Joe Besser in Fraidy Cat stars in vintage Columbia comedy short

A 

Review by Doug Gibson

The old comedian Joe Besser is  best known as the funny man who replaced Shemp Howard as the third Stooge in the late-middle 1950s. The Stooges needed a third to finish up their quarter-century contract with Columbia. The shorts with Besser are not the best of the Stooges, but other considerations, including smaller budgets and an inability of Besser to bond with the mannerisms and acting of Moe Howard and Larry Fine, hampered the productions. After the Columbia contract, the two main Stooges decided to make movies with Joe DeRita, another old comedy man.

However, on his own Besser made 10 comedies as a solo Columbia comedy star. I acquired "Fraidy Cat," a 1951 short, because I wanted to see how Besser worked as the star. Besser shone as a man/child type, this older middle-aged comic who chattered and snarked like a six or seven year old, bumbling and surviving his way through comic disasters.

In "Fraidy Cat," Besser is teamed in comedy with a radio personality of the time named Jim Hawthorne. Nevertheless, Besser is the main comedy star of the team, with Hawthorne as more straight man. In what is a remake of a Three Stooges short called "Dizzy Detectives," Joe and Jim are hapless detectives with a boss (Tom Kennedy) who threatens the duo with job dismissal if they don't catch a gang of thieves that uses a gorilla to rob shops. They take vigil at an antique shop where comic mayhem ensues. I enjoyed a slapstick bit early in the short in which an angry Kennedy pounds a desk, smashing some edible nuts. Hawthorne would support Besser in three Columbia shorts. (See the pair below in this still from the short, Besser at right)

If one wants to see Besser doing the fussy man/child act at his best, catch some old Abbott and Costello TV shows, where he play, in over the top but funny style, the childish "Stinky," who snarks and slaps often at Lou Costello in skits. Dressed as a detective in "Fraidy Cat,", Besser does a lot of that, takes a few lumps but always seems to come ahead, and get the bad guys, with the luck of providence. A typical Besser joke in the short, uttered in childish talk, is him insisting the criminal plot is an "inside job" because it's "not outside."

Jules White directs with his usual constant mayhem slapstick ... a lot of heads are cracked on the noggin. Besser may not be everyone's cup of Joe but he does possess strong comic timing, even in these later, cheaper-produced Columbia shorts. I mentioned Besser made 10 shorts with Columbia, but nearly half of them were remakes with a lot of stock footage. He actually remade "Fraidy Cat" as "Hook a Crook" in 1955, with few original scenes.

The print from The Columbia Shorts Department website is very clean and crisp and it's a strong introduction to Besser as a non-Stooges performer. Look to our site for future reviews of vintage Columbia comedy shorts.

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Afternote: I recently acquired copies of nearly two dozen non-Three Stooges Columbia comedy shorts. Greg Hilbrich, who manages the invaluable website The Columbia Shorts Department offers many of the comedy shorts, including titles other than Columbia, for sale via DVD and digital download. A current sale of non-Stooges shorts provided the opportunity to view vintage comedy shorts that are out of circulation. 

Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn

1987, Color, 85 minutes (less in some foreign versions). Directed by Sam Raimi. Cast includes: Bruce Campbell as Ash, Sarah Berry as Annie Knowby, Dan Hicks as Jake, Ted Raimi as possessed Henrietta Knowby, Denise Bixler as Linda, and John Peaks as Professor Raymond Knowby. Schlock-Meter rating: Eight stars out of a possible 10.

So many reviews like to call Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2 a comedy, or a tribute to the Three Stooges, and there are some great "gross-out" gags, as well as my favorite comic scene, where Bruce Campbell's Ash, minus his possessed hand, traps it by piling a copy of Hemingway's "A Farewell To Arms" on a container holding the hand. Yes, this film contains a lot of comic parody, and after the first half Campbell plays his part mostly for laughs. And it's true that Raimi's very fast-paced, boom-boom-boom "I'm going to jar the viewer every 30 seconds" seems a tribute to Stooge-like filmmaking. And the excessive gore does desensitize the viewer after a while.

But let's not forget that Evil Dead 2 is a very scary, suspenseful thriller that throws out just about every horror/action plot element that exists. Most work. There are only a few clinkers, and the result is a cinema gem. Critic Roger Ebert pegged it best when he wrote that the film was not in bad taste, but about bad taste. Evil Dead 2 is sort of remake of Raimi's micro-budgeted Evil Dead, but with a little more plot and a twist ending that set up another, even more comic sequel, Army of Darkness. The plot: Ash and his girl Linda (Bixler) decide to squat for a night at a cabin in the Michigan woods. Once there, Ash turns on a tape recorder where a professor, who lives in the cabin, invokes a chant from The Book of the Dead that sends a demon to the cabin. From that point on, all hell breaks loose. Eventually, Ash and a few later arrivals, including the professor's daughter (Berry), are forced to fight it out with the demons.

The film is so fast-paced that you just marvel at the speed and special effects in the film that you forget the plot is pretty light. Director Raimi was destined for bigger assignments (A Simple Plan, Quick and the Dead, the Spider Man series). He's thrifty and economical. I suspect many minutes were spliced out of the final cut of Evil Dead 2 to maintain the fast pace, horror shocks and, yes, comic timing. Most of the cast is mediocre, except for Campbell, who is outstanding. For the first half of the film, he is largely responsible for carrying the flow of the film, and he uses the right amount of fear, fatigue, anger and outrage to pull it off. There are great visual effects, including a twisted, ominous looking bridge over a high drop, a dancing headless woman-demon, a human snake, a psychopathic hand, a woman being attacked by a tree, a demon's eyeball flying into a screaming mouth, and the most chilling, Ted Raimi's possessed Henrietta Knowby, a thoroughly gruesome old demon hag who hangs out in the cellar.

By all means rent or buy Evil Dead 2. It's well worth the price. However, while it is funny, expect more shivers than chuckles. Also, those who leave the room for a snack will miss several shock scenes. They happen so fast.

-- Doug Gibson

Pistol Packin' Nitwits -- Harry Langdon's last film

Review by Doug Gibson

I've probably seen "Pistol Packin' Nitwits" about 40 times; even though its circulation days are long over. With a YouTube dupe and my own duped DVD, courtesy of a kind fellow Harry Langdon fan, I have easy access to this Columbia comedy short via a DVD-R print.

There's pathos involved in my interest and fascination. It's sad but compelling. Harry died after completing the film. Although not the last released, this was the final film Harry made. According to his wife, Mabel Langdon, he came home feeling very ill after a day of shooting, citing in particular a soft shoe dance routine he did with co-star El Brendel. (The dance, by the way, is one of the highlights of the short). Watching the dance, you realize it's more or less the last work this comedy genius ever did.

Harry was 60 and there seemed to be a history in his family of dying relatively young. His doctor diagnosed a cerebral hemorrhage, and Harry unfortunately quickly declined, dying on Dec. 22, 1944. Besides Mabel, he was survived by his son, Harry Jr., who still lives and has enjoyed an excellent career as a photographer.

There's another reason I enjoy "Pistol Packin' Nitwits," even though it's far from Harry's best sound short, or even his best Columbia short. It's a wildly free-ranging film, a blunt spoof that's 90 percent western and 10 percent "old-time serial superhero with amazing powers."

