Comedy Tonight

    

from my clown collection

      Is each episode of the Beverly Hillbillies funnier than the movie A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum? Yes, I have to return to the Beverly Hillbillies for one more nostalgic post. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the movie version, came out in 1966. I don't remember if I saw it at the Palace Theater in Hamburg, the closest and only place we went for the movies back then, or if I saw it on television which would have been a couple of years later. But I thought A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was the funniest thing I had ever seen! I can't remember any of it now, except there were togas and the song Comedy Tonight!

     It was not too long after I hooted and laughed till tears ran down my face while watching the movie that I saw an article – I guess in the newspaper, we didn't do TVGuide back then, and I doubt it was in the Smithsonian, but you never know. The article was comparing the comedy in the Beverly Hillbillies with the comedy in the movie A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and concluded that the former was funnier!

     Oh gasp! How could that possibly be? The Beverly Hillbillies was formulaic and corny – each episode might be good for a ha ha or two, but it was just wrong to compare it to what I thought was the brilliance of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum!

And I remember complaining bitterly to my mother about it. How could anyone say that any episode of a corny TV show was funnier than a ninety-nine minute laugh fest/tear inducing movie like A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?

   

 Surprisingly, Mom had an answer for me! She told me to consider what has to be packed into a thirty minute TV show (less than 24 minutes actually – the rest were commercials!) - The plot, action, and comedy must be introduced quickly, and then the rest of the story needs to get told and wrapped up, with plenty of sight gags, jokes all along the way, to make it a comedy. In a movie, there is more time to set up a situation for a bigger belly laugh later on. So the Hillbillies likely were more laughs-per-minute than A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and if that is the measure for a comedy, one would conclude the Beverly Hillbillies was/is funnier.

     Mom was not necessarily a fan of the Beverly Hillbillies, so I was intrigued with her response, and thanks to our talk that night, I've learned to appreciate what has to go into episodes of sit-coms – the urgency to get the comedy across in such a small time frame.

     Recently I started watching episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies – season 1 so far, to study the comedy in it. As an old person now, I'm enjoying the antics and spryness of Granny. Jed's even more good looking than when I was young! Gotta love them both! I call Mike into the room when Ellie Mae slides down the stair banister – one of the many repeating jokes in the first season. I'm appreciating the comedy beyond the formulaic plots. And it is fun. Some ha ha's, but no belly laughs as yet.

Rabbit Box, Athens, Georgia 2015

     There have been other movies in my days that I swore were the funniest movies I had ever seen. But when I watched them again, decades later, eh, not so much. Paint Your Wagon was one and Hallelujah Trail was another. The former does have its moments upon second viewing, the latter, however, had me cringing. I have not seen A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum since my first viewing back in the '60s. It is on my list, but I'm afraid of being disappointed – will I have to concur that the Beverly Hillbillies is funnier after all?

     You all know how much I love clowns, but the article I've mentioned here along with the conversation with Mom is likely how I got to studying comedy – not that I'm an expert, but, yeah, how about that?

20200714 57 Comedy Tonight