Dr. Seuss and Flit: "An Optimist"

On January 4, 1930, Dr. Seuss gives us two tragically mutated Lovecraftian nightmares...AND a well-worn vaudeville joke!

This "What is an Optimist?" schtick was a big thing at one time, but it's hard to know whether it was passe by 1930.

I bring this up because throughout its first year of publication the fledgling New Yorker magazine peppered its pages with the same joke, over and over again:

Pa, what's an optimist?

A man who thinks he can do it in par.*

Sometimes, for variety, they'd reverse it.

A man who thinks he can do it in par.

Pa, what's an optimist?

This was obviously some New Yorker editor's 1925 idea of a joke, and the repetition was also supposed to be funny, but...well, I hereby admit that I didn't get it. Eventually it seemed like something they were doing just to fill the occasional half-inch of blank column.

* (I'm paraphrasing a bit because I haven't read those issues in several years, but the joke appeared so often that I think it's permanently engraved in my mind).

New Video: "Depressed Benny Hill"

Yesterday I started thinking that although Benny Hill is fun to watch when you're in a great mood, I bet his show would simply infuriate a depressed person. And since Schnapps the Seal is always depressed this was a shoe-in for a short video, which I shot last night and edited today:



Backstage Expose

As usual the music was mostly built up from Apple Loops -- including some sound effects that came with Soundtrack Pro -- but this time I tried something entirely new: foley recording.

If you've ever seen Benny Hill (!) then you know that much of the comedy (!) depended on over-the-top foley work...one of his trademarks was sped-up film with overdubbed sound effects. I was hoping to be able to avoid all that hassle, but as I was putting this video together it became obvious how essential that stuff is to slapstick.

So I did some brainstorming, and these were the techniques I came up with.

* Footsteps: I turned a pair of high heels upside down and hit the heel-tips with a pair of hairbrushes. Totally unnatural, but Benny Hill's footsteps never DID sound natural.

* Brushing: The aforementioned hairbrush rubbed across fabric. I enhanced the lower frequencies to make it sound richer.

* Slapping Schnapps' Head: The hairbrush again, slapped against my palm.

* Whip Effect: A thick hair elastic stretched between my fingers, then snapped on my leg. Ouch.

* Dominatrix Hissing: "Hiss! Hiss! Rah! Hiss!"

* Weightlifting Noise: This was the hardest one. I wanted something that sounded like a ratcheting wrench -- or maybe a jack -- but I'm not exactly swimming in tools. So I took three strings of cheap mardi-gras beads, wrapped them around the back of a wooden chair, and pulled them back and forth. It really worked!

Jack Donahue's Tap Dancing Jokes

I know what you're craving...you want to hear some tap-dancing jokes from 1929! Fortunately I just ran across this advertisement for the Jack Donahue / John Boyle school.


Jack -- the guy in the picture -- was known as an eccentric...a tap dancing comedian! He was so convinced that tap dancing was fun that he packed his advertisement full of stinky jokes! He even wrote them himself! No ghost-writer!

MRS. C. CLARK, of Park Avenue, has formed a new beginners' class with some friends. She and a couple of gentlemen were running over the class work while dressed for the street. One of our teachers said, "You can't enjoy that work with high heels." "They're not heels," sez she, "they're nice young fellers."

Really! Mrs. Clark actually sez that! Here's another.

MARILYN MILLER, Warner Bros.' star in coming production of "Sally," who has been working two and three hours a day on step creations by Johnny Boyle, stops a minute and asks, "If, when I get to California, I forget one of these steps, what'll I do?" "Call me up," sez Boyle. "I'll put the phone on the floor and do the taps for you." "Won't we be pinched for tapping the wires?" asks Marilyn?

A joke so good they went all the way to California to get the punch line!

Fortunately, Donahue is aware of his own failings:

That's old, but so is dancing which gets better all the time and that's more than you can say for fish...

WHAT? Jackie-boy, you tap dancing eccentric...WHAT?

Anyway, the jokes are terrible, but the REAL punchline for the advertisement is the picture of Donahue's partner John Boyle, who looks like he's about to murder somebody...probably somebody who always tells stupid jokes and grins like a loon.

(From the June 15, 1929 New Yorker)

Appreciating the Chorus Girl

The New Yorker, May 12, 1929.

