"
The Gay Nighties"
*** (out of ****)
You've dived into the comedies of the Marx Brothers with gusto, and you've tackled the work of the Ritz Brothers with equal zest and yet your cinematic appetite for cockeyed, anti-authoritarian comedy lingers. Where to turn next? Perhaps into the waiting arms of Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough.
Forgotten today, the comedy team of Clark and McCullough starred in a number of comedy shorts at Fox - nearly all of which were destroyed in the infamous fire on the Fox lot in 1937 - and RKO between 1928 - 1935. With this being the year of Life is Short - my year long look at short films, with a heavy emphasis on comedy shorts - now was the perfect time to discuss the duo.
Of all the RKO Clark and McCullough shorts, "The Gay Nighties" (1933) may be one of my favorites, a political satire that implies politics is full of dirty tricks and dishonest politicians.
Clark is B. Oglethorpe Hives and McCullough is his associate Blodgett. They are a pair of campaign managers working for Oliver Beezley (John Sheehan). (Did you get the joke? The names Beezley and Hives. Bee hive.) Beezley is worried he may lose out to opponent Commodore Amos Pipp (James Finlayson), who claims to have a "spotless reputation". Hives and Blodgett believe the only way to turn the election around is by finding something indecent from Pipp's past. What they find is he has a weakness for the ladies. Now they must arrange for Pipp's to be discovered in a compromising situation with a woman. The grand plan is to have Blodgett dress as a woman to meet Pipp in a hotel room and Hives will snap a photo.
Unfortunately, Blodgett proves to be far too unattractive as a woman - he doesn't even shave off his moustache - causing Hives to abandon their plan. They are going to need to a find a real woman instead. As a last resort they ask Beezley's wife (Dorothy Granger). Before their plan can be implemented however the boys contend with a wild assortment of guests at the hotel - a sleepwalking countess (Sandra Shaw) - who enters in and out of rooms wearing a revealing nightie, a busy body detective (Monte Collins) - who makes sure to inform everyone there is no ukulele playing allowed - and a man (Charles Williams) looking for a place to sleep.
With a running time of nearly 20 minutes, this pre-code comedy, directed by Mark Sandrich, is as bawdy and zany as a burlesque act. Take for example a sequence that may recall the Marx Brothers or Olsen & Johnson. The boys are in their hotel room, devising their plan when all of a sudden, one by one strangers start entering and exiting the room. The detective is having a shootout with a burglar, a woman walks in, steals their blanket and leaves. All without saying a word. And then the sleep walking countess enters and lays on their bed.
This may make Clark and McCullough too difficult to digest for some modern viewers. They wouldn't be able to verbalize it in this way but they wouldn't appreciate the "vaudeville on film" approach to the comedy. "The Gay Nighties" is a blizzard of sexual innuendos and puns that they'd consider too corny and dated. Of course, Clark and McCullough did come from the tradition of vaudeville and burlesque. And the "naughty" humor is part of the appeal watching their comedies. As individuals walk in and out of the room, all assume Blodgett is a woman and "she" and Hives are in the middle of a romantic tryst.
To the "movie critics" (AKA sheep) this all lacks the polished refinement of Abbott & Costello or the Marx Brothers - both of which is also vaudeville on film. The critics would say what was missing from Clark and McCullough was a lack of talent behind the camera. The boys didn't have a team of A list gag writers working on their material. They didn't have talented directors visually elevate their comedies either. "The Gay Nighties" however had Mark Sandrich as director. RKO would promote him to feature-length projects, most notably Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals such as
"Top Hat" (1935),
"The Gay Divorcee" (1934) and "Shall We Dance" (1937). In addition to directing a few other Clark and McCullough comedies, Sandrich also directed Jack Benny -
"Buck Benny Rides Again" (1940) and "Love Thy Neighbor" (1940) with Fred Allen - and the comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey - "Hips, Hips, Hooray! (1934) and
"Cockeyed Cavaliers" (1934). Wheeler and Woolsey's second film appearance was in the musical - comedy, "The Cuckoos" (1930) based on a Broadway show called
The Ramblers which featured Clark and McCullough. Also worth noting is the cinematographer for "The Gay Nighties" was Nick Musuraca, who had a long career in film and television working on the classic film noir "Out of the Past" (1947) and the horror film
"The Cat People" (1942)
What "The Gay Nighties" really suffers from is poor editing. A lot ended up on the cutting room floor. Some of which was critical to the plot. For example, we never see how Pipp was convinced to meet a lady in the hotel room. The audience can assume Hives and Pipp discussed it, because once the meeting between Pipp and the lady doesn't go over well, Pipp calls Hives. But does Pipp really not know that Hives is one of the managers on the Beezley campaign? How did Hives explain who he is? The meeting between these two had the potential for some humorous dialogue. Disappointingly this was all done to keep the comedy down to two reels.