The plot: In Hangman's Gulch, Nevada, the beautiful Queenie Lynch (Christine McIntyre) owns Queenie's Place," a saloon. Her future is threatened by thuggish and buffoonish Rawhide Pete (Dick Curtis) who owns the mortgage on the saloon and will foreclose if Queenie won't marry him by midnight. Queenie appeals to the handsome cowboy Jack (Brad King) to help her and he promises to have $2,500 by midnight.

Harry and "Professor" Brendel are grifter salesmen peddling fake cleaning fluid. With Pete as a volunteer, they mistakenly put real axle grease on his clothes and make a huge mess. This so amuses Queenie that she hires the hapless duo to "help run the place." Inside the saloon, Pete, when he isn't falling over and threatening Harry and El Brendel, tries to kill Jack with a gun. In the "superhero" spoof portion of the film, the bullets bounce of the chest of a smiling Jack. Harry and El Brendel think Pete was firing blanks but almost lose their lives learning that he is using real bullets.

The middle portion of the film has two shining moments; the aforementioned soft shoe dance of the comedy duo (see screen shot above) and a solo song, "Father, Dear Father," by McIntyre. She has a beautiful singing voice, as anyone who has seen the Three Stooges short, "Micro-phonies," already knows.

In between are the gag scenes, with El Brendel hitting the jackpot on a machine, Harry avoiding an unfunny stereotypical old cowboy, the duo trying to use a test-your-punching-strength machine to steal the mortgage from Pete, and Pete being generally buffoonish, at one time having a bumblebee fly into his collar.

IMDB incorrectly lists Edward Bernds as the director. It's actually Harry Edwards, a one-time major talent who had sunk to mediocrity by this time. While this is better than a host of Langdon 1940s Columbia efforts, it still suffers from poorly presented gags and editing is poor. An example is inclusion shots of Jack racing on his horse to get back to the saloon. They play to The William Tell Overture but the inserts last about one second and are place clumsily in the film. (Bernds has co-credit with Langdon for the story).

There's a showdown at the end with Jack, Pete, Harry, El Brendel and Queenie. I'll let readers watch the film and be surprised.

As mentioned, I have a fondness for the film. It's quirky and has some good song and dance routines. Harry is funny; El Brendel is less funny but some of the gags work, including the cleaning fluid demonstration and the efforts to rid Pete of the mortgage.

Langdon enjoyed the security of working at Columbia (he called them "O-Ouch-O" comedies). He was looking his age, though, and starting to get overshadowed in shorts by lesser talents, such as El Brendel and even Elsie Ames. On the other hand, he was working in B movies, as well as sometimes on the stage and writing. This was the happiest time of his life, with a comfortable home, a loving wife and a son growing up.

Both Edwards and El Brendel only lasted about a year with Columbia after "Pistol Packin' Nitwits." Although Curtis died at 49 in 1952 of pneumonia, he made about 250 films, and was active in Columbia shorts as well as early television. McIntyre (see below) had a long association with Columbia shorts, particularly with the Three Stooges. In fact, today she is iconic for her association with the trio as their co-star.

"Pistol Packin' Nitwits" was remade as "Out West," in 1947, with the Three Stooges as the stars. McIntyre reprises the role of the damsel in distress. "Out West" is directed by Bernds. The probable reason Bernds is listed as director in IMDB is because Columbia goofed in their release posters for "... Nitwits," listing Bernds as director. I must confess, of the pair, I prefer "Pistol Packin' Nitwits." Give it 17 minutes of your time, and watch Harry Langdon gamely finish the scenes and wrap his final film.

All about Vernon Dent; an interview with his biographer Bill Cassara

Interview by Doug Gibson

Vernon Dent is ubiquitous to vintage comedy film. Genre fans and scholars know him well. The more casual film fan, the one who, say, has only sampled the Three Stooges shorts, can't recall his name but they sure do know his face. And, most importantly, Vernon Dent makes them laugh.

Dent's "I know that guy" persona is a lot like, say, the character actor Donald Meek. My wife and I, watching WC Fields and Mae West in "My Little Chickadee," saw Meeks play a faux preacher "marrying" the stars. "I know that guy. What's his name?" my wife said. "He's also in "You Can't Take It With You," I reply. (And several hundred other films ...) ... Vernon, by the way, worked with WC Fields in films.

It's the same with Vernon. Last year, on a Fox News segment, background film was rolling as comic relief. Suddenly, there's Vernon from an old Stooges short. "I know that guy. What's his name," said my son, who loves the Stooges and Harry Langdon shorts. (Dent, of course, is also a veteran of hundreds of films).

Enough preface, let's get to the interview with author and vintage comedy scholar Bill Cassara, writer of "Vernon Dent: Stooge Heavy -- Second Banana to the Three Stooges and Other Film Comedy Greats" (2013, BearManor Media). Bill has also written biographies of Edgar Kennedy and Ted Healy. We've reviewed the Dent biography and the Healy biography.

Enjoy the interview.

1)      Vernon Dent is a ubiquitous figure to the casual vintage comedy fan, the one who only watches The Three Stooges. He’s the face without a name they always recognize. Describe how Dent’s talents make him so memorable to fans when other frequent co-stars are less noticeable to casual fans?

CASSARA: In the Three Stooges comedies there had to be an authority figure to play against their humor, it's called "comedy contrast." While there were plenty of actors who could do that, Vernon brought with him a seemingly no-nonsense approach and dealt out the punishment. It helped too that Vernon who was not a tall man, nevertheless physically fit perfectly in the frame with the much shorter Stooges. If one watches the Stooges even casually, he shows up in 56 of their total product. That makes a lasting impression, so if one sees "Vernon Dent" in the opening credits you know that the boys are really going to get it!        

2)      Did the deaths of Vernon Dent’s parents, have an effect on his life, career or personal, in your opinion?

CASSARA: Vernon's father was the owner of a saloon in San Jose, Calif., and was murdered when Vernon was a boy. The local newspaper blamed the circumstance of the murder, not on the suspect but on the "evils of alcohol." Vernon's mother made the boy swear on his father's grave that he would never touch alcohol. Vernon's mother was a non-professional thespian and encouraged her son's budding talents, she died when he was only 20. 

3)      In his pre-Sennett career, what were Vernon Dent’s greatest strengths in the shorts he made? How did these early films, as well as Sennett shorts, set up his career as a foil to the stars of the shorts?


CASSARA: It should be noted that Vernon was influenced by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, while Roscoe sang illustrated songs at the Unique Theater in San Jose. Vernon was a singer first, even a published song writer. Vernon was the emcee while at Seal Beach, Ca. when Hank Mann saw possibilities of him as a comic "heavy" to Mann's comedies. Vernon graduated to his own starring series for "Folly Comedies 1921-1922. His character was very similar to Fatty Arbuckle's film persona to include a similar fitting hat. In those silent days, action was the key. Vernon proved himself adept at physical comedy; making pratfalls and big reactions. The Mack Sennett studios demanded a quick pace and sometimes very dangerous stunts, he was also a "fat" character so necessary to play off of others.     

4)      What are the three best Harry Langdon/Vernon Dent Sennett shorts and why?

