THE QUALITY OF HUMOUR

Southland Times, Issue 23389, 22 December 1937, Page 8

THE QUALITY OF HUMOUR

ROBERT BENCHLEY’S

OPINIONS

THE SCREEN’S LITERARY

COMEDIAN

Robert Benchley is one of the new literary humourists of the screen.' Invercargill audiences will remember him in short pictures (“The Romance of Digestion” was one of them) with a special individual flavour. There is practically no action; but Mr Benchley has the art of being funny simply in what he says and probably relies less on mannerism than any other comedian. His views on humour are reprinted from an interview in The Age, Melbourne. The quality of humour is not strained. It falleth as the gentle rain. When it falleth like a ton of bricks, a coin on a plush sofa, you may be sure that some self-made clown is parading around the living room with his trousers rolled up and wearing one of the woman guest’s hats. “What we need,” declared Robert Benchley recently, “is a reliable type of fool-killer, guaranteed for 90 days, and a stout blotter to mop up the remains.” Mr Benchley, admits that because of the very nature of his occupation and fame he is subject to at least two dozen assaults a day by amateur halfwits, determined to show him that they can be funny. “My face is getting to be known as good old Benchley’s ‘pickle-puss,’ for no other reason than having to listen wryly to chance acquaintances’ jokes which weren’t even funny when I wrote them in the first place! “You don’t have to reach for humour. It’s either there, or it isn’t. If you strain for a funny effect it is the same as a strain anywhere, although I admit that a strained funnybone can be more painful than a broken leg. “Of all humourists, however, the parlour humourist is probably the most serious affliction that can hit a party, running second only to the ‘cutie’ who gives impromptu imitations, and the contralto who donates comic songs in her best operatic slumming voice. “In the films a humourist seldom really needs to call on his stock of comedy. Most film comedy, such as they have me doing in “Live, Love and Learn” (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) al? ready is written by a clique of writers, whose biggest assets lie in their ability to look like pall-bearers and write like ticklish old maids under laughing gas. “The boys never strain for a laugh. Their , humour is pure and undefiled and charged with everything from grand larceny to Who-was-that-lady-I-saw-you-with-last-night? I laughed more just reading the script of “Live, Love and Learn” than I ever did over any of my own comedy shorts. And if ever anybody enjoyed Benchley comedies it is Benchley. “But don’t, I implore you,” Mr Benchley concludes, “ever laugh—even weakly—at any amateur or professional strained atempt at humour. It encourages him —and some day he’ll grow up and be a half-wit. There’s not enough jobs in this industry for all of us, as it is!”