Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Like most contemporary humorists, Monty Python homes in wherever it spots a cliche so rotten it's ready to split open in an explosion of laughter. They take a line like "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition" and turn it into a six-minute joke when Cardinal Fang bursts in shouting, "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" and proceeds to torture his victims wih a comfy chair and a soft pillow. During the surfeit of Mary Queen of Scots a few years ago, Monty Python produced a skit that reduced the enigmatic Scotswoman's appeal to its formulaic minimum...
Tops in Taps. Brooks is a 24-hour clown who never stops performing. On the set, directing one of his own gags, he crumples to the floor and lies there clutching his sides with laughter. Between takes he lurches into an imaginary swordfight with one of his actors. Minutes later he is airily winging it through Gene Kelly's Singin 'in the Rain dance sequence, crying at top volume, "Fellini and Dick Lester are great directors, but are they tops in taps...
...away. For Benny was never a great creator. Even on TV his gift was that of an actor who wraps himself in other people's material. His props were inflections, pauses and reactions. In his mouth, "Well!" could express a thesaurus of repartee; a Benny "Yipe!" could wring laughter from a stone. Benny might have enjoyed a film career as durable as Bob Hope's. As the Polish ham in Ernst Lubitsch's wartime comedy, To Be or Not to Be, the comedian gave one of the screen's classic performances. Indeed, British Actor Alec McCowen...
...FAVORITE. Neil Simon makes the tribulations of Job bray with donkey laughter, not unmixed with muted sounds of compassion...
ABSURD PERSON SINGULAR. A singularly jovial farce. Three suburban British couples party together on three successive Christmas Eves, and the audience gets blind drunk on laughter...