CASSARA: 1) HIS FIRST FLAME: This is the sweetest little film full of charm and redemption. Harry is a naive nephew to Vernon's worldly Uncle who works as a fireman. Harry overcomes his physical limitations and wins the girl and his uncle's respect. This film holds up really well to modern audiences, the lessons to be learned are still fresh and humorous. 2). HIS MARRIAGE WOW : Harry almost plays the straight-man to Vernon's maniac character. It's a visual delight as Vernon drives his car crazily and seeing Harry as his captured passenger. 2) SATURDAY AFTERNOON: This short made in 1925 establishes both as buddies, Harry is hen-pecked and Vernon is his "wiser" friend who tries to fix them up with a couple of floozies. Tiny Harry and big Vernon are perfectly contrasted together, this predates Laurel and Hardy by a couple of years and might have been very influential. 

5)      You mention something interesting in your biography, that perhaps Harry Langdon would have had better success at First National had he taken his frequent Sennett co-star Vernon Dent with him. How could Dent have improved, say, “Three’s A Crowd,” if he had played Arthur Thalasso’s part, or the judge in “The Chaser.”

CASSARA: I'd hate to speculate other than saying Vernon would have enhanced any screen appearance.

   

6)      There was an effort to make Dent a comedy pair team with Monty Collins, and of course many say he and Langdon were teamed often without officially being a team. What were the challenges in the 20s and 30s against succeeding as a comedy team? What were the artistic challenges as well as the logistical challenges, such as exposure, play dates and marketing?

CASSARA: This is an interesting question. Comedy teams were certainly popular in vaudeville but often did not make it in film because one was a talking medium and the other visual (during the silent era. For film teams to emerge there has to be a business sense by the respective studio that the audience will be in demand of said team. The comedians also have to have a strong respect for each other; the typical set up is for a "comedian" and a "second banana" to help set up the gags. Many teams failed because both wanted to be the funny one. Stan Laurel for instance had a chance through the years to establish himself as a solo comedian to lukewarm response. Frankly, he was not ready in the early years to take on a partner. This changed when he was eventually paired with Oliver Hardy, at the Hal Roach Studios. Audience reaction at the two as a true team demanded more. The studio then marketed it to the distributors and the public as such. Vernon and Harry were never a "team" on equal footing, Harry was the star and Vernon was versatile in comic support. While Harry had a defined character, Vernon did not.  More importantly, Harry wasn't ready to be a team in the 20's. On reflection in later years he might have regretted it.         

7)      All of us want so badly to see the lost Arvid Gillstrom Educational/Paramount shorts. Synopses seem to tease us with plots for Vernon and Harry that would be appropriate for a regular comedy team (Laurel and Hardy). Do you believe Paramount was pitching the duo as a team, albeit maybe with a little more press toward Langdon?

CASSARA: Gillstrom is a name not heard of anymore, he was an important director and producer for Paramount in his day. I think he was in line to make Harry Langdon comedies and Vernon would have a big responsibility for the studio. As it was, Gillstrom directed Vernon Dent and Bing Crosby in "Please," a two-reel comedy written by Vernon. He also wrote the screenplays for Langdon/Dent series that are lost now. Gillstrom died suddenly in 1935 and that ended any hopes of bigger fame at Paramount.    

8)      Based on your biography, Vernon seemed to have a wonderful final marriage. He settled into an eventual well-paid character actor supporting role in Columbia shorts, with freedom to do other work. His settling down into that role, was it due to domestic happiness, and perhaps also that his diabetes was a growing concern

CASSARA: Vernon was married three times and his second wife passed away When Vernon was in this 30's. Vernon met his future wife at a party at the Langdon's home and he was so smitten, he proposed to her that night. Vernon was in love and they were both dedicated to each other though Mrs. Dent had no interest in the movie business. Vernon's wife worked at a bank for consistent income, aside from Vernon's acting income he was also vested in real estate and owned a concession stand in Westlake Park in Los Angeles. They both pitched in during the weekends.   

9)      What are Dent’s best dramatic roles?

CASSARA: Thomas Ince hired Vernon for his feature: "Hail the Women" (1921). It is unfortunately this is a lost film, Vernon had a prominent part. Mack Sennett cast Vernon as a sinister and overbearing suitor of Mable Normand in the feature, "The Extra Girl." (1923) He played a mean husband in the rarely seen "Dragnet Patrol" even out bullying screen heavy Walter Long. Vernon's most sensitive portrayal was the feature, "Beast of Berlin" (1939) when Vernon's character is German citizen (a bartender) who is terrorized by the Nazi soldiers. We hear Vernon cry in pain...it's heartbreaking.  

10)   What are the best examples of Dent singing in films

CASSARA: In the short Technicolor film, "Good morning, Eve." Vernon (as Nero) sings "Rhythm in the Bow," it's very catchy. He sings "There's No Place Like Home" to a sequestered jury in "The Jury Goes 'Round and Round" (1945). My favorites are when Vernon sings the old songs: "The Waning Honeymoon" (Fainting Lover (1931), "When You and I were Young, Maggie" (with Harry Langdon in Hooks and Jabs), and especially in Bing Crosby's short "Please," Vernon challenges Bing to a singing competition and bellows out "Dear Old Girl."  

11)   Has there ever been a comedian who had a stare as humorously menacing as Dent?

CASSARA: I think Vernon carved this out for himself and sustained it through out his years at Columbia. He forewarned the Stooges many times with his look of intolerance, Charley Chase and Shemp Howard both got those stares in the baseball-themed "The Heckler" and "Mr. Noisy." The audience could witness his many stages of body language, but never the comedians.   

12)   Who did Dent pair best with in films? I imagine the favorites are The Stooges or Langdon, or maybe you have another selection?

CASSARA: For sustained pairing there is no doubt; The Three Stooges for the sheer delicious physical comedy and Harry Langdon for the obvious chemistry between them. 

13)  In your research, how is Dent received by genre fans? Is he recognized for his supporting talents or seen as a comedy star who couldn’t quite reach star status?

CASSARA: Though Vernon appeared in over 400 films, most of them are unavailable for viewing. We'll never know what heights Vernon would have propelled to if Gillstrom had lived, the same could be said about Thomas Ince who also died after casting Vernon in a dramatic feature. Vernon knew everyone at Columbia Studios when he became one of their prized stock-players in 1936, so who wants to change history? I had the pleasure of giving a discourse at the last Three Stooges Convention in 2016, if the knowledgeable audience was any gauge, they held Vernon Dent in highest esteem for his comic support. 

14)   In your research, what more did you learn about the warm personal friendship between Dent and Langdon? (Vernon, Harry, and their spouses seen in above photo.)

CASSARA: In Harry Langdon Jr.'s new book, it is reaffirmed how close Vernon and Harry were. Harry's widow emphasized this to Junior, Vernon even took the boy to baseball games in his father's absence. Vernon never had children but he would have been a great dad.
 

15)  If someone were to put on a Vernon Dent film festival, what 12 films would you choose to include?

CASSARA: Some titles I have already mentioned, those would have to be included in any list. The rest go to just about any of The Three Stooges: "Slippery Silks," "An Ache in Every Stake,"Idle Roomers," "Half-Wits Holiday," "Three Little Pirates," "Sing a Song of Six Pants," "Squareheads of the Round Table," "Fuelin' Around," Malice in the Palace," (see Vernon above)  "Scrambled Brains," "The Tooth Will Out." 



