3 Review(s)

This unusual film study begins with a survey of American print humorists from eras leading up to and overlapping the advent of film--including some who worked both on the page and on the screen, like Will Rogers, Groucho Marx and W.C. Fields. Six comic film genres are indentified as outgrowths of a national tradition of cracker barrel philosophers and country store raconteurs--personality comedy, populism, parody, screwball comedy, romantic comedy and dark comedy. Tracing a rambling lineage from Ben Franklin to Mark Twain to Bob Hope to Steve Martin, the author presents a genealogy of glib antiheroes blowing raspberries at the world.