Horton Andrew - A Companion to Film Comedy

Table of Contents

This edition first published 2013

2013 John Wiley & Sons Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A companion to film comedy / edited by Andrew Horton and Joanna E. Rapf.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4443-3859-1 (hardback : alk. paper)

1. Comedy filmsHistory and criticism. 2. Comic, The. I. Horton, Andrew. II. Rapf, Joanna E.

PN1995.9.C55C675 2012

791.43617dc23

2012023048

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover design by Simon Levy Design Associates

Cover images: Charlie Chaplin as the Little Tramp Bettmann / Corbis, from the Archives of Roy Export Company Establishment. Banana skin leeavison / iStockphoto

Notes on Editors and Contributors

Editors

Andrew Horton is the Jeanne H. Smith Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Oklahoma, an award-winning screenwriter, and the author of 24 books on film, screenwriting and cultural studies, including Laughing Out Loud: Writing the Comedy Centered Screenplay (University of California Press, 1999). His films include Brad Pitt's first feature film, Dark Side of the Sun (1988), and the much-awarded Something In Between (1983, Yugoslavia, directed by Srdjan Karanovic). Joanna E. Rapf is a professor of film in the English Department at the University of Oklahoma. Periodically, she also teaches at Dartmouth College. Her books include Buster Keaton: A Bio-Bibliography (1995), On the Waterfront (2003), and Interviews with Sidney Lumet (2005). Recent publications in the area of comedy have been on Roscoe Arbuckle, Harry Langdon, Fay Tincher, Marie Dressler, Jimmy Durante, Jerry Lewis, and Woody Allen.