16. Is there anything you have discovered since your book was released?

CASSARA: Most definitely. I heard from a woman who was a teenager when Vernon was at home and blind unable to work. She used to check on him while his wife was at work. One day she came in and she caught Vernon at the dinner table with TWO pies in front of him furnished by a buddy. Vernon sensed her presence and slightly panicked (he was on a strict diet). He tried to buy her off with "Keep your mouth shut and the other pie is yours." That's how much he valued his sweets. I also heard from a man who said he was Vernon's lawn mower as a boy. Vernon offered him any of his souvenirs and artifacts. Apparently Vernon collected stills from all his pictures and had them autographed by his co-stars. Where they went nobody knows.

I also found out something unique about Vernon that I'm not sure if he was conscious of himself.  The very uncommon surname of "Mann" seemed to pop up in his life: He went to Horace Mann school, Sam Mann was Vernon's stage idol and who encouraged Vernon to continue impersonating him with his foreign dialects, Gus Mann hired him for the "Jewel City Cafe," Hank Mann hired Vernon as his comic heavy, and Helen Mann played opposite of him in "The Girl Rush" (1931). If I were to ever write a play about Vernon I would start with the temperance movement, Vernon's father's death, and weave it around all the "Mann" coincidences. I can see it now...  

Thanks so much, Bill, for the interview.

Biography breathes life into the career of Three Stooges' mentor Ted Healy

Review by Doug Gibson

I recently purchased "Nobody's Stooge: Ted Healy," by Bill Cassara (Bear Manor Media) here (and be advised it's much more inexpensive via Kindle), It's an entertaining fact-filled account of the life of a man who was a major star in 1920s vaudeville, the creator of The Three Stooges and later doing well as a studio contract star when he suddenly died near the end of 1937, mere days after becoming a father. Cassara's book has garnered plaudits; it was recently named a finalist in the biography category of the International Book Awards.

Healy was a mere 41 when he died, and his abrupt death was a real shame. Had he hung around for another 25 years or so, he almost certainly would have continued having strong acting roles, and likely would have been an early TV variety hour or comedy series star. He was a Master of Ceremonies superstar, a variety show talent with strong sketch comedy skills, as well as an ability to banter with audiences and co-stars. He defined being comfortable on the stage and screen.

He grew up in a somewhat dysfunctional family although their economic circumstances were better than most. He was a boyhood friend with "Moe" of the Three Stooges and both performed with a diving entertainment show as boys. Healy moved steadily into stage prominence. As Cassara reports, he was an early blackface star in the manner of Al Jolson. After he married a beautiful entertainer named Betty Braun, the pair's act, and their supporting players, reached Broadway star status. It was around that era that Healy developed the Three Stooges, as well as other Healy perennials, into his acts. As Cassara notes, an early "Stooge" was a show business plant in the audience.

Healy and Braun eventually split; Ted was not a faithful husband. It was inevitable that Healy's star would reach into the movies. Initially, he took Moe, Larry and Shemp/and sometimes Curly into the movies with him, including a stint of shorts. One of their first features (although it's Healy as the star and The Stooges in supporting roles) was the 1930 Rube Goldberg-scripted film "Soup to Nuts." While reading "Nobody's Stooge," I bought the film and watched it. Aside from Ted's role as a reporter in the MGM film, "Mad Love," I had never seen a Healy film.

I'm so glad I watched "Soup to Nuts." (imdb page) It's a time-capsule joy; the type of Hollywood romance with wisecracks and vaudevillian skits arranged into a Goldberg-esque plot. Ted plays the chief salesman of a failing costume shop. His bickering banter with his girlfriend, who works at the shop, has the timing and comedy of a Fred and Ethel Mertz. The characters are not unique, but fresh. There's Ted, his girlfriend, the proud shop owner, his lovely niece, and the nice young man who takes over the shop and falls in love with the niece.

Ted hangs around at a firehouse that employs Moe, Larry and Shemp, as well as an eccentric mute fireman, played by Fred Sanborn, a tiny man with bushy eyebrows, a Chaplin-like walk, an amusing running gait, and strong musical skills. He was one of Healy's vaudeville team and I guarantee that viewers will find him fascinating, whether they like him or not.

Much of the film has scenes with sketches that were likely related to vaudeville sets, physical and others, in the past, and there's a Fireman's Ball scene that features an extremely entertaining set of Ted and the Stooges. Rube Goldberg, by the way, has a cameo as do some silent comedy stars. Anyone who enjoys the Stooges, Healy, and early sound Hollywood variety comedy/musicals, or vaudeville, should watch the film. I'd love to see "Soup to Nuts" produced as a stage musical comedy.

Back to the biography; eventually The Stooges' screen time with Healy at MGM diminished and as Cassara notes, they were dropped and went on their own to eventual success with Columbia's shorts department. Healy continued working as a contract player, and worked with substitute Stooges as well.

As mentioned, Healy struggled with some issues, marriage fidelity, drinking, hanging out too often with cronies and hangers on, and he had tax problems. The government was attaching much of his earnings. Hurting for money, he filed suit against the Stooges of Columbia for allegedly appropriating his acts. This is a difficult charge to prove and the suit languished sans success until its dismissal long after Healy was dead.

The lawsuit has fueled rumors that Healy and the Stooges were highly antagonistic toward each other. Cassara makes a good case to debunk this with quotes from the Stooges praising Healy and paints the lawsuit as a not uncommon yet largely unsuccessful type of lawsuit that happens occasionally in the entertainment industry.

Cassara also debunks conspiracy theories, some published in prominent sources, that Healy was beaten to death or killed by the "mob" for gambling debts. As the book relates, Healy died after a long weekend of celebrating his son's birth (to his final wife, Betty Hickman) with a huge amount of drinking. He was involved in a fight that resulted in a wound to his head that was treated by a doctor very shortly before his death at his home. When his personal doctor delayed signing a death report, media speculation swirled.

Cassara is a retired law enforcement professional and he methodically deconstructs -- with some expert colleagues' help -- and discounts such conspiracies. The wounds from the fistfight don't seem severe enough to have killed Healy. The almost certain cause of Healy's death was an infection to his kidneys that was worsened to a grave condition by either a massive off-the-wagon weekend of drinking or a heavy drinking weekend from a severe alcoholic. Tragically, Cassara notes that Healy, certainly in agonizing pain from the kidney infection, may have unwisely been self medicating with drinking to alleviate the pain.

Healy died a few days before Christmas 1937; his wife Betty, recuperating from the delivery, was not told of her husband's death for a few days. Although still an in-demand Hollywood star, he did not save his money and left his family in poor financial condition

Although he's an entertainment footnote today, and certainly his relationship to the Stooges has him overshadowed by their iconic status, he was a far bigger star in 1937 than his former proteges, and his death and funeral were major news.

I urge cult movies fans, and particularly vintage talkie variety and comedy fans, to search for Ted Healy footage; he's really superb, and I envy anyone who gets to witness his talent for the first time. A pre-code YouTube clip short is below, and purchase "Soup to Nuts" and locate say, "Hollywood Hotel" the next time it's on TCM.

