ABSTRACT
Comedy is drama heightened, oxygenated, says Ed Hooks, and it can even include death as we know from the work of Woody Allen. There were two masters of movie comedy. Charles Chaplin came from British music hall tradition. The other, Buster Keaton, was trained in American vaudeville. Keaton certainly was humiliated and became a heavy drinker, same as Lon Chaney, Jr., who, according to late writer Curt Siodmak, was tormented by his famous father, the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Phantom of the Opera. Chaplin, on the other hand, brought emotion to superficial slapstick: Other comedians might have stumbled into a bucket and just shove it away, but Chaplin, ashamed, would try to hide foot and bucket and turn not so much the mishap but the following embarrassment into fun and laughter. Chaplin was looking for empathy and Keaton for sympathy. Harold Lloyd was no natural comedian. Keystone's Mack Sennett did not consider him funny at all.
