, not nudging them in the ribs like Dick Emery in his drag persona going 'Oooooo, you are awful - but I like you!' That it is assumed that Dumont achieved this by nature fits in with all the other assumptions about wymmynz' work, no?

[laughingrat]

Oh yeah, I hate that perception of Ms. Dumont. She was a bad motherfucker, and despite Groucho's remarks that the brothers "got her alone one night and taught her what all the jokes were about" (let's not even get into the rape "joke" there), there's lots of moments where she's obviously trying to keep from cracking up. Hmp. Now I need a Margaret Dumont icon.

[bientot]

I'm taking your post as an excuse to complain about the way so many people (on NPR no less) talked about Leslie Nielsen being known for his 'one-liners', going on to cite:
"Surely you can't be serious!"
"I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."

TWO LINES. TWO. This is not a one-liner. A one-liner is, "Take my wife, PLEASE."

Grumble grumble grumble...