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THE COMEDY STORY 111 shall be amusing through the action and idea. The script is merely the description of the action through which the idea is conveyed. In appraising the offering the Editor reads the words but he sees the action. He will not appreciate the jest in the written script. He wants to see it in the action. Therefore do not labor to make the script read cleverly; devote your energies and inventiveness to making the action amusing. The simplest rule is to give the audience something funny to think about and give it to them in action that is, of itself, funny. Once the trick is caught—and it is largely a trick—this is a com- paratively simple matter to one with a natural sense at humor, but the disposition to lightly regard the production of a comedy has resulted in the writing of thousands of utterly useless scripts. The writer feels assured that his idea is stronger and more ap- pealing than much that he sees on the screen and he cannot un- derstand why his brilliant script is rejected in favor of one less funny. The answer almost always is that the script accepted and produced : has both the comedy of idea and action where the dis- appointed author has either written the idea or the action, but not both. Perhaps the simplest explanation may be found in such humor- ous cartoons as the Mutt and Jeff series. The pictures of Mutt and Jeff in varying poses are of themselves amusing and the series of six of eight poses may convey a suggestion of comedy story, but the greater appeal is made in the dialogue with which each picture is supplied. It is the idea back of the pictures that makes the pictures themselves funny, and not the pictures that give the humor to the idea. The dialogue alone would not be so appealing nor would the pictures without dialogue seem as amus- ing. It is the combination of the two that brings the fullest effect, so give the idea for the brain and the action for the eye and the most effective combination is produced. Suppose that we take the old variety afterpiece, Bibbs and Bibbs, better known to the present generation of theatergoers as An Uptown Flat. The idea is that two brothers share the same apartment each with his own domestic extablishment, but sharing the common rooms. The wife of one is strong minded and that brother is badly henpecked. The other brother is the dominant character on his side of the house and he browbeats his wife. The assertive brother takes the other out and gets him drunk in the hope of bringing a change in his domestic rela- tions. In the meantime the assertive wife induces her sister-in- law to get the whip hand of her husband. The curtain falls on the situation turned around.