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Having gone to school with Marie and figuring that it would be a smart political move to have Marie talk to the women, the Mayor invites her to come up onto the platform and make a speech. But instead of making a speech Marie asks the Mayor some very pertinent questions about crime in that little town everybody loves so much.
The Mayor tries glibly to get her off that subject but Marie is too aroused to think of anything else, too heartbroken over the murder of the little girl she has known since a baby.
Unable to put her questions off, the oily-tongued Mayor gives her evasive answers, but Marie insists on direct answers. Why does he tolerate rum-runners, bootleggers and gangsters ? Why does he allow them to endanger peoples' lives ? Where is the protection he had promised them and their children?
The Mayor finally becomes so exasperated he forgets himself and tells Marie to keep her nose out of his business, probably the worst thing he could say.
Stung by his brazen attitude Marie goes after him hammer and tongs, the women in the audience cheering her on. Then as the women become more and more incensed at him be begins to wilt and look for a way to get out of there and suddenly we see the high and mighty Mayor tumbled from his perch as he hurries for the back door, with books, umbrellas, even a few purses hurled at him.
That scene was definitely dramatic and yet it got as much laughter and applause as any so-called comedy scene I have ever directed. But the point is that the double-dealing Mayor made the audience feel that they were beneath him and when Marie toppled him from his high pedestal, virtue triumphed over wickedness, inferiority over superiority, a surefire reason for elation.
Thus we learn that comedy is not a thing in itself but an effect produced by two things. The first may be anything within the realm of human knowledge or consciousness, but to be effective must be definitely unfunny, that is, neither existing nor occuring directly or indirectly with anything that might make it look or sound ridiculous or amusing. The second factor, which may be a stupid or smart variation or inversion
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