There's enough madness in "The Gay Nighties" to keep audiences entertained but the story feels rushed. An additional ten minutes to more properly set up all the conflicts and character motivations would have gone a long way to establishing this as something of a comedy masterpiece.
"
Odor in the Court"
*** (out of ****)
In "Odor in the Court" (1934), Clark and McCullough tear down another "respectable" institution, the legal system. Similar to "The Gay Nighties" in its antics, "Odor in the Court" is another prime candidate for the team's best comedy short.
Clark and McCullough are two lawyers with the slogan, "no case too small - no fee too large". Clark is named Blackstone this time and McCullough plays Blodgett again. In their comedies McCullough's character was usually named Blodgett while Clark's characters were often given names meant to correlate to his profession. The name Blackstone is probably a reference to the English legal scholar, Sir. William Blackstone.
June Bolt (Helen Collins) plans to divorce her husband Willie (Lorrin Raker) in order to marry professional boxer Plug Hardy (Tom Kennedy). Willie doesn't object to getting the divorce however he is adamant about not wanting to pay alimony. To achieve this he hires Blackstone and Blodgett, while June has acquired the legal services of Thackery D. Ward (Jack Rice), the best lawyer in the state. Despite his reputation, Ward plans on scheming his client out of the full amount of the settlement, and intends to split it with Hardy. Not to be outdone in the unethical department, Blackstone and Blodgett arrange to have their secretary photographed kissing Ward. Ward is engaged to a judge's daughter. The same judge that it just so happens will be presiding over the divorce case.
Blackstone and Blodgett proceed to make a mockery of the courtroom by bringing a marching band with them and a soda and popcorn vendor. They needlessly shout out objections merely to irritate the judge and make accusations - which may not be entirely wrong - that the plaintiff has been coached by her lawyer when on the witness stand. As funny as these shenanigans are, it recalls much of what Wheeler and Woolsey did in their feature-length comedy,
"Peach-O-Reno" (1931) which I found to be a much funnier and more biting commentary on marriage and divorce.
Much like in "The Gay Nighties" one gets the feeling there was a lot of editing done to "Odor in the Court" so as to keep it as a two reeler. Information is revealed in awkward ways, such as Ward being engaged - we never see his bride to be - and the relationship between the judge and Ward isn't played for any laughs. And what exactly is the relationship between Ward and Hardy? Why are they defrauding June? And does June really love Hardy? There seems to be so much more to these characters than what appears on-screen.
One issue first time audiences may have with Clark and McCullough is while technically they were a two man team, they don't follow the usual straight man / comic set-up. All of the comedy falls on the shoulders of Bobby Clark. This doesn't necessarily bother me as I understand what the Clark persona is meant to be - a phony authority on any given subject in the tradition of Groucho Marx and W.C. Fields. Clark is loud and obnoxious, confident and deceitful. You will notice his characters "wear" glasses. The glasses are in fact painted on. Surely those interacting with him know the glasses aren't real. It takes a lot of confidence to try to and deceive people into believing they are.
And yet there is an energetic silliness to "Odor in the Court" that I find infectious. This zany and broad style of comedy has always appealed to me. I laugh at the absurdity of it all and get a kick out of the pre-code nature of the humor such as when a woman's dress flies up as she stands over a manhole.
I can't pretend Clark and McCullough were as funny as Laurel and Hardy or the Marx Brothers but I hate to think of them as being forgotten. They were as fluent in comedy hijinks and anti-establishment sentiment as the best from their era. They turned chaos into comedy art.
"The Gay Nighties" and "Odor in the Court" are two very good comedies to use as an introduction into Clark and McCullough's mad comedy world.
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