My 100+ Favorite or Most Admired Comedians

My favorite Keaton feature-length movies: The General, The Navigator, Sherlock Jr, Steanboat Bill Jr, The Cameraman, Parlor Bedroom & Bath,

Bea Lillie never made a film that showed her at her best. Are You There? (of which a 30-minute fragment can sometimes be found on VHS) is the most representative film of her work. It's a shame that her companion/agent turned down Mary Poppins, for Bea Lillie would have been perfect for that role. Bea has good scenes in Dr Rhythm and Thoroughly Modern Millie. On Approval may be her best film but it offers her in somewhat of a departure from her more bizarre and witty stage persona. Lady Peel (she was married to a British Knight) blended an ultra sophisticated manner with some outlaandishly eccentric physicality.

Groucho, Harpo & Chico: my favorite Marx Films (in order): Animal Crackers, Duck Soup, NIght at the Opera, Day at the Races & Night in Casablanca.

I think the Mutual shorts show Chaplin at his best. Of his features I prefer Modern Times and (yes) Limelight, but most critics and fans will agree that Gold Rush and City Lights are better.

His best features are 1) Tramp, Tramp, Tramp and 2) The Strong Man. I enjoy the quirky Hallelujah! I'm a Bum and most of Harry's short silent films, especially Saturday Afternoon (a silent with sidekick Vernon Dent) and many of his short talkies, especially The Head Guy (shows Harry dancing). Contrary to the lies about Langdon that Frank Capra spread (when Harry had to fire Capra, that soon-to-be-great director-but-venal-man sent a poison pen letter to every studio in Hollywood to try to destroy Langdon). Decades later, after Langdon's death, Capra used his autobiography to claim credit for inventing Harry's screen persona, but Langdon, like Keaton, was a vaudeville headliner with an already developed characterization when he came to Hollywood in 1925. Langdon had the misfortune to score in silent films just as sound was becoming feasible and studios dumped expensive silent stars for far less expensive hopefuls from Broadway. Still Harry's 1930s sound shorts for Hal Roach are delightful, and even in the last few years of his life, Langdon enlivened some cheaply-produced features like Misbehaving Husbands and his two films with another Roach alumnus, Charlie Rogers. In all, Harry Langdon made almost 100 films, about two dozen of them features and most of the them with sound.

Although Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy had solo movie careers before they were paired, they reached the top shlef of comedy as the team of Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy

Although Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy had solo movie careers before they were paired, they reached the top shlef of comedy as the team of Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy

In my opinion the most underrated and ignored of the great comedians. Born in Australia (given date is 1881, but 1876 or thereabout is more likely otherwise he would have graduated from pre-med school at age 16!), he wrote show, played Shakespeare and circus before he left for the USA in 1907 with his wife. In the USA he worked West Coast music hall, then managed and starred in burlesque troupe (Roscoe Arbuckle was one of his discoveries) before he joined the Ziegfeld Follies in 1911 and played in big-time vaudeville until the 1920s. He was the first big white star who chose to team with a black comedian (Bert Williams) in four editions of the Ziegfeld Follies 1912-13-14-15 (and was the only white pallbearer at Bert's funeral). Leon also staged four those editions of the Follies. Then, between 1911 and 1929, Leon Errol starred (and usually directed as well) 20 Broadway shows! Errol starred in seven silent films (leading ladies included Dorothy Gish, Nita Naldi, Dorothy Mackail & Colleen Moore), and after sound came in, he made over 100 shorts and about 60 features. Among his shorts, do not miss The Jitters (1938, RKO). When he died in 1951 (at age 75), he had signed to make a situation comedy series for TV. -- Frank Cullen

of the Wiere Brothers

of the Wiere Brothers

of the Wiere Brothers

of Clark & (Paul) McCullough

In his day (1920s-1930s) he was consider along with Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin as one of the USA;s three great comedians. Since then, most people would substitute Buster Keaton in Wynn's place. Ed Wynn was a top star of vaudeville, Broadway show and network radio, but not as successful in movies until his old age aand a new career in Disney films and with Jerry Lewis. At the same time, he, like oother older comedians (Milton Berle, Chico Marx, Buster Keaton, Bobby Clark and Bert Lahr) worked successfully in dramas as well as comedy. On Broadway he produced, wrote and starred in his shows. In the early days of television, Ed Wynn and Buster Keaton were the biggest stars to give TV a try. Both left their weekly shows after two years only because TV ate up their material faster than they could create it.

Mae West and her character of Diamond Lil were one and the same in every movie and every stage appearance she made. Only her closest friends saw much beyond the image she sold. Like other great comedians, she wrote most of her material, all her plays and much of her movie scripts. She was barely five feet tall but she wore high platform shoes. Hollywood make-up men said her skin was so fine that she needed only the barest apllication of makeup (false eyelashes were another matter). Her comedic technique included 'working slower' than the other cast members. Seldom did she work fast (one rare occasion was in Go West when she was preparing to sing opera). Mae was well-liked by stage and film crews for her professionalism, even temper and consideration of their talents and work. Her boyfriends remained friends and spoke highly of her even when she turned them in for newer models.

Bizarre, nearly ghoulish appearance, bizarre sense of comedy. Eccentric comedy dancer, physical comedian and character actor.

Dusty was a star comedian of black revues and vaudeville. His few films include the short "Open the Door Richard" and the features-length Killer Diller and Boardinghouse Blues.

His great strenths were his judgment of what was funny, his modest artitic ego and his common sense. He assembled a top flight supporting cast of comedians and stooges for whom he largely played straightman. His characterization gradually changed over the decades, as he aged, from sophistoicated ladies man to egotistical and stingy patsy. His most suitable medium was network radio where his excellent creative crew (including Mel Blanc) used sound to better effect than any other comedy show.

