What Made Pistachio Nuts?: Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic / Edition 1

by Henry Jenkins

Overview

Lively and highly readable, What Made Pistachio Nuts? examines what Henry Jenkins calls the anarchistic tradition of American film comedy. Anarchistic comedies of the 1930s mock the social order and celebrate the creativity and impulsiveness of their protagonists in a form of clowning that ultimately reestablishes the status quo.Jenkins focuses on well-known films such as the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup and W.C. Fields' It's a Gift, as well as all-but-forgotten works like Diplomaniacs,Hollywood Party, So Long Lefty, and others. He tracks the careers of the comic stars -Eddie Cantor, Winnie LIghtner, W.C. Fields, Charlotte Greenwood, the Marx Brothers, and Wheeler and Woolsey- as they moved from vaudeville and the New York reviews to Hollywood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231078559
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	12/29/1992
Series:	Film and Culture Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Henry Jenkins is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at MIT. He is author of Textual Poachers:Television Fans and Participatory Culture. He is coauthor of The Science Fiction Audience: Dr.Who, Star Trek, and Their Fans.

Editorial Reviews

Jenkins (film and media studies, MIT) examines a genre of comedy films produced early in the 1930s that centered around particular comedians, such as W. C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Eddie Cantor, and Burns and Allen. He shows how the zany antics of vaudeville combined with the conventions of classical film narrative to celebrate the collapse of the social order. Illustrated with stills. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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