Contributors

Kristen Anderson Wagner received her Ph.D. in critical studies from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. Her dissertation, Comic Venus: Women and Comedy in American Silent Film , explores the often overlooked work of silent-era comediennes. Suzanne Buchan is Professor of Animation Aesthetics and Director of the Animation Research Centre at the University for the Creative Arts in the United Kingdom. She is also a curator, a festival advisor, and the editor of animation: an interdisciplinary journal (Sage). Recent publications include The Quay Brothers: Into a Metaphysical Playroom (University of Minnesota Press, 2011). Celestino Deleyto is Professor of Film and English Literature at the Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain). He is the author of The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy (Manchester University Press, 2009). Maria DiBattista teaches English and Comparative Literature and film at Princeton. She is the author of Fast Talking Dames , and, most recently, Novel Characters: A Genealogy . Roberta Di Carmine teaches film studies at Western Illinois University. She received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Oregon (2004) and a master's degree in foreign languages and literatures from West Virginia University (1996). In September 2011, Peter Lang publishers released her first book, Italy Meets Africa: Colonial Discourses in Italian Cinema. Mark Eaton is Professor of English at Azusa Pacific University, where he teaches American literature and film studies. He is co-editor of The Gift of Story: Narrating Hope in a Postmodern World (2006), and a contributor to A Companion to the Modern American Novel, 19001950 (2009). He is currently at work on a book about religion in contemporary American fiction. Lucy Fischer is a distinguished professor of English and film studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where she serves as Director of the Film Studies Program. She is the author of eight books including Jacques Tati (1983), Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Women's Cinema (1989), Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre (1996), and Designing Women: Art Deco, Cinema and the Female Form (2003). She has held curatorial positions at The Museum of Modern Art (New York City) and The Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), and has been the recipient of both a National Endowment for the Arts Art Critics Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Professors. She has served as President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (20012003) and in 2008 received its Distinguished Service Award. Dan Georgakas is on the editorial board of Cineaste and is director of the Greek American Studies Project of the Center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY). He has published on film in academic and popular journals in the United States and abroad. He has taught film at New York University, Columbia University, the University of Oklahoma, Empire State College, and Queens College. His film books included co-editing The Cineaste Interviews, In Focus: A Guide to Using Film, Cineaste Interviews 2 , and Solidarity Forever , a work based on the film The Wobblies . His most recent work is compiling the Greek film entry for the new Oxford University Press On-Line filmography, coediting an issue on Greek film for the Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora , and preparing a Greeks of Hollywood issue for the annual Journal of Modern Hellenism . Leger Grindon is Professor of Film and Media Culture at Middlebury College. He is the author of Shadows on the Past: Studies in the Historical Fiction Film (1994), Knockout: The Boxer and Boxing in American Cinema (2011) and Hollywood Romantic Comedy: Conventions, History, Controversies (2011). Tamar Jeffers McDonald is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Kent. She is the author of Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre (2007), Hollywood Catwalk: Exploring Costume and Transformation in American Film (2010), and the forthcoming Doris Day Confidential: Hollywood Sex and Stardom (2012). Henry Jenkins is the Provost's Professor of Communications, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Education at the University of Southern California and the former director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is the author or editor of 15 books on media and popular culture, including What Made Pistachio Nuts? Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic (Columbia University Press), Classical Hollywood Comedy (Routledge), and Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York University Press). Catherine A. John is an associate professor in English and film and media studies at the University of Oklahoma. She has published Clear Word and Third Sight: Folk Groundings and Diasporic Consciousness in African Caribbean Writing (Duke University Press in 2003), and she is currently writing The Just Society and the Diasporic Imagination . She hopes to produce a book-length text on black film comedy. Rob King is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto's Cinema Studies Institute and Department of History, where he is currently working on a study of early sound slapstick and Depression-era mass culture. In addition to The Fun Factory , he is the co-editor of the volumes Early Cinema and the National (John Libbey Press, 2008) and, with Tom Paulus, Slapstick Comedy (Routledge, 2011). Frank Krutnik is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Sussex and has written In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity (1991) and Inventing Jerry Lewis (2000), co-authored Popular Film and Television Comedy (1990), and co-edited Un-American Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era (2007). Charles Morrow is a librarian at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at the Lincoln Center, where he catalogs moving image material for the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive. He writes essays on the arts, and contributed entries to Broadway: An Encyclopedia of Theater and American Culture . Claire Mortimer teaches film and media studies at Colchester Sixth Form College and has written Romantic Comedy (2010) and co-authored AS Media StudiesThe Essential Introduction (2011). Joshua B. Nelson , a Cherokee Nation citizen, is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. His current project, Progressive Traditions: Cherokee Cultural Studies , explores the potential of adaptive, traditional dispositions. His work has appeared in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal and Studies in American Indian Literatures . Jane Park is a lecturer in gender and cultural studies and the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. Along with her first book, Yellow Future: Oriental Style in Hollywood Cinema (Minnesota Press, 2010), she has published in World Literature Today, Global Media Journal , and Asian Studies Review . William Paul is a professor of film studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of Ernst Lubitsch's American Comedy and Laughing Screaming: Contemporary Horror and Comedy . He is currently writing Self-Actuated Romances , a book about contemporary romantic comedy. Najat Rahman is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Montreal. She is author of Literary Disinheritance: Home in the Writings of Mahmoud Darwish and Assia Djebar (2008) and co-editor of Exile's Poet, Mahmoud Darwish: Critical Essays (2008). She also managed the production of the documentary Ustura ( Legend ) (1998). Frank Scheide is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Arkansas, where he teaches film history and criticism. He has co-edited a series of books on Charles Chaplin, and has been co-chair of the annual Buster Keaton Celebration in Iola, Kansas since 1998. David R. Shumway is Professor of English, and Literary and Cultural Studies, and Director of the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University. His most recent book is John Sayles (University of Illinois Press, 2012). Kevin W. Sweeney is a professor of philosophy at the University of Tampa. He has published an anthology of interviews with Buster Keaton, Buster Keaton: Interviews (2007). He has also published in Film Criticism, Film Quarterly, The Journal of American Culture, Literature/Film Quarterly, Post Script , and Wide Angle . Paul Wells is Director of the Animation Academy, Loughborough University, UK. He has published widely in the field of animation studies, including Understanding Animation (Routledge), Re-Imagining Animation (AVA Academia), and The Animated Bestiary (Rutgers University Press). He is also an established writer and director for radio, TV and theater, and conducts workshops and consultancies worldwide based on his book Scriptwriting (AVA Academia). He is chair of the Association of British Animation Collections (ABAC).Next page