What was more unlikely than the great success of a ventriloquist Edgar Bergen on sightless network radio? Fortunately, Bergen's skill was not as a technician but as a comedy writer and staightman for his most successful comedy partner, the brash, sophisticated and wise-beyond-his-years wooden vent doll, Charlie McCarthy, that Bergen voiced. Bergen's top skills were writing clever comedy dialogue and seemingly overlapping his dialogue as himself and his dialogue as Charlie. His act worked best in radio and nightclubs. Film never quite knew how to stage his (or any vent's act until Jay Johnson's on TV's "Soap").

A shrewd comedian and excellent pop singer, she was one of many female comedians who performed what the Brits lovingly call a "grotesque'. But while some women comedians capitalized on their height (Charlotte Greenwood & Edna Mae Oliver) or lack of it (Daphne Pollard), their avoidupois (Marie Dressler & Trixi Friganza) or lanky appearance (Nellie Wallace & Joan Davis), Fanny's burlesk of vamps, ballerinas, torch singers was done with a wink---she didn't let the audience forget that she was a attractive woman burlesking glamor and high art.

Although critics do not include him in their articles about the "great clowns," it is fair to say, given the number of films he made in the late 1920s. throughout the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s, and the huge cumulative box office his movies earned for Warner Brothers, that Joe E. Brown probably ranks as the most popular comedian of the Hollywood Studio talkie era. And few comedians come out of retirement so successfully that their final major film is regarded their best ("Some Like It Hot")?

The last of the female physical and musical comedians, her TV variety show series (1967-78) mainstained a high level of comedy and musical numbers for its entire run.

Burns made his earliest success as the straighman to comic partner Graice Allen then, after her death, reinvented his character as a wise, randy elder statesman of stand-up comedy and comedy actor. He ranks as one of the top straightmen along with Bud Abbott and Moe Howard. Was in great demand for comedy concerts and Vegas-style shows almost until his death at 100 years of age. A success in every branch of showbiz from vaude to films, radio-TV, nightclubs and recordings.

Many comedians and critics do not credit Cantor for his comedic gifts but categorize him as a song-&-dance man. That is likely because off-stage in the company of other comedians, Cantor wasn't funny. Neither were Charlie Chaplin or Ed Wynn. Also, by the time Cantor starred on TV in the 1950s, he was no longer the "Apostle of Pep." But watch any of his 1930s mvies he made for SAm Goldwyn, and you see an inventive comedian at work in well-made films. His schlemiel with chutzpah characterization presaged Danny Kaye's schnook and Woody Allen's sexually-stirred nerd.

Better known as Pee Wee Herman,

Based on the final half of his career it's hard to justify Hope's inclusion on this list, but judging him by his best work in an overexposed career on Broadway, Hollywood, radio & TV (His 1930s and early 1940s movies, his partnership with Bing Crosby in some of the Road movies and, expecially, his masterful hosting of the Academy Awards on about 20 occasions. Ar his peak, he was a masterof light comedyand song & dance, and was credible in physical comedy.

What must presage any evaaluation of the Three Stooges is that they were forced (for twenty years and until old age) to grind out film comedy at a pace and with a budget that did not allow for decnet scripts, production or editing and were usually helmed by bottom-of-the-barrel directors. Moe Howard was not only a good comedian with excellent timing and an original characterization (a bully only a trifle smarter than Curley, Shemp or Larry), he was one of the finest straightmen in the business. He could also work solo, as he did later in his career doing stand-up.

A nervous and gentle man, Shemp Hpoward was uncomfortable as one of Ted Healy's Stooges and Healy's roughhouse style, and Shemp went solo and supported comedians such as W. C. Fields, Olsen & Johnson and Abbott & Costello. When his brother Moe later pulled out of Healy's act and formed The Three Stooges, brother Jerry (as Curly) became the third Stooge (along with Moe and Larry Fine). When Curly became too ill to work, Shemp loyally gave up his lucrative solo career to rejoin Moe and Larry as the Third Stooge.

When he joined his one-time singer-straightman partner, the duo of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis immediately caught the public's fancy and they zoomed to the top. Lewis was fresh, exciting and disciplined. When the tram split, it was assumed that Martin would sink and Lewis would continue his rise to fame/ Wrong. Instead Lewis had trouble fining his role as asolo while Martin became more famous and successful. Lewis' solo screen personality became goofy and overbearing (and his movies were slackly paced) while his TV and live stage persona went Las Vegas-y, a pose that suited Martin but seemed smarmy for Lewis. Later in life, Lewis reclaimed himself professionally as a bizarre older comedian--sort of a six-foot eccentric, and became a credible straight actor.

Richard Pryor should be higher on this list becaused he was one of the great monologists, asmportant or more sothan Lenny Bruce. But his films, with a few exceptions like Jo Jo Dancer Your Life Is Calling, were more silly and run-of-the-mill than daring. Post-WWII African American performers appeared suave & intelligent or swaggerly aggressive.Pryor married the old-style nervous ineffectual but hollow braggart of old-school black comics with the observation comedy of the new.

One of the more recent of physically adept comedians who also has vocal and acting ability, Short never got the starring feature film roles that allowed him full play in a lead role (Three Amigos was a debatable exception). Mostly, he was hired in films as a supoporting comedian to bring life to a film starring less funny comedians. On Broadway he a few starring oppotunities in the Goodby Girl and Little Me. The latter was a revival of a show that originally starred Sid Caesar in multiple madcap comedy roles, the type of feat that Bert Lahr mastered. In Short's generation of comedians it's diffuclt to think of anyone but him capable of that feat.