IT'S HARD WORK BEING FUNNY!

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 17, 21 January 1939, Page 7 (Supplement)

IT'S HARD WORK BEING FUNNY!

ARE you. funny? Do your •friends say: "Let's get Bill to come over —he's a kick!" Or perhaps it's your little Willie who sets people laughing, so that even those who can't tell the other children apart always . remember to ask about your "clown." If Willie answers. this description, don't discourage him; he may win fame as a comedian. And fame in comedy means big money and a lifetime career, according to Jack Haley, record-breaker of stage and screen. • • "Buy Willie a joke book," advises Jack." "Help him along. He may turn out to be a Benny, an Allen or a Victor Moore. Then you'll Ibe set for life.*' Comedy isn't a real joke with Jack, however. When he appears 'behind the footlights or before the cameras it's carefully. planned business as far as he

is concerned. No anxious broker ever watched a Dow-Jones average more closely than Jack scrutinises the chance of a laugh in his scenes. "What you do just after you pull a funny Jine," he explained, "is just as important as the humour in the line itself. A smart comic learns, after years of experience, to milk his laughs; to keep his audience gufTawing as long as possible. Naturally, in pictures you are milking a laugli by remote control, because you can't sec your audience. But fundamentally the principles of comedy are the same on the screen as off it." . Willie will have to learn that "milking a laugh" can be done in several ways. He had better evolve his own. Jack Haley has wide-open eyes, as you may have noticed. It's no accident that, he uses them as he does. After reading a funny line or getting, the tag of a gag he invariably pops his eyes, gazes around in simple-minded wonder-

ment, as if to say: "What's so funny?" Naturally, this makes the audience laugh harder. 1 Don't fool yourself; Jack isn't the dopeyeyed fellow he seems. He knows he has to do something to lift and incredse the laughter, so he pops his oyes. "That trick is called 'getting away with a laugh,'" grinned Jack. "Every comedian has his special technique in this. Sch nozzle Durante stamps his foot and laughs wildly. Jack Benny makes a gesture of nonchalance, such as tentatively scratching the back of his ear. Fred Allen keeps on talking, then stops suddenly, stares in surprise at the audience still laughing at his gag, as if he were surprised at having said something funny. Victor Moore uses a similar technique—lie always pretends to 'be innocently surprised and embarrassed when the audience laughs at one of his cracks. "It's up to Willie to figure out something for himself." If Willie is to be a full-fledged comedian, he'll have to understand that it is no hit-or-miss trade. It's as old as the world, yet it must seem as fresh and new as the first crocus. "Willie should learn some of our trade secrets 'if he hopes to make comedy a career," advised the young comedian. "There's the business of topping a laugh. Every comedian must keep a look-out for toppers. "For example, in a stage show I once did, a girl, dressed in cowboy costume, complete with horse, pistols, got into an argument with me and rushed out of the house. One night, wlien she was making her exit, the door stuck. She struggled to open it, panic-stricken, and the scene got a bigger laugh than ever before. "That gave me an idea, for the audience had pointed to a gag I hadn't realised; the door situation, on top of the horse-pistol girl quarrel, was hilarious. "The next night we topped the laugh. The prop, man fixed the door so that it would stick tight, and when the girl tried the knob and found the door wouldn't open she pulled one of her guns, shot the door-knob off, and flung herself out of the house. Of course, the knob had been wired to fall at the moment of the gun's firing, but the sight of the girl leaving dopey-faced me, shooting the door open, and my wide-eyed 'tripletake' of the amazing situation made it the. high spot of the sliow.

