Word: two
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Woody Allen may well be the funniest man in America. But he is not the funniest writer in America, and between the two titles lies a profound gap. At the bottom of the gap is Don't Drink the Water, the film version of Woody's first stage play...
...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...
...resemblance to persons living or dead is purely 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...
Discovering where the laughs came from is the undeclared aim of this biography. Lahr himself professed not to know. "Put me in a jockstrap and if I entertain people for two hours-it's a good show," he once said. "I'm not an artist, I'm in business. If it's a hit, that's all I care about." Another time, speaking about his dramatic abilities, he said, "All I know is how to do it. I can't articulate." In hopes of doing better, John Lahr, his son and biographer, has endeavored...
...mixed up. Success, disaster-I had everything"). Eventually, he finds the right girl but is so gun-shy that she marries someone else; then he pursues her until she gets a divorce after he is sued for alienation of affections in a headline scandal. He marries her, has two kids, continues as a Broadway star, gets on TIME'S cover but can't make it really big in radio, TV or movies (except for Oz). He wins a huge artistic success in Waiting for Godot as his stage career dims, and finally -oh, irony-makes the biggest money...