The artist was John Reynolds. He created a real flurry of cartoons for the magazine between 1928 and 1930, but appears to have been subsequently forgotten.

Fred and Portland

I hear a lot of great comedy duos while listening to old time radio, but one of my favourites is Fred Allen and Portland Hoffa. There's something about his deadpan sarcasm and her earnest stupidity -- and strangely clipped delivery -- that makes me happy. Not to mention they have a decidedly bizarre and almost scary style of humour.

After years of hearing them guest-star on other people's programs, I've finally gotten started on the Fred Allen Show proper. Here I am, listening to the first existent episode (from Christmas day 1932) and I'm already in love.

FRED: Who's first on your list?

PORTLAND: Grandpa. I wanna buy him some liver tonic.

FRED: "Doctor Groan's" is the best.

PORTLAND: Yes, that's very good. The man upstairs used that for twenty years. It cured HIM!

FRED: That's fine.

PORTLAND: He died last week.

FRED: Well, if he died cured, that's something.

PORTLAND: You can't blame the liver tonic.

FRED: No?

PORTLAND: No! After the old man died they had to beat his liver with a stick for three days to kill it.

If I had a daughter, I would seriously consider naming her Portland.

Quaint Humour For a Rainy Day

On a cold, rainy day, a little backwards-looking vaudeville-style humour from the '50s is just what you need:

LEFTY: (Entering a prison cell) Well, I've got company. What's your name, punk?

BLACKY: Blacky.

LEFTY: Yeah?

BLACKY: Yeah.

LEFTY: Why do they call you "Blacky?"

BLACKY: I never take a bath.

(From the May 20th, 1953 episode of the Bob Hope Show, with Richard Widmark)

Dr. Seuss and Flit: "Theatrical Note"

I was beginning to wonder if Dr. Seuss had given up on being a media whore, but no! Here he is on January 5, 1929 with yet another "Flit" advertisement.

This picture gives us some crucial insight into vaudeville; we now know that these sorts of acts juggled cheese-balls, candles, flowers, piranhas, and "bowling-and-killing" implements, all while standing on the ass-faced pig-dog.

Why Groucho Marx is holding the Flit I have no idea.

Vaudeville

Margaret: That scar on your face is very romantic.

Bob: That's my mouth.

(Paraphrased from The Bob Hope Show, March 4, 1953)

More Vaudeville Cats, Plus Special JJ Synchronicity Bonus!

I've just finished Douglas Gilbert's "American Vaudeville." It really is an exceptional book. Sloppy, yes, full of asides and written almost like a journal, but if you pay close attention you get a real sense of the interconnectedness of vaudeville; the stage hands, the performers, the booking agents, the theatre chain owners, the critics.

But of course you want to hear about the vaudeville cats.

The domestic feline--the writer, who adores them, regrets to say--never graduated with high honors in vaudeville although there were a number of successful cat acts. Of course, these cats are not dangerous, but they are unreliable, merely because they are supreme individualists, preferring to do the thing they want at the time they want to do it; which should be understandable...

Yet even [Tetchow] could get from his pets, for indeed they were that, but one trick each. His star performer was a tom who ran from the wings, scrambled up a rope hanging from the proscenium arch, got into a basket attached to a parachute and came floating down to the stage.

Heck, my cat could do that. Or at least she would if there was a toilet up there to drink out of.

It may be unnecessary to say that goats are difficult to work with and more unreliable than cats.

So no goats in baskets.

Special synchronicity bonus for reader jj! He mentioned this act last week, and what did I find on page 247?

Willie [Hammerstein] combed the museums and side shows for his freaks. In Philadelphia he found the wonderful Sober Sue...A number of the best comics of the period tried [to make her laugh]--Sam Bernard, Willie Collier, Eddie Leonard, Louis Mann. All failed. But the customers kept coming, not to see Sober Sue, but the comedians who (without salary) were contributing thousands of dollars in prestige and box-office take... When the engagement terminated it was discovered that her facial muscles were paralyzed and it was physically impossible for her to laugh.

Apparently Sober Sue suffered from the very odd Mobius syndrome, and her real name was Susan Kelly.

More Quirky Vaudeville Anecdotes

I'm having so much fun re-reading Douglas Gilbert's "American Vaudeville." His anecdotes about popular variety acts are priceless and rapid fire. I can't vouch for his accuracy -- heck, he was there and I wasn't -- but vaudeville was so exaggerated to begin with that you can forgive the occasional over-the-top description.