And buy Bill Cassara's biography of Healy, which besides debunking rumors provides a fascinating look into the stage star who created the Three Stooges and contributed strongly to the early years of cinema.

Talking Three Stooges and more: An interview with the creator of Columbia Shorts Department website

When it comes to history on the 25 years that the Columbia comedy shorts were a staple in movie theaters, there was the book, "The Columbia Comedy Shorts," by Ted Okuda and Ed Watz, that has been like a bible for us genre fans. However, one individual has taken it a step further into the digital age.

Greg Hilbrich is the creator of the website The Columbia Shorts Department. It is an always-growing "information-heavy site dedicated to the vintage theatrical short subjects of Columbia Pictures." The website is frankly, priceless, and we are indebted to Hilbrich's hard work and scholarship. Once I discovered the site, I knew we had to interview him for Plan9Crunch, and we have a treasure trove of information ahead of us. It's a long interview, but full of fascinating information, but still not nearly as much information as The Columbia Shorts Department website contains.

Enjoy the interview!

-- Doug Gibson

Plan9Crunch: How did you become interested enough in the Columbia comedy shorts to start a website on its history?

Hilbrich:  Here's the short answer.

It all began with the Three Stooges. I was fortunate enough to grow up in the pre-cable/satellite days when weekends on local television were made for old Bowery Boys and Abbott and Costello comedies, Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolfman films and an occasional Ma and Pa Kettle or a Sherlock Holmes feature. The real fun for me was the after-school programming, shows like Gilligan's Island and The Munsters and old theatrical shorts like Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, The Little Rascals and The Three Stooges. During one of these television viewings of a Stooges short, my dad told me about how, as a kid growing up in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he rarely saw a Stooges short in the theater. Instead, he rattled off the names of comedians he remembered seeing ... Andy Clyde, El Brendel, Hugh Herbert and Buster Keaton. He told me how he recognized Jules White's name (on the Stooges shorts) and that he was the same guy who made the films of the comedians he named, (and) told me that they had the same sound effects. His little discussion on these "other films" ended with the question "How come they don't ever show those guys on TV anymore?" (He recalled seeing the Andy Clyde and Buster Keaton Columbia shorts on WGN Channel 9 out of Chicago in the early 1960s, tied into the same hour-long program with the Stooge comedies).

I asked a few more questions about his movie-going experiences, where I learned that most of what I watched, the old Popeye and Tom and Jerry cartoons were made to be seen in a theater too. I had always noticed the studio logos at the beginning of them, but never quite made the connection at that age. So I went to the library and began my research. Being such a Stooges fan, I found myself checking out books like MOE HOWARD AND THE THREE STOOGES and THE THREE STOOGES SCRAPBOOK. In these books I would find the names of a few of the guys my dad had mentioned, El Brendel and Andy Clyde, in the select filmographies. I also discovered that there were short comedies starring all three of the actors who were more popular for replacing Curly as "third Stooge." So my interest in theatrical short-subjects began ... one thing led to another and that's when I found the book THE GREAT MOVIE SHORTS by Leonard Maltin, a book chock-full of the information I was seeking out, but (still) I couldn't find a single one of these films to view.

Then it happened. ... I discovered THE book ... my "bible" of sorts, THE COLUMBIA COMEDY SHORTS by Ted Okuda and Ed Watz. This book was even more chock-full of the information I sought as it was a complete list of every two-reel comedy Columbia produced, 526 of them, between 1933-1958 (The book only concerned itself with those shorts produced in Hollywood by both Jules White and Hugh McCollum. Columbia actually produced/released thousands of one- and two-reel subjects ranging from animated cartoons to sports reels to sing-a-long subjects). There was information on the people in front of and behind the scenes, release dates, actual quotes from folks who appeared in the films and more, But even with this wealth of information provided by Okuda and Watz, one thing that was apparent to the question "How can I get to see some of these things?" ... was that there simply was no easy way. So I started to look into other areas of opportunity such as private 16mm film collectors, mom-and-pop home video companies, and Hollywood collector shows.

Unfortunately, being new to this, I didn't turn anything up right away. My dad died in 1992, so he never got to see any of the films he had me searching for, but shortly after his passing, they seemed to start pouring in, Andy Clyde and El Brendel being the first official non-Stooge Columbia shorts I got to see.

I like to think that my dad had a lot to do with that.

So as I gathered up more shorts for my collection, I also gathered up more bits and pieces of info that THE COLUMBIA COMEDY SHORTS book had omitted; not on purpose, just over time, more information became available. So, with the blessings of Ted Okuda and Ed Watz, my site became a somewhat unofficial and very expanded follow up to their book.

Plan9Crunch: How would you describe your site to a casual web surfer whose knowledge on the subject ends with the Three Stooges?

Hilbrich:  As far as the comedy shorts go,  I often describe a non-Stooge Columbia short as being a Three Stooges film without the Three Stooges. I describe them that way because the same folks behind the Stooge films are behind these other shorts. Easily recognizable are the names of directors, writers, co-stars, gags, plots and sound effects, even the style of the opening titles are all very familiar, giving off a sense of déjà vu even to the casual Stooges viewer. Columbia was the king of the two-reel comedy short. The unit stayed in business until the late 1950s, and the shorts stayed in regular theatrical circulation a good 10 years after Columbia closed the doors on its short subjects division. There was a reason why, and although the 190 shorts starring The Three Stooges were the studio’s number-one two-reeler draw, there were another 336 two-reelers that helped keep the unit in business. So my site explores those other films, all by series. Originally, the site was going to focus only on the two-reel comedies, but I decided to make the site a much wider world when it comes to the shorts that feature the words "Columbia Pictures Presents." I offer information (when available) on every single Columbia short either produced by the studio or produced by other production companies and released through Columbia. Being that there are thousands of titles, my site might be a bit much for the casual web surfer -- it's very info-heavy -- and it could easily scare someone off. It's also a work-in-progress, and I am doing my best to make it user friendly.

Plan9Crunch: Obviously, the Three Stooges have became iconic and are still played today on TV. What separates their long-term appeal from other stars, such as Buster Keaton or Harry Langdon, whose Columbia shorts are appreciated only by a few genre fans?

Hilbrich: The Stooges are far different from Langdon or Keaton, or most of the other comics who appear in these two-reelers, but the shorts of Langdon and Keaton, and many others, were just as popular when originally released.

As I mentioned earlier, not all of the shorts ran in certain areas of the country. I've looked through old newspaper archives, for instance, and in the area my dad grew up in and rarely saw an "Also included, a Three Stooges comedy" in the movie advertisements local theaters ran. I did find a lot of Andy Clyde, El Brendel, Harry Langdon Columbia's advertised, even some simple "Added-Columbia Comedy" blurbs with no description of what the short was. It was definitely television that helped spark the Stooges' popularity (not saying they weren't already a hit).

