American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller

We started the year dipping into a delightful surprise – American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller.  Arranged alphabetically, Miller enumerates the countless tropes so frequent in American comedy circa 1900-1966, and why they were funny and what they tell us about Americans of old.

Miller creates an artificial cutoff of 1966, citing anecdotally that the upheavals of the 1960s resulted in a seismic change in what America meant and, consequently, what it meant to be an American.  One would think that this is an invitation for Miller – a professor at Bennington College in Vermont and the author of Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects – to take potshots at the Great American Century.  However, such is not the case at all, as Miller rightly sees the downside of our social “progress.”  More often than not, it would seem to Miller that the America of the 1920s, 30s and 40s was a funnier, and perhaps, better place than the country we know today.  (A sentiment with which we here at the Jade Sphinx are in full agreement.)

The book has entries on a wide array of laugh-getters, including falling safes and anvils, pratfalls, milquetoasts, flappers, hash, hobos, outhouses, rolling pins, castor oil, dishwashing husbands, nosey neighbors and noise – and that is just scratching the surface.  Miller also talks about many of the formerly great venues for this humor, including full-page comic strips, radio comedy, silent movies, and of course, joke books. 

Coming in at 544 pages, one would think that American Cornball more than overstays its welcome; however, one wishes the book was longer and some of the entries more detailed.

Miller’s particular genius is not just in enumerating instances of a comedic trope, but wondering why they were (or are) funny in the first place.  Miller has keen insight into the human condition, and finds many of his observations in the arena of the ridiculous.  Though not a philosopher like G. K. Chesterton (quoted, incidentally, in this volume), Miller’s worldview is that of an expansive humanist with a predisposition to the comic rather than the tragic. 

The encyclopedia format keeps the observations loose and light, and this also proves to be one of the few flaws in the book: when Miller really has something to say (which is often), he is hamstrung by his format.  One hopes that he will follow-up American Cornball with a collection of essays of greater depth and fewer topics, as there is much more for him to say.

But what he does say here is terrific and to be savored.  I read through the volume with a goofy smile plastered on my face – and how could anyone resist a book that cites the Three Stooges, W. C. Fields and the Marx Brothers a source material?

Here is an example of Miller at his best, rifting on the subject of pain:  There is, as far as I know, not one scene in all of Henry James where a character of either sex sits on a thumbtack.  I haven’t read everything by Henry James, but I’ve read enough to know what the rest must be like, and nowhere do I see a thumbtack penetrating an unsuspecting buttock.  Stubbed toes are also few and far between, if they occur at all.  And unlike all those hapless dads on America’s Funniest Home Videos, the males in James’s arcadia never get it in the balls.

Good stuff, that, but better still, here he is midway on his discussion of morons:  In our culture, “That’s not funny” really means “It’s wrong to laugh at that,” which is why we sometimes say it even while laughing.  “That’s not funny” is only secondarily a report on the speaker’s true reactions, though it can be an effort to train those reactions.  If you strongly disapprove of something and therefore insist it isn’t funny, that isn’t quite as dishonest as insisting that O.J. Simpson was never a great running back because you hate the psychopathic asshole he later became.  No, it’s more like refusing to find an actress beautiful because you hate her personality.  Given the determination, you really can suppress your sense of humor, like your sense of beauty.  But if you say, “There’s nothing funny about mental retardation, and for the life of me I’ve never understood why anything thinks there is,” you must be either a hypocrite or a saint.  Either way, you’ve clearly forgotten the jokes of your childhood…..

Then there is this, on farting:  Before it became permissible to discuss farts openly, our forebears relied on all kinds of substitutes— from ducks to tubas, from foghorns to balloons. It may be that the fully lifelike simulation of farts became possible only with later improvements in sheet rubber, but in the pre-whoopee epoch it wasn’t necessary or even desirable for a noisemaker to sound exactly like the real thing; it just had to sound like something sometimes used to symbolize the real thing. Novelty makers are always boasting about how “realistic” their products are, but in this case, realism wasn’t wanted.  Instead, aspiring practical jokers were offered a range of metonymies and metaphors.  Even in our unembarrassed age, the whoopee cushion itself still claims to imitate a “Bronx cheer” or raspberry—not a fart but the imitation of one made by buzzing the lips in what linguists call a bilabial trill. (The reason that sound is called a “raspberry” is that it is or was cockney rhyming slang for “fart,” via “raspberry tart.”) The sound is the best simulation of a fart we can produce with our normal speech apparatus.  In the early 1930s, when whoopee cushions took the world by storm, raspberries too were in fashion, at least on the funny pages—both Dagwood and Popeye had recourse to them now and then.  A little later, Al Capp gave us Joe Btfsplk, the world’s biggest jinx, easily recognized by the small black cloud—a personal fart cloud? —hanging over him at all times. When asked how to pronounce Joe’s surname, Capp would respond with a raspberry, adding, “How else would you pronounce it?”

I loved American Cornball, and spent much of the past few weeks reading it aloud to all and sundry.  This is a treasure for anyone interested in humor – and a perfect gift for those without a sense of one.  Highly recommended – and Mr. Miller, more, please.

Why I’m a Marxist Part I: Groucho

Okay, I’ll admit it – I’m a Marxist.  I’ve been a Marxist for as long as I can remember, dating back to my earliest years of grade school.  And I don’t see it changing any time soon.  I’m a Marxist for life.  (Note to the NSA: this is an old, venerated American tradition called humor.  Just go with it.)

