Cinematic clowning lost something delicious when the two-reeler became extinct in the 1940’s. Up until then you could catch the likes of Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton, the Three Stooges, Charley Chase or Clark and McCullough in twenty minute slapstick epics that would make a cigar store indian split a gut laughing.
Perhaps you don’t know about Clark and McCullough? For the most part, they have fallen through the cracks in comedy history. The cigar-puffing Clark, with a pair of painted-on spectacles, and McCullough -- always swathed in a racoon fur coat and inevitably named ‘Blodgett’ in every film -- were boyhood friends who got so good at acrobatics that they dropped out of high school to join a circus passing through their hometown of Springfield, Ohio. from there they went on to vaudeville and Broadway -- and then had a brief fling in two-reelers at RKO Studios.
A typical, and very enjoyable, sample of their frantic zaniness is 1934’s “Odor in the Court.” This two-reeler is jam-packed with pratfalls, spit takes, meandering fisticuffs, brass bands, pompous judges, shapely blondes, shyster lawyers, and everything else that a slapstick screwball comedy should have. Film historians claim that Bobby Clark wrote the script to this meshuggah movie on the back of an envelope, and that when the cameras started rolling the two clowns just made it all up as they went along. The spontaneous buffoonery in the film suggests that just might be the case.
So if you want to study some prime slapstick silliness, do yourself a favor and catch this twenty minute strip of celluloid with a screw loose. Once again, we can thank YouTube for offering an excellent copy of the film for free, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hi6eeSg9f4
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