Because of the Stooges' television success, Columbia’s Screen Gems released to TV a package of some 200 non-Stooge titles. Their selections of titles are somewhat baffling, not every single short in a series was offered. Using the Stooges' success, these films were marketed as sure-fire ratings winners. They weren't, and disappeared from TV a short time after their initial release (maybe turning up as fillers after a movie or during a rain delay of a ball game). I think the reason for this was that they simply weren't the Stooges. They usually ran in a time slot shared by other shows popular with the after-school crowd; combined into an hour-long block of maybe, for instance, a Bugs Bunny cartoon, a Popeye cartoon, and a Glove Slingers short. ... "Glove Slingers? Where are the Stooges?" some kid who just rushed home from school to catch them might ask. Now, as for Andy Clyde and Buster Keaton, I believe because they were still in the public eye, their shorts remained in the rotation (at least at WGN they did). Other stations, such as one in Cincinnati, rotated through the entire package of non-Stooge shorts.

Another reason that these films in their post-theatrical run maybe fizzled out was that there just weren't enough of them to sustain a series of sorts. There were 190 Stooges shorts to cycle through as a daily program, and only 10 Keaton shorts. In some other cases, a series with Polly Moran (that was included in this non-Stooge deal) only contained 2 titles. Yet despite their TV revival failure, a lot of the shorts (many unobtainable today, like Harry Mimmo’s DOWN THE HATCH) were reissued theatrically in the early 1960s.

Plan9Crunch: I have read Okuda and Watz' book, "The Columbia Comedy Shorts," and I'd wager the casual reader would be shocked to discover how many Columbia comedy shorts stars there were. Who are some of your favorites among the many, including Hugh Herbert, Charley Chase, Monty Collins, El Brendel, Vera Vague, Sterling Holloway, Schilling and Lane, Baer and Rosenbloom, Shemp Howard, Joe Besser ... and so many more?

Hilbrich: I was one of those who was shocked to see how many comics Columbia starred in two-reelers. My favorite of these others are Andy Clyde, followed by El Brendel. Hugh Herbert’s films are fun when he's paired with Dudley Dickerson, but I like them all; even the worst of the shorts have a moment or two, well, maybe not KIDS WILL BE KIDS (1954), Jules White’s answer to the then-popular theatrical reissues of Hal Roach’s Our Gang (The Little Rascals) comedies.

Plan9Crunch: What can we do to get more of these other Columbia shorts into public consumption? I love Harry Langdon and have managed to see most of his Columbia shorts via YouTube, and I bought the DVD release of Keaton's shorts. But it's a tough task finding these non-Stooges shorts, and recently I've noticed Langdon shorts being taken down from You Tube by Sony for copyright reasons!!?? I would hope Sony would release Langdon's Columbia shorts, but that seems like a fantasy wish.

Hilbrich:  I hope that because Sony is pulling some of the shorts that were posted on You Tube that it's a sign that these little films could be coming to the On Demand DVD service (or maybe even TCM) in the near future. A while back, an online petition was formed to get the Columbia Charley Chase shorts onto DVD -- that finally happened (the set was almost sidelined by the poor reception the Keaton set received). The Chase shorts were made available through the Sony On Demand dvd-r service. A bonus included the Chase-directed Columbia short A NAG IN THE BAD with comics Smith and Dale. Perhaps a petition would help see at least some other shorts in the future.

The two-reelers have crept their way onto DVD. A beautiful restoration of MIDNIGHT BLUNDERS with Tom Kennedy and Monty Collins appears on a set of Columbia horror films, PHONY CRONIES with El Brendel appears on one of the budget Stooges DVD sets, and Andy Clyde’s HOT PAPRIKA appears as an extra on a Hammer Studios pirate-themed set. All but two solo Stooges' Columbia shorts are available on in the Ultimate Stooges DVD set, included are a couple of Andy Clyde and Glove Slingers shorts that co-star Shemp Howard (as well as the Shemp Howard-El Brendel team up PICK A PECK OF PLUMBERS).  The two titles missing are NOT GUILTY ENOUGH (Andy Clyde with Shemp Howard) and a early Joe Besser short produced by Ben Blake called CUCKOORANCHO. I highly recommend this Ultimate Stooges set.

Plan9Crunch: What's the most fulfilling aspect of your Columbia blog for you? Is it tracking down the shorts posters, bio info on the stars, or finding new locations or websites where many of the shorts exist, or something else?

Hilbrich: I love researching this subject, collecting lobby cards and one-sheets for these little two-reelers is fun, but the most fulfilling thing about collecting information about these mostly forgotten films has been helping family members of those who either appear on screen or were behind the scenes during the production actually get to see the films. Harry von Zell's daughter, for example, had no idea that her father ever appeared in his own two-reel comedy series and was floored by what she saw when I sent her some of the films I have in my collection. Why she didn't know he appeared in two-reelers was answered by the fact that he just never mentioned it. Another person who comes to mind is the son of Stooges writer Searle Kramer. He knew his dad worked on Stooges shorts (some of their best, I feel), but had no info or had ever seen the other Columbia films his dad wrote or co-wrote, and I helped him obtain copies of several.

Plan9Crunch: I've noticed there are lost Columbia shorts. Do you think it's more that they haven't been properly looked for or that they are really lost?

Hilbrich: I think it's a mixed bag. I know of a few titles that no material exist on, but I think for the most part, they're out there. I know of a few one-of-a kind prints in private collectors hands, and I know of a few that have been publicly screened that I'd love to get copies of (Harry Mimmo's DOWN THE HATCH in 3D and ROOTIN TOOTIN TENDERFEET, a Max Baer and Maxie Rosenbloom short that was a reworking of Laurel and Hardy's WAY OUT WEST). Probably not the best shorts, but it's nice to know that they're out there, especially with the recent discovery of HELLO POP, a Ted Healy short featuring Moe, Larry and Curly that was made at MGM, that was once on top of the "lost pile," so there's hope.

On a personal note, I finally tracked down a print of MITT ME TONIGHT, the fifth short in the Glove Slingers series. It was part of the Screen Gems' TV package for syndication, but it's been a tough one for me to track down. There were 12 Glove Slingers shorts produced, and I believe only the first 8 titles were in the TV package. A "Holy Grail" of sorts is the last of the Glove Slingers series, HIS GIRL’S WORST FRIEND, as it features my pal Parry Hall's father, Eddie Hall.

Plan9Crunch: There were scores of supporting players in the Columbia shorts, Vernon Dent, Christine McIntire, Dick Curtis ... Who are some of your favorite supporting players?

Hilbrich: I am a big fan of Vernon Dent. Christine McIntyre always stands out, but my favorite is Emil Sitka. That man could have had his own series. His on-screen antics are often funnier than the star player's, to which a comparison to James Finlayson of the Laurel and Hardy subjects was always made by my dad whenever Sitka was on screen. He's always a focal point, no matter how large or small his role is. He's terrific in Billie Burke’s BILLIE GETS HER MAN (1948)  and in the role as Hugh Herbert's uncle in HOT HEIR (1947), a role he would improve upon in its remake, GENTS IN A JAM (1952) with The Three Stooges. And then there's his role as the preacher in BRIDELESS GROOM. Can you imagine one of the other supporting players, such as Vernon Dent or Dick Wessel in that role? Neither can I.

Plan9Crunch: The Columbia shorts had a certain slapstick style, influenced by Jules White and made very popular by the Three Stooges. What impact, in your opinion, did Columbia's more physical style of comedy have on the success, or lack of success, stars such as Keaton, Langdon, Chase and others had. Also, did Columbia leave the lasting impression on comedy shorts, in the same manner that, for example, Glenn Strange's Frankenstein Monster is more iconic than Boris Karloff's monster?