Hard as it is to believe now, but at one time it was possible to be young in the US and have aesthetic and emotional attachments to cultural artifacts of previous generations.  When I grew up in the 1970s, it was just as easy to be a rabid fan of The Marx Brothers or, say, Bela Lugosi, as it was to appreciate Elton John or The Beatles.  Culture was a more amorphous stew of new and old, good and bad, the tried-and-true and the newly emerging.  Radio dramas from the 1940s could still be heard in reruns on radio along with Top 40 programs, and late night television was awash in classic American cinema.  It was a wonderful time to grow up, if one was awake, because the great kaleidoscope of American culture was spread out before you.

That has largely changed.  Our culture has become too fragmented, our viewing and listening habits too balkanized, and our deep and abiding suspicion of anything remotely challenging has shrunken the offerings of our cultural landscape.  It is, I believe, the sneaking suspicion that something not contemporary may be too challenging -- too slow, too much story, not loud enough – that has consigned so much of American culture, both high and pop, to the contemporary dustbin.

Not so just a few decades ago.  And no figures from the Golden Age of American pop culture loomed larger – in college campuses or grade school playgrounds – than the comedy team The Marx Brothers.  It is arguable that the Marx Brothers were more popular in the 1970s than they were in their heyday of the 1930s.  It is a success story that has no real equal in American entertainment, except, of course, for the continuing popularity of the more proletarian Three Stooges.

During this reclamation, the aging and increasingly frail Groucho Marx (1890-1977) managed a one-man show at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and appeared on just about every television venue that would have him.  It was a wonderful coda to a remarkable career, and one that, we hope, made up for many real-life disappointments and setbacks.

Born Julius Henry Marx in New York, Groucho was pushed into show business by his mother, Minnie.  She was convinced that a family act would be a hit, and all five brothers would eventually work onstage as a team or separately.

Chico, the oldest brother, was a compulsive gambler and womanizer who seemed, oddly enough, to be mother’s favorite.  Things came easily to Chico, and Groucho resented that.  Harpo, who clearly had some kind of undiagnosed learning disability, was often the subject of Groucho’s most condescending jokes.  However, Harpo was a genuinely happy man – he had a talent for happiness that Groucho lacked.  (Indeed, Groucho was deeply suspicious of happiness.)  The two younger brothers, Zeppo and Gummo, never really embraced show business, but Groucho felt a responsibility towards them, and often made arrangements to further their careers and businesses.

In fact, Groucho played father to his brood of brothers, something that their real-life father Sam could never quite pull off.  It is perhaps this early imposition of responsibility and obligation that soured Groucho so early in life, and made his private relationships so fraught.  He married three times, twice to women young enough to be his daughter, and spent his sunset years with a conniving adventuress who sucked away his energy and cash while trying to establish herself as a Hollywood player.

But, whatever messiness of his private life, Groucho was probably the most gifted comedian of the 20^th Century.  He had all the gifts: he looked funny, his voice was funny, his walk and mannerisms were funny; he was a gifted physical comedian and a comedic lord of language.

Groucho’s métier was the insult; this has been much degraded of late, but with Groucho it was an art form.  Groucho’s insults relied on real wit, not merely funniness, which is, in the final analysis, the ultimate indication of intelligence.  We could easily fill up multiple pages with examples, but here is one delirious scene from Horse Feathers (1932).  Groucho, as Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, romances college widow Connie Bailey (Thelma Todd) in a rowboat while she tries to steal information on the upcoming college football game:

Wagstaff:   This is the first time I've been out in a canoe since I saw The American Tragedy.

Connie:       Oh, you're perfectly safe, Professor, in this boat.

Wagstaff:   I don't know. I was going to get a flat bottom but the girl at the boat house didn't have one.

Connie:       Well you know, Professor, I could go on like this, drifting and dreaming forever. What a day! Spring in the air.

Wagstaff:   Who, me? I should spring in the air and fall in the lake?

Connie:       Oh, Professor, you're full of whimsy.

Wagstaff:   Can you notice it from there? I'm always that way after I eat radishes.

The football team's signals fall out of Wagstaff's coat pocket into the water and drift by Connie. He boasts that he has a second set of signals in his other pocket: Luckily, I've got a duplicate set in my pocket. I always carry two of everything. This is the first time I've only been out with one woman. Then, she attempts to use baby talk on him to divulge Huxley's football signals:

Connie:       Do you know, Professor, I've never seen football signals? Do you think a little girl like me could understand them?

Wagstaff:   I think a little girl like you would understand practically anything.

Connie:       Is gweat big stwong man gonna show liddle icky baby all about the bad footbawl signals?

Wagstaff (startled): Was that you or the duck? 'Cause if it was you, I'm gonna finish this ride with the duck.

Connie:       If icky baby don't learn about the footbawl signals, icky baby gonna cwy.

Wagstaff:   If icky girl keep on tawking that way, big stwong man gonna kick all her teef wight down her thwoat.

The Marx Brothers made some 13 films in all; some brilliant (Duck Soup, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races), some awful (At the Circus), but all worth seeing, even if for only occasional glimpses of genius.

In the 1950s, Groucho became a solo act, serving as quiz master for You Bet Your Life on both radio and television.  Here was Groucho in his element – talking to a broad cross-section of people and deploying his killer wit.  Oddly enough, this was Groucho’s most celebrated star turn before his great revival in the 1970s, and though amusing, You Bet Your Life was never as inventive, transgressive or fall-down funny as his classic films.

If you have not seen the early Marx Brothers films – particularly the films made at Paramount: The Coconuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers and Duck Soup – do so without delay.  They are among the most wonderful artifacts of American pop culture.