Here are a few more of my favourite moments in the book. First off, he reprints a wonderfully nasty song by Dan Collyer called "Tommy, Don't Wriggle the Baby."

Now I am the oldest one of a family numbering twenty.
At the tender age of one begun my troubles of which I had plenty.
The children I had to nurse, with an infant's nursery bottle.
And when they were twins, upon my pins!--the infants I'd like to throttle!

CHORUS:
Tommy don't wriggle the baby.
Please don't tickle the baby.
Be pertickeler, perpendickeler
Always carry the child.

I think this would be a good companion song to the Talking Heads' "Stay Up Late."

I'm intrigued by the short chapter regarding Charlie Case, who Gilbert describes as "a natural Negro, a gentle neurotic (strange combination!)". Ahem. The transcription of one of Case's routines is unlike any vaudeville act I've heard before, so deadpan in its weirdness. It has a touch of the Marx Brothers to it but is so toned down...

Father was a peculiar man. Us children didn't understand him. Mother understood him. Mother could always tell when father'd been drinking. We couldn't tell. We used to think he was dead.

In the "synchronicity" department, just a few weeks ago I blogged about the practice of "paying the angles" on 1920s radio. This was just as big a problem in vaudeville, and Gilbert knows who to blame.

Lottie Gilson...almost ruined her art with an innovation that is still a nuisance in night clubs and on the radio--song plugging. She was the first of the pluggers, singing for an extra fee the most awful junk of the one-finger Tin-Pan Alley boys...

For an interesting article about the birth of the "hit song," see this parlor songs page.

Life Was Cheap For the Vaudeville Felines (plus "socks")

In his rather informal book "American Vaudeville," author Douglas Gilbert often goes off on wild tangents, describing the long-lost vaudeville routines that he obviously pines for. He takes real delight in remembering the more bizarre acts for us, and I take a real delight in reading about them:

A performer whose name nobody can recall had an act called "The Cat Piano." It comprised a number of live cats confined in narrow boxes with wire netting on the front ends. Artificial tails extended from the rear. This performer was a marvelous cat imitator and miaowed the "Miserere" by pulling the cats' tails. Spits, snarls, and plaintive mews added to the effect of the back-fence serenade.

He also mentions "Nelson's Boxing Cats" in his huge list of standard acts from 1880 to 1930, sadly with no further details.

Here's another passage that I love:

Most of the museums pasted warnings in dressing rooms that the words "slob," "sucker," "damn," "hell," and "socks" were forbidden. The ban on "socks" may seem unreasonable today [1940] but in the eighties crude jests--"stronger than father's socks," or "I threw my socks at the wall and they stuck"--were common gags.

Next time I'm at a party I'll be sure to try out some of those sock gags. "The wine has a pungent bouquet...stronger than father's socks!"

Pie in the Pundit

I am fascinated by the slow accumulation of hits, comments, links, and subscriptions that my videos are pulling in. I wonder what I am doing that is "intriguing," what people EXPECT me to be doing, and what I might do to actually turn them off.

When I noticed that some of my subscribers were interested in pieing -- no doubt in a fetishy way -- I got even more curious: what do they like about pieing, and what makes a good "pieing video" for them?

I decided to make a pieing video in my own way, without ever having watched any of the OTHER videos. Over the holidays I built up the idea in my head, and then at 3am on New Year's Day I decided the time was right; also I had to do it soon or the pie would go bad.



Off the top of my head I can say that it was a cold, wet, and slimy experience, and that lemon meringue doesn't stick to CoverFX E20 cream foundation. I also think it would have been more fun to have the pie THROWN at me -- in the true spirit of a vaudeville pastry-attack -- but there was nobody else around so it had to be me.

I'm most interested to find out if "pie in the face" fans HATE the video. They probably want to see gorgeous, scantily-dressed, model-perfect women getting surprised by the approaching pie, not a scruffy, post-bar drag queen, pontificating without eyelashes and wearing a very old T-shirt.

So for the next few weeks I'll be eagerly watching the comments and anticipating the "hate comments" that I have managed to totally avoid so far. Are people ready for a gentler, smarter, uglier "pie in the face" video? We'll see, but I doubt it!