Hilbrich: It's funny that you bring up the Frankenstein comparison, as I associate Glenn Strange with that role over Boris Karloff, too.

Columbia cornered the market on 15-20 minute slapstick comedies with their unique, mostly overly violent tones. But the Stooges' style of slapstick comedy in these Columbia shorts is really different and the boys take it up a notch, even when compared to a short like TRAINING FOR TROUBLE with Gus Schilling and Richard Lane that recycles the same or very similar plot line and gags. There is a smoother flow to the Stooge films, and there is a flat-out attraction to their characterization of human beings. In a Stooges short, Moe, in retaliation will pick up a shovel and swing it into Larry's face as a form of punishment, with a CLANG sound effect. In an El Brendel two-reeler, El might pick up that same prop shovel to begin to throw it over his shoulder, and with that same sound effect of a CLANG, he clips Tom Kennedy in the head. It's an accident that is forgiven, leaving El to be happy. Moe wasn't on the other end of that shovel.

The moments of slapstick throughout these shorts are all very similar, vases get broken over people's heads, monsters or goons chase people through hallways, gun fire blows hats off heads, but it's all a little different than how those same situations appear in the shorts of the Three Stooges. The cartoon violence that is softened by those sound effects mentioned earlier are handled very well in the Stooge shorts, and for that reason the sound effects work better with them. The Jules White approach to the violent style of slapstick does outshine other studios' short-subjects of the era just because that style is much more outlandish in approach and execution.

As for the success or lack of success this style of comedy had on others like Charley Chase or Harry Langdon, I don't think it was lost in first release. If you look through older reviews in trade magazines, audiences ate it up; the shorts were popular, even shorts that we might look at today as being just so-so. Keaton’s Columbia shorts are looked at today as being awful. I really don't think they are as bad as the shorts he made at Educational, and they are definitely 10 times better than the stuff he did for MGM in the early 1930s. Are they as good as his early 1920s output, no, they aren’t. The style is very much off from what viewers today are used to seeing when compared to his silents , and the use of stunt doubles or rear-screen projection can be jarring, but audiences of the day welcomed his films, and I don't think they compared something like THE GENERAL to his Columbia short MOOCHING THROUGH GEORGIA. He was a familiar face from the past once again bringing laughs to the screen.

If anything, it was the release of the films to television that spawned a lack of success; again going back to what I mentioned earlier, the films were broadcast during a time slot children were used to seeing the Stooges in. And the Stooges had more childlike appeal, with Curly’s mannerisms. A good example of a Columbia shorts series being a close second to the Stooges in appeal to both theatrical audiences and younger television viewers later are those starring Andy Clyde. His "old man" character is the draw, a likable goof that wanders into slapstick situations but never comes off as too stupid to sympathize with (as Laurel and Hardy do (to me at least) in their later films for Fox.

Slapstick was the focus of 90 percent of Columbia's two-reel comedies, especially those directed by Jules White. Ed Bernds' approach at directing the shorts sometimes allow an actual story line to develop and conclude in the brief 16-18 minutes with outlandish bits of slapstick peppered throughout. A Jules White short might end on a sight gag with no conclusion to the story line, and some vote that the Stooges shorts at his helm are much more cruel, even with the sound effects softening the violence. TV stations took notice, and some of the gags, for either sensitive material that was a product of the times or extreme amounts of violence, cartoonish or not, were either cut by Screen Gems themselves or by in-house television station editors.

The most violent scene in Columbia shorts history was not even a product of Jules White, but instead by director Del Lord in THEY STOOGE TO CONGA (1943) with The Three Stooges. It's the now-famous climbing spike gag, in which Curly drives a spike into Moe's eye. It's been reported that Screen Gems did not include this short in its rotation of Stooge comedies for syndication, but that is not true. Now whether or not stations chose not to use this short in their lineup  or have their in-house editors remove the climbing spike clip, I'll never know. I'm sure a little of both happened, but I own a Screen Gems print of this title, climbing spike gag and all intact.  But even with some of these shorts slightly edited for violent content, we'll never really know how many kids busted each other's skulls open with a hammer or cut off one another's noses with a pair of scissors, but I think it's pretty safe to say that very few kids were sent to the ER for 32 stitches because one of their pals playing Moe ran a hacksaw across their heads.

Plan9Crunch: What future plans do you have for the site? Any chance of a convention with a full slate of shorts with those players we can't access on TV today?

Hilbrich: The site is still, and will most likely always be, a work-in-progress since I am always updating it with new or expanded information that I continue to find daily, which I couldn't do by myself, so I do feature a page of acknowledgement to all of those who have helped me out. One of the biggest challenges for me is finding information on the less-popular one-reel subjects, especially those from the early 1930s. I've managed to gather up titles, but I'm still working on production credits and the synopsis. There are a few other things in the works, like a media player and gallery for photos of the one-sheets, lobby cards and other bits of related material. There are also some other pages to the site that I am working on, pages with mini-bios for the writers, directors and other behind-the-scenes folks.

The site is also on the way to becoming a dot com site, so you won't have to type in a thousand-letter web address. I'd love to do a screening of the shorts, maybe one day that will happen, but I don't have anything planned.

Review of Vernon Dent: Stooge Heavy, a second banana gets his due

By Doug Gibson

It's a pleasant surprise to see that BearManor Media has provided cinema genre fans a biography of that most famous supporting character of slapstick comedy shorts, Vernon Denton (here). Mentored by Keystone cop Hank Mann, his career started about 100 years ago and never really ceased, moving smoothly through the heydays of Mack Sennett, Educational shorts and the Columbia comedy shorts.

Dent (1895-1963) was fated to have a face often recognized but a name that would come slow to the lips of the average theater-goer. He's best associated with the Three Stooges. (In fact, just a few days I was watching The O'Reilly Factor have a segment that was highlighted with old film clips. Although it lasted a mere five seconds one of the blackouts was Dent -- in some old Stooges short -- getting a pie in the face. I hope I'm not the only viewer who snapped his fingers and said, "THAT'S VERNON DENT!"

But enough of my chatter, I need to get to reviewing "Vernon Dent: Stooge Heavy: Second Banana to the Three Stooges and other Film Comedy Greats," by Bill Cassara, BearManorMedia, 2013. To be very frank, if you're looking for a personal biography of Dent's life, and his impact on the times, you'll be disappointed. This is not really a biography. It can't claim that status when major events such as the death of Dent's mother, Fannie, or his first marriage, are captured in a passage or two.

Instead, what Cassara presents is the equivalent of a well-researched, in-depth, entertaining long magazine piece on the times of Dent's life, with major focus on the entertainer's career. Cassara provides scores of newspaper, school and publicity accounts to traverse Dent's interesting life and times. One personal note that does include extensive reference is the 1909 murder of Dent's father, William, a saloon keeper. William was murdered by the boyfriend of a woman he was having an adulterous affair with. Not unlike today, such an unsavory scandal attracted the media; an added incentive was that William Dent was a nephew of former U.S. President U.S. Grant.

