I guess the one thing all the truly great early movie comedians shared was a backrgound in vaudeville (or music hall, as we know it over here); Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, the Marx Brothers. W.C. Fields ...... well, the list goes on. It gave them all the chance to hone their talent, and the very nature of the audiences would have made them great ad-libbers; if you couldn't think on your feet you were dead!! The criticism people make now when they see films by Chaplin, or the Marx Brothers, is that the humour is so corny, the jokes so old; the thing they are forgetting is that these jokes were invented by Chaplin et al, and have been endlessly imitated since, which shows the sheer power, genius and inventiveness of these first comics.
Bob Hope also came from vaudeville; personally, while I admire his craft & ability I never found him funny - but then we didn't have as much exposure to his live stuff, Carson, Cavett etc were never shown here.
Interesting that Robin Williams gets a mention. We have a whole new generation of comics now who have also had that solid training, via the comedy clubs (the successor to vaudeville?) and, in the States, SNL; so the likes of Richard Pryor, Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Mike Myers, Eddie Izzard etc already had that solid grounding before they made it onto film. Sadly their talent is often wasted, with the films being a lot less inventive than the classics; but that is probably more down to the studio executives playing safe than to the comedians themselves - Williams especially has