"Sometimes an accident like that will give you a liint; sometimes you worry it out after weeks of thinking. But if Willi© is seriously considering a comic career lie might as well take time now to work out toppers to each funny piece of business he evolves." Another trade secret is called "punctuating a gag." "That means a carefully calculated trick to put over your comedy," explained Jack. "There's the old vaudeville gag of two fellows, one upstairs and one downstairs. The ceiling begins to leak, and the man downstairs cups his hands and shouts to the other: " 'Hey, you dope, turn off the water ill the sink, you're flooding the place!' "Whereupon the stooge upstairs shouts down: 'Stop swearing, I've got a lady up here!' "At which the man downstairs sneers: "Well, what do you think I've got here— a duck!' "Now, the tag line of this gag is the one a'bout the duck, of course. But if it were read simply as it is the

audience would not foe warned in time to pick it up for a laugh. So, in vaudeville, when I used it, I punctuated tlie lino with a loud 'Ha!' before saying, 'Well, what do you think, etc./ and the audience caught on that something funny was coming, and were prepared not to miss it." This necessity for punctuating a laugh becomes especially apparent, according to our comedian, when the lines of a joke are distributed among four, or five actors. "When yon take a tag line," Haley pointed out, "you have to secure the audience's attention, which has been focused on the previous speakers. Willie will have to learn that he must do something to call the audience's attention to himself before he attempts to read his line, or they won't laugh. He will flick his cigar; he will shout 'Ha!' as I did in the above gag; he will slap his kneo or throw his hat into the air. He may even start to take off his coat, if it's a gag that might prompt him to fight. But some sort of gesture must be made to make sure the tag won't be lost.

"This strategy isn't confined to comedians. Every experienced public speaker -has his favourite device for gaining attention. President Roosevelt always begins an address by saying 'My friends.' Then, after a pause, he begins, sure that his audience is expectantly awaiting his next phrase. "Let Willie, if he really expects to line up with big-time comedy, "begin to experiment on gaining attention, so as not to waste laughs." On the stage, our comedian observed, .one difficulty is to make scenes seem to be impromptu, night after night, month after month. Willie may be able to make 'cm laugh the first time, but it's doubtful if he can go 011 getting them to roar with mirth if he doesn't learn how. to put over the presumably ad lib comedy. "I asked one of my friends on what night he had seen 'Take a Chance,' one of my big hits 011 the stage. "'Oh, that's easy!' he replied. 'I saw it the night Sid Silvers got thrown out of the 'bar so many times.' "The joke .of it was that Sid Silvers was thrown out every night—it was a regular routine, though everyone thought it was an accident, and treasured it as being peculiar to a single performance. Ethel Merman and I used to sing a song 011. the stage, and just as we finished Sid was tossed out of the 'bar in back of lis while the audience applauded the song, so the bartender and Sid, tired of waiting to give their lines, return to the bar and repeat the toss. This seems impromptu to the audience; which delighted them and heightened their applause. The barkeep, with a disgusted leer, again taps Sid on the shoulder, and the tossing out gag is repeated. The trick is continued as long as the audience seems interested." Willie may as well set to work on his own and see what lie can make of .Jack Haley's hints, for it is the comedian's conviction that the talking picture has just about killed off the breeding ground of that talented and sensitive ego. the comic. "There are apparently no new comedians," he complained, "because the developing fields for comics have disappeared. In the old days, a comic learned his trade in the 'Tabloids'— poverty-stricken revues that piayed small towns incapable of supporting vaudeville. They learned their stuff there—what a gag was and how to milk it and top it—in the old burlesque. That old 'burlesque, by the way, was radically different from to-day's burlesque, which depends on smut. Why, do you know, when I played burlesque we couldn't even say 'hell?' And- that's good for comedy, for if a comedian has to work for clean laughs he really works. Grabbing a laugh with- a dirty line is too easy. "Willie may as well learn that even if they do shamefully guffaw when he pulls a . smutty joke they don't pay money into a box-office to have mamma and the children to go to see him. Harold Lloyd lasts twenty years and makes millions on comedies anybody's grandmother can see." Jack's own private collection of gags and jokes totals approximately 22,000 items. All in all, he has spent before footlights, microphone, and . camera a sum of at least 15,000 hours. In his latest radio show he had to plan an average of ninety laughs a performance for 39 consecutive weeks.