Fleischmann's Yeast: For Men Who Drag Little Girls Around

In the June 23, 1928 issue of The New Yorker, Stanley Carvet writes:

Returning from a tour of Africa and Australia, I found that I had contracted stomach trouble. Thinking it would wear off, I started east on a well-known vaudeville circuit. But instead of getting better, my trouble rapidly became acute. At Omaha I decided I would have to cancel the rest of my route. A fellow performer, however, suggested Yeast. Said I, 'I'll try it,' and that night I began. Every day I ate several cakes. Well, I was able to go right on with my act, thanks to Fleischmann's Yeast, doing three strenuous dancing shows daily. In a short time I was in first-class shape.

That's alright for you, Stanley, but what about that little girl? It amazes me that his name doesn't turn up a few police reports from Google, but I guess those vaudeville guys were pretty crafty (not to mention "tight").

Vaudeville

A fashion hostess is telling viewers about all the latest fashions. Meanwhile, off camera, her drunk and obnoxious husband is heckling her.

HOSTESS: Hemlines are inching down, and formalwear is reaching ankle-length again. Gentlemen, wouldn't you love to see your wives in something long and
flowing?

HUSBAND: Yeah, a RIVER!

HOSTESS: Stop it

HUSBAND: May I go wee now?

HOSTESS: You may.

HUSBAND: Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

From The Benny Hill Show.

Vaudeville

During the final funny seconds of the April 1st 1951 episode of "The Big Show":

Joan Davis: Fine. If none of you fellas wanna take me out to dinner, I'll just go shadooin' after the show.

Bob Hope: What's "shadooin'" after the show?

Joan Davis: Nothin', and it's a date!

Bob Hope: Trapped! And by a corny joke!

Vaudeville

From February 5, 1948's episode of "It Pays to Be Ignorant"

Lulu McConnell: Before I left home this morning, I rocked my husband to sleep.

Tom Howard: Awww, that's sweet.

Lulu McConnell: Yeah, you should've seen the rock I used.

Vaudeville

I'm not much of an Abbott & Costello fan but they probably didn't write this joke anyway:

Costello: I've been experimenting with shortwaves!

Abbott: When did you start experimenting with shortwaves?

Costello: Ever since I got slapped by a tall WAC!

It's a joke so clean you could tell your grandparents! And for those people who AREN'T grandparents, here's some context: a WAVE, a WAC, and for additional bonus points, a WREN.

PS: Overheard on the March 7, 1946 edition of the "Abbott and Costello Show."

Old Gold

Another set of ongoing advertisements in The New Yorker is "Now You Tell One," a 100% unfunny ad-comic that started appearing in the Spring of 1927.

Drawn by Clare Briggs -- who produced one of the first (if not the first) newspaper comic strips -- the advertisements are usually about a wife who forgets to buy Old Gold cigarettes. Her husband is forced to smoke ANOTHER brand of cigarettes while doing some important piece of work (talk on the radio, give a speech), and he ends up coughing all the way through.

The strips always end with somebody saying that Old Golds have "not a cough in a carload," which is not the world's best punchline, believe me.

Here's a slightly different take on the gag, featuring "Frank and Earnest" (not to be confused with the comic strip from the '7os), "direct from the Gus Sun Time" (a vaudeville circuit). I suspect that Frank and Earnest actually existed -- because of their fleshed-out style and the weird note at the end -- but I can't find anything about them online. Either way I hope their routines were better than this.

"Got a new pair of shoes today, Frank...how do they look?"

"Immense Earnest, absolutely immense!"

"Maybe you can tell me who wears the biggest hat in the army?"

"A cinch, Earnest, a cinch...the guy with the biggest head."

"You're so smart, can you tell me why an Old Gold cigarette is like a hot dog?"

"Because you can't get a bark out of either of them."

"Give the boy credit for a hit. But now get set for a fast one."

"Shoot Earnest shoot."

"Then tell me why Old Gold Cigarettes are like a carload of hams."

"Earnest, THERE'S one that stops the old riddle king. Infrorm me."

"Because they're smoked ALL OVER!"

"AND HOW!"

The cartoon ends with this comment: "Note: The boys like their vegetables FRESH."

The Best Joke, Ever

Q: Where do all the little bugs go in the winter time?

A: Search me.

Q: No thanks!