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of her dear friend, Polly Moran, to the esteemed post of Commissioner of Garbage.
Joe Laurie, Jr., sublimating backwardness : "I spent four of my best years in the sixth grade."
Farcing, much ado about little, stressing or emphasizing things out of all proportion to their true importance or significance provides a surefire comedy contrast when the result is an exposition of plain pinheadedness :
Dismantling a balky automobile and holding a lengthy and profound diagnosis over the remains only to discover there is no gas in the tank.
Joe Cook with his system of gears, pulleys, levers and triggers finally releasing a great weight on his assistant's conk, a cue to tap the drum.
And the contrast is just as surefire writh the formula for pathos; little ado about much or understatement:
"Well dearie," said Ted Cook's Aunt Bella, "It was like this: He said the coffee was weak. I threw my cup in his face. He took me over his knee and spanked me with his slipper. I conked him with a bridge lamp and the next thing we knew we found ourselves quarreling."
Audiences, although their attention is fixed on the screen, are at the same time conscious of the fact that they are seated in a public place, a condition perfect for embarrassment.
Now then, the comedian suddenly blurts out that he knows a place right there in that neighborhood where women don't wear anything but bracelets.
Apprehensive, ill-at-ease, the straight man finally manages to stutter: "Wh-wh-where ?"
"On their wrists!*' the comic tells him.
Knowing the audience was primed for embarrassment, the comedian tensed them still more for shock. Fooling them, he next lulls them into an even greater feeling of security with a statement as innocent as the cooing of a dove.
"I just saw a guy milking a cow."
"Where?" the straight man asks.
"About that far from the middle," and the comedian shows the straight man just how far from the middle.
In that particular manner of routining gags we discover the comedy dialogist's ace-in-the-hole, or self
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