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ZaSu Pitts started out to become a tragedienne, but the audience laughed at her vague hands. "They have always waved around — sort of without me," she explains. That "Oh, dear" of hers was an accident, in her first talkie
SOME actors arc born comedians; some acquire comed\% and others have comedy thrust upon them. Heartaches, chance, desperation, accident, luck, coincidence . . . upon each one of these hangs the career of some comedian who didn't mean to be funny at all.
Harold Lloyd, after he evolved Lonesome Luke, a comic type that mam' considered an imitation of Chaplin, worked out his smooth-face, funny fellow with the horn-rim specs — worked it out deliberately, after long consideration. But Harold had been a stock company character man. Louise Fazenda's aim was to make people laugh — only she didn't mean to make them laugh quite so hard. The Marx Brothers had a definitely comic act when they first started out minus Harpo, but Harpo never meant to be the comedy riot he is now. His comedy was thrust upon him when he was dragged unwillingly on the stage one evening, and was screamingly and silently funny because of his intense fright.
W. C. Fields was born a comedian. Charlie Chaplin began as a boy entertainer in London, but it was not until he more or less accidentally developed his sad little tramp that he
They Didnt Mean To Be
FUNNY
became the target for a million laughs. Eddie Cantor discovered that he could roll his eyes and so became a singing comedian. Mary Boland was so ravishingly beautiful that she was always cast as the conventional leading lady opposite such actors as John Drew, but she achieved higher rating as a comedienne when she got a light role in "The Torch Bearers."
It is difficult to pick out many comedians who were born
in the interest of pure comedy. Most of them acquired il
or had it thrust upon them. A thousand potential Hamlets
are sending America into stitches, and a thousand
comedians are reducing us to tears.
Consider, for example, the sudden popularity
of Una Merkel since the talkies. Sitting in
her blue and white dressing-room at M-G
M, we discussed the reasons for the giggle?
when she appears on the screen.
Bob Woolsey's funny, mincing swagger is natural. He actually walks that way ! But the cigar was an accident, from a gag. Wheeler's little boy manner is studied
Joe E. Brown's yell came from trying to get a friend up mornings. The friend was a heavy sleeper, until Joe E. thought of the yell. The mouth, of course, helped
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