Word: gagman
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Tops among Hollywood writer-director teams for many a year were hairy little Frank Capra, who used to be a Mack Sennett gagman, and baldish Robert Riskin, who got into the movie business when a shirt manufacturer he was working for decided to take a flier in shorts. During the six years they worked together for Columbia, Capra & Riskin turned out a dazzling string of critical and box-office successes, Lady For a Day, Broadway Bill, It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Lost Horizon, You Can't Take It With You. They won their share...
Eighteen-year-old Ben Freedman, son of radio's late No. 1 Gagman David Freedman† left for Hollywood to write Al Jolson's radio scripts, took with him his father's private file of 40,000 jokes...
...week in a stage production of Barbara Frietchie to watch for the Rebels from a prop tree, he fell out of the tree, got a raise because audiences liked the variation. After a try at vaudeville singing he got into films, posed as a cameraman, worked as a gagman, then got a chance at directing. As a director he is best at purposeful melodrama (Little Caesar, Five Star Final, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,They Won't Forget), which he usually endows with newsreel clarity, noteworthy ingenuity. In drawing-room comedy his approach is parvenu...
...hope this provides an answer to the critics of the screen who claim there is nothing new in the movies. What the medical profession needs is a damned good gagman...
...director for 1934 is Columbia's Frank Capra (Lady for a Day, It Happened One Night). A chunky Italian with short fingers and round, glossy eyes, he has a fine sense of human comedy, an aptitude for "gags" that dates back to the days when he was "gagman" for Hal Roach's Our Gang. He has collaborated on all his hits with Writer Robert Riskin, considers that no good actor can become a has-been, asks his cast for advice before making a scene but seldom follows it. His opinion of Clark Gable: "As soon as he walked into...