Topic: Abbott & Costello's Buck Privates copies you know who

[healyhouston]

Abbott and Costello's blockbuster film "Buck Privates" 1941 copies two films.  The first of course is the Three Stooges "Boobs in Arms" 1940 and the second is an early Shemp short called "Salt Water Daffy" 1933.  A&C actually copied Shemp's film more.  See for yourself

Shemp Salt Water Daffy 1933 (this is on the new Fatty Arbuckle and Shemp DVD)

Three Stooges Boobs in Arms 1940

Abbott and Costello Buck Privates 1941

Filmed on a B-picture budget, Buck Privates was Universal's biggest box-office hit of 1941 and gave Bud and Lou a sever year contract.  However the films doesnt hold up as good as the stooges because future generations wont sit thru the music


EDITED to incorporate this site's video presentation function.

[BeAStooge]

Looking at a film-chronology and drawing "this one copied that one," "this one stole from that one" conclusions is overgeneralizing and misleading. 

Army skits like the drill routine were a staple of vaudeville and burlesque comedy performers for decades.  It was standard practice "in the business" for performers to borrow from one another, with all types of routines.  The best performers, like the Stooges, could take the old routines and give them their own spin thru their own talent and personalities. 

SALT WATER DAFFY was produced for Jack Haley, and with Vitaphone based in Brooklyn where it used NYC-based performers to cast its films, and considering Haley's fame on vaudeville and Broadway stages, it's quite possible that Haley himself had stage experience with the old bit, so Henley & Lambert constructed an appropriate script.

BUCK PRIVATES was not inspired by BOOBS IN ARMS.  Abbott & Costello had their own version of the drill routine which they had been doing in burlesque since they teamed in 1936, and notably on Broadway in 1939 in THE STREETS OF PARIS.  And it takes a lot more than one 2-reel short to incent a competing studio to finance a feature film.  Universal had a new comedy team who were nationally popular on radio, U.S. involvement in the European war was inevitable, and the U.S. re-instituted the draft in the Fall of 1940.  Real life events had more to do with BUCK PRIVATES than anything else, and similiar projects were underway at Fox for Laurel & Hardy (GREAT GUNS), and at Paramount for Bob Hope & Eddie Bracken (CAUGHT IN THE DRAFT). 

Joe Besser starred in the nationally touring YOU'RE IN THE ARMY stage revue in 1937 and 1938.  The drill routine he did in HEY, ROOKIE! (1944) and AIM, FIRE, SCOOT (1952) was adapted from that stage show; the bit was also frequently performed by him on TV variety shows from 1946 thru the 1950s, e.g., HOUR GLASS (5/9/46), THE KEN MURRAY SHOW (10/14/50) and Spike Jones' CLUB OASIS (3/29/58). 

Jules White visited Besser during an L.A. run of YOU'RE IN THE ARMY in late September 1937.  A month-and-a-half later in November 1937, the Stooges are filming WEE WEE MONSIEUR (1938), with a drilling scene that borrowed liberally from both Besser's and A&C's acts.  Coincidence, inspiration, or "copying"?  BOOBS IN ARMS (1940) did the same a couple years later, and much more blatantly from Besser.

[metaldams]

  It was standard practice "in the business" for performers to borrow from one another, with all types of routines.  The best performers, like the Stooges, could take the old routines and give them their own spin thru their own talent

Absolutely correct.

Years ago, a friend and I wrote an article in The Three Stooges Journal comparing gags The Three Stooges and Harold Lloyd had in common.  Everybody copied from everybody else back then, and the only thing the Stooges can claim as original, and it's a big thing, is their characters.  Same with Bud and Lou.  Both teams came much later in the film slapstick genre.

As far as army comedies go, I think Charlie Chaplin's SHOULDER ARMS came out in 1917 or 1918.

[BeAStooge]

As far as army comedies go, I think Charlie Chaplin's SHOULDER ARMS came out in 1917 or 1918.

And beginning with that, there are enough Army comedies thru present day to fill up Hal Erickson's new, 426-page book, Military Comedy Films which includes discussions of the above films and scores more.

Beginning with Charlie Chaplin's Shoulder Arms, released in America near the end of World War I, the military comedy film has been one of Hollywood's most durable genres. This generously illustrated history examines over 225 Army, Navy and Marine-related comedies produced between 1918 and 2009, including the abundance of laughspinners released during World War II in the wake of Abbott and Costello's phenomenally successful Buck Privates (1941), and the many lighthearted service films of the immediate postwar era, among them Mister Roberts (1955) and No Time for Sergeants (1958).
 
Also included are discussions of such subgenres as silent films (The General), military-academy farces (Brother Rat), women in uniform (Private Benjamin), misfits making good (Stripes), anti-war comedies (MASH), and fact-based films (The Men Who Stare at Goats). A closing filmography is included in this richly detailed volume.

[sandmountainslim]

Abbot and Costello,  Laurel and Hardy,  Marx Brothers have ALL been left behind by the Stooges.    Kids today barely know who they are.

[metaldams]

Abbot and Costello,  Laurel and Hardy,  Marx Brothers have ALL been left behind by the Stooges.    Kids today barely know who they are.

In Europe, it's the reverse.  Even on this board, most people over the years have been American, east coast Americans.

I generally can find ways to appreciate different comedy acts on their own merits, Jerry Lewis being the exception. There's plenty of room in my collection.