When Comedy Was King

During the late 1950s and ‘60s, Robert Youngson's feature compilations of silent comedy shorts helped introduce many movie lovers to that long-gone style of mirth making. When Comedy Was King (1960), presented in a visually pristine restoration, presents a stellar lineup of silent comedy royalty at their raucous best. The formative Keystone years are represented with early works from Charlie Chaplin and Harry Langdon, along with the wildly inventive Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916) starring Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Mabel Normand, who are in a house that gets washed out to sea. Another Keystone gem, the 1917 Teddy at the Throttle, finds an 18-year-old Gloria Swanson chained to the railroad tracks by a villainous Wallace Beery but rescued by the heroic canine Teddy. Buster Keaton's classic Cops (1922) has the Great Stone Face eluding an army of angry constables after he accidentally tosses an anarchist's bomb into a parade of police officers. And Laurel and Hardy show up as Christmas tree salesmen who get into a violent tit-for-tat brawl with Yuletide-hating James Finlayson in Big Business (1929). The one drawback to this delightful concoction is the soundtrack, which features seemingly nonstop narration by radio broadcaster Dwight Weist and bombastic music and sound effects that add little to the onscreen antics. Extras include a trio of comedy shorts. Highly recommended. (P. Hall)