Word: dykes
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...vaudevillian, Billy Bright (Dick Van Dyke), clicks in silent two-reelers and becomes a national figure. Producer-Director-Writer Carl Reiner gives Van Dyke almost enough of this plot line to hang himself by strutting and capering in the manner of Mack Sennett's mute screwballs. Such flickering shenanigans are the most comical part of The Comic, but they are also the most derivative. The film gains its validity and poignance when Billy Bright reaches a crossroads and veers to the wrong. Sound movies are bunk, he decides, and abruptly the humor fades to black...
...Sunday Supplement color and cutting that might have been done with garden shears. Perhaps as a consequence, Columbia Pictures decided to hold it at arm's length, a flop to be forgotten. A flop, perhaps. Forgotten, hardly. For The Comic contains the most ambitious performance of Van Dyke's career, a resolutely unglamorous close-up of a string-necked, right-wing Angeleno, faded by sun and circumstance...
...unmistakable. In appearance, Cockeye obviously recalls Ben Turpin, and Billy Bright subtly evokes Buster Keaton. In actuality, the melancholy story is closest to that of the late Stan Laurel. The bitterness of The Comic arises from an incident in 1963, two years before Laurel's death, when Van Dyke decided to mimic Stan in his TV series. "We wanted to pay him for the rights to use his character," recalls Reiner, then producer of the show. "And we found that the rights belonged to another human being. The rights to the man's own personality! It was easy...
Wednesday, October 15 WEDNESDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 9-11 p.m.)* Everyone's changing partners in Divorce, American Style (1967), which stars Dick Van Dyke, Debbie Reynolds, Van Johnson, Jason Robards Jr. and Jean Simmons...
...LESLIE UGGAMS SHOW (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). Dick Van Dyke, David Frye, Sly and the Family Stons turn out to wel come the Smothers Brothers' replacement. Premiere...