Word: slapstick
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Hollywood puts out a type of comedy that lies somewhere in between the Marx Brothers' slapstick and the more subtle personality humor of the late Will Rogers or the present Bob Benchley. This in-between brand depends mostly on a tricky plot and rapid dialogue, and has lately been dished out in large quantities by the Rosalind Russell-Cary grant team...
...lesser-known great actors. Will Hays found nothing to censor, and the Governor of Georgia's sole complaint was that the state's fine peaches weren't given a plug. Others who read the book or saw the play will find "Tobacco Road," the picture, one of the funniest slapstick comedies of the year--the most disappointing Hollywood product since the flickers declared themselves...
...which startle even their closest friends with huge returns (present guesstimate: $1,000,000). It also gives audiences a satisfactory opportunity to appraise the talents of Broadway Comics Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, a new pair of old-school comedians full of blackface repartee and Mack Sennett slapstick...
...Jeeter's aged life & times. Jeeter has one decrepit jalopy that explodes as often as the trick clowns' car in the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus. And when his son Dude (William Tracy) goes hog-wild with a brand-new Ford, the effect is of violent slapstick rather than of a moron's disregard for mechanical decency. As Jeeter's daughter Ellie May, Actress Gene Tierney had herself systematically dirtied every day. But, typically enough of Hollywood, the events leading up to the grime did not include giving Ellie May the hare...
...strolls placidly through the role of a Soviet streetcar motorman intent on the cause. Scripters Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer's picture of bungling and dawdling inside the Soviet is a lot less witty, and less tender than Greta Garbo's memorable film Ninotchka. But their slapstick commentary is a relief from the realities of headlines...