The scandal caused Fannie to move her family from San Jose, California to Oakland, and Vernon grew up in northern California. He seems to have been stagestruck since about the age of nine, and received his share of local publicity as a teen. Fannie Dent died in 1915; by that year the young Dent was married and a professional musician performing in San Francisco and he later Southern California in a nightclub in 1916.

As mentioned, Hank Mann, who had a young Charley Chase directing films, started using Vernon as a supporting player in a series of one- and two-reelers. By 1920 The Pacific Film Company attempted to make a star of Vernon by having him basically do a Fatty Arbuckle takeoff in a series of shorts. As Cassara notes, that ended with Arbuckle's scandal involving the death of actress Virginia Rappe. In these early comedies, Vernon also starred with a beautiful, petite actress with the odd name of Duane Thompson, although in the comedies she went by Violet Joy. Some of these films still exist.

At this juncture of his career, Dent had roles in some features, including "Hail the Woman," but he caught the eye of Mack Sennett and that solidified him as a comedy shorts player. He had a natural rapport with star Harry Langdon, and the pair would work together in films for two decades. Late in the 1920s, during the evolution from silent to sound films, there were two attempts to pair Vernon with co-stars Monty Collins and later Lou Archer. Both attempts could not generate the fan interest to keep them competitive with popular teams such as Laurel and Hardy.

That Dent failed to click as a comedy shorts star is likely because he didn't generate the pathos or likability that Oliver Hardy, for example, could muster with his screen presence. Or maybe he had weak scripts too often? Dent was a splendid actor and talented comedian. That made him very valuable to the comedy shorts producers, who could essentially plug him into any part, star, supporting or bit player. He was always on the payroll of Sennett, Educational and Columbia and often made the equivalent of a $100,000 a year salary today.

Perhaps the last chance Dent had to develop a team was with Langdon in the Educational shorts of the early to mid 1930s. They have some great rapport in shorts, particularly "The Hitchhiker," "The Big Flash," and "Hooks and Jabs," but the death of director Arvid Gillstrom, and later Educational studios, moved both stars to the more slapsticky, Stooge-comedy Columbia, with its shorts head Jules White. As Cassara writes of the Stooges, "The humor of The Three Stooges was physical, lowbrow and 'vulgar.' It was anything for a laugh. The Stooges were a curious combination of surrealism and exaggerated sound effects."

And it worked. Audiences loved the Stooges and their act kept at least two dozen more comedians busy working at Columbia in its many different shorts series. Vernon worked for everyone, but in popular culture, he's attached to the Stooges. In fact, the final 40 percent of the book is a compendium of Vernon's 400-plus film appearances, including his roles with the Stooges.

As the reader gets closer to the appendix, more of the personal life of Vernon is noted. This is mostly thanks to interviews with Vernon's third wife, Eunice, conducted by film historian Ed Watz. (Vernon's second wife had died in the 1930s). He met Eunice at a party thrown by his good friend Langdon, and his wife, Mabel. According to the book, Eunice says he proposed that very night. Their marriage lasted until Dent's death.

As Dent settled into life as a Columbia comedy shorts player, he contracted diabetes in the mid 1940s. It was no surprise as the very heavy Dent loved eating sweets. The condition worsened and by the mid 1950s Vernon was blind. According to Cassara's book, he became blind after refusing to submit to more painful insulin shots.

The strength of Cassara's book is that casual, and even genre fans, will learn many new things about Dent. One was his participation in a "keep-up-the-moral" feature from the World War II era, "San Diego, I Love You," a Universal offering. I have embedded a scene from the film that includes Vernon at the end of this review. Other interesting tidbits is Dent's appearances on TV, including "I Love Lucy."

The details of Watz' interviews with Eunice provide fantastic ancedotes into the lives of the husband and wife, as well as a glimpse into the Hollywood of that era. She notes that Vernon was a favorite of Frank Capra, who used him in bit parts in some of his films. She also expounds more on the close friendship between the Langdons and Dents.

Dent died of a heart attack in 1963, having survived long enough to witness the rejuvenation of the Three Stooges' careers after the Columbia shorts ended. It would be very interesting to read similar accounts of other Columbia shorts supporting players, such as Christine McIntyre or Dick Curtis.

(Also embedded below is a clip from a 1924 Sennet short with Vernon and Andy Clyde, "Black Oxfords").

One more note: This Dent biography can be purchased for under $10 via Kindle.
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Plan9Crunch retread -- Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn, Raimi and Campbell

By Doug Gibson

1987, Color, 85 minutes (less in some foreign versions). Directed by Sam Raimi. Cast includes: Bruce Campbell as Ash, Sarah Berry as Annie Knowby, Dan Hicks as Jake, Ted Raimi as possessed Henrietta Knowby, Denise Bixler as Linda, and John Peaks as Professor Raymond Knowby. Schlock-Meter rating: Eight stars out of a possible 10.

So many reviews like to call Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2 a comedy, or a tribute to the Three Stooges, and there are some great "gross-out" gags, as well as my favorite comic scene, where Bruce Campbell's Ash, minus his possessed hand, traps it by piling a copy of Hemingway's "A Farewell To Arms" on a container holding the hand. Yes, this film contains a lot of comic parody, and after the first half Campbell plays his part mostly for laughs. And it's true that Raimi's very fast-paced, boom-boom-boom "I'm going to jar the viewer every 30 seconds" seems a tribute to Stooge-like filmmaking. And the excessive gore does desensitize the viewer after a while.

But let's not forget that Evil Dead 2 is a very scary, suspenseful thriller that throws out just about every horror/action plot element that exists. Most work. There are only a few clinkers, and the result is a cinema gem. Critic Roger Ebert pegged it best when he wrote that the film was not in bad taste, but about bad taste. Evil Dead 2 is sort of remake of Raimi's micro-budgeted Evil Dead, but with a little more plot and a twist ending that set up another, even more comic sequel, Army of Darkness. The plot: Ash and his girl Linda (Bixler) decide to squat for a night at a cabin in the Michigan woods. Once there, Ash turns on a tape recorder where a professor, who lives in the cabin, invokes a chant from The Book of the Dead that sends a demon to the cabin. From that point on, all hell breaks loose. Eventually, Ash and a few later arrivals, including the professor's daughter (Berry), are forced to fight it out with the demons.

The film is so fast-paced that you just marvel at the speed and special effects in the film that you forget the plot is pretty light. Director Raimi was destined for bigger assignments (A Simple Plan, Quick and the Dead). He's thrifty and economical. I suspect many minutes were spliced out of the final cut of Evil Dead 2 to maintain the fast pace, horror shocks and, yes, comic timing. Most of the cast is mediocre, except for Campbell, who is outstanding. For the first half of the film, he is largely responsible for carrying the flow of the film, and he uses the right amount of fear, fatigue, anger and outrage to pull it off. There are great visual effects, including a twisted, ominous looking bridge over a high drop, a dancing headless woman-demon, a human snake, a psychopathic hand, a woman being attacked by a tree, a demon's eyeball flying into a screaming mouth, and the most chilling, Ted Raimi's possessed Henrietta Knowby, a thoroughly gruesome old demon hag who hangs out in the cellar.

By all means rent or buy Evil Dead 2. It's well worth the price. However, while it is funny, expect more shivers than chuckles. Also, those who leave the room for a snack will miss several shock scenes. They happen so fast.