When Comedy Was King (1960)

Dwight Weist: Narrator

Quotes 

• Narrator : [Last lines]  So ends our visit to the era of the great silent clowns who mass-produced laughter and sold happiness and who passed into oblivian just before the years when the world needed them the most.

• Narrator : A young Charlie Chaplin swept so swiftly to fame was to grow into a figure of controversy. But, in 1914, all that lay undreamed of decades in the future. Whatever one may think of Chaplin, these films, made so long before the troubled times, are blameless.

• Narrator : Across 30 years of time, back to a neighborhood theater of the 1920s. They called them: Palaces of the Silent Drama, though they were far from silent. There was always music. The only things missing were words. And from this very lack there emerged a new art form, one that flourished, then died. The art of the sight gag. Comedy to be seen, not heard. Many believed it the greatest comedy of all. It was to be found on every screen of every theater, every day. It made the 20s roar! We believe it'll make you laugh as loudly as the audiences of so long ago.

• Narrator : The Chaplin story of fabulous success and fabulous trouble was just beginning on this bright September day, 45 years and two world wars ago.

• Narrator : For the next 90 minutes, you will part of a world, a third of a century younger: When Comedy Was King.

• Narrator : Like most of the Keystones, the Chaplin films were shot without a script, off the cuff. The actors ad libbed their stuff as they went along. Scenes requiring split second timing were made in this fashion and they were rarely taken more than once. The reason for this method was economy, but, the result was sometimes a brand of spontaneous fun unapproached since the passing of silent comedy.

• Narrator : Across the lives of madcap Mabel and jovial Fatty alike, were to pass the shadows of scandal, ill fortune, and early death. But, that too was the undreamed of future in these gay Keystone days.

• Narrator : While Bobby makes love, Teddy takes action!

• Narrator : Langdon rose rapidly to stardom. Then, at the height of his career he turned in films directed by himself to a new, strange, off beat kind of comedy full of pathos and even despair. It was like a trumpeter reaching for a celestial high note somewhere beyond human range. Audiences stopped laughing and the little fellow slid into oblivion.

• Narrator : Buster Keaton, the third of the three great and completely original comedy talents to rise in splendor during Comedy's golden age. Chaplin was the Tramp. Langdon was the Baby. Keaton was the Great Stone Face, around whose impassive figure of mad havoc roared like debris around the dead eye of a hurricane.

• Narrator : That's queer.

• Narrator : Summing up all the lack of understanding with which woman has greeted man's efforts since time's beginning, Buster's girl gives him the fisheye. Jilted.

• Narrator : In the unearthly stillness, weird happenings...

• Narrator : From Mark Twain to Will Rogers, America has had many dry wits whose humor sprang from words. Buster Keaton remained its only dry *visual* comedian.

• Narrator : The Mack Sennett Bathing Beauties: introduced in 1912, the Sennett girls brought cheesecake to the screen and popularized the one-piece bathing suit. From their ranks rose such stars as Gloria Swanson, Phyllis Haver, Bebe Daniels, Sally Eilers, and Marie Prevost. Names that brightened the time when those of us who are old were young. And those of us who are young, had not yet been born.

• Narrator : Crafty Mack Sennett knew that the deflation of authority and dignity drew the biggest laughs. And that the old time policeman was the symbol of authority and dignity. His creation, combining the greatest of zeal with the upmost in incompetence became immortal: the Keystone Cops.

• Narrator : In slapstick, as in life, for every sweet dream, there's bound to be a rude awakening.

• Narrator : The characters Laurel and Hardy portrayed had as many layers as an artichoke. First they were bumbling, accident-prone, incompetence upon whom havoc settled at the simplest act. Beneath this, among others, were layers of dauntless dignity, hopeless heroism, and wistful sadness. With deepest of all, a dash of the devil.

• Narrator : Two comedians who produced more laughter than any others; yet, whose greatness was not recognized until the twilight of their lives. In and editorial, The New York Times was to think of skinny Laurel playing against fat Hardy as a bow plays against a fiddle and to recall gay, ingenious music. But, that was after Oliver Hardy could no longer hear the applause.