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What Made Pistachio Nuts?

Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic

Author: Henry Jenkins
Paperback: 364 pages
Publisher: Columbia University Press (1992)
Avg. Rating: [ Unrated ]
ISBN: 0231078552
In Print? No

The chapter "Assorted Lunacy... With No Beginning and No End" includes a detailed analysis of the development and scripting of HOLLYWOOD PARTY (1934).  The role Ted Healy & His Stooges played in the film are part of that discussion.

From the back cover...

"Taking a fresh look at long-forgotten films by W. C. Fields, Wheeler & Woolsey, Eddie Cantor and George Burns & Gracie Allen, What Made Pistachio Nuts? examines anarchistic comedies of the early 1930s, the first years of the sound era.

Unjustly dismissed by critics, exuberant, zany films like DIPLOMANIACS, DUCK SOUP and HOLLYWOOD PARTY rejoiced in the creativity and impulsiveness of their protagonists, and the resultant collapse of the social order.  Jenkins shows that these films reflect Hollywood's attempt to assimilate aspects of vaudeville practice into the formal and thematic conventions of the classical film narrative.

Illustrated with 167 photographs, What Made Pistachio Nuts? includes a reconsideration of the role of female comic performers; an in-depth profile of Eddie Cantor's precarious career; a case study of the scripting of a single film, HOLLYWOOD PARTY; and a discussion of the treatment of laughter in the American popular press."


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