For good or ill, the new and updated Three Stooges movie premiers this weekend.
Hollywood loves jumping on the bandwagon, so if
this movie is even a moderate box office hit then I predict filmmakers will start
scrambling to recreate other comedy teams from the past.
In
the next year or so expect to see films starring the all new Marx
Brothers, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Martin and Lewis, Hope and Crosby,The Ritz Brothers,
Allen and Rossi and any others they can think of.
You read it here first!
Don't forget Stoopnagle And Bud, Olsen and Johnson, and Wheeler and Woolsey! The possibilities are endless!
ReplyDeleteWow, you're really mining the past! I've never even heard of those teams!
ReplyDeleteWell you're the one who name-checked the Ritz Brothers! How many Americans have ever heard of them? (And I'd never heard of Allen and Rossi.)
ReplyDeleteStoopnagle And Bud were really more of a radio team, which I didn't remember until after posting. (But then, several of the teams you mentioned had a strong radio presence.) Olsen and Johnson are best remembered today for their film Hellzapoppin, based on their earlier Broadway success. And Wheeler and Woolsey were one of the top comic teams of the early 30s. TCM sometimes shows their stuff, and Warner Archives has recently started releasing them to home video. Their films are pretty funny (the two I've seen, at least). One is basically the same premise as Duck Soup, only four years earlier.
I was just reminded of another obscure film comedy team: Durante and Keaton. Both are extremely well known as individual performers, but they did a string of films on the early 30s as a team. Not very memorable as a comedy team. But if Hollywood is going to start recycling old comedies, expect to see the Jude Apatow version of "What! No Beer?" in 2013!
Interesting. I had no idea Durante and Keaton were ever a team.
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing Allen and Rossi on TV a lot when I was a kid. They were kind of a very low rent Martin and Lewis. They made one movie that I know of called "Last of the Secret Agents," which as you may guess was a Bondian spy spoof. When I was a kid I thought Marty Allen was the funniest person alive. I think it was because he looked funny, with his bug eyes and Brillo-pad hair. That's pretty much all he had going for him comedy-wise. Believe it or not his catch phrase was "Hello dere." That was pretty much the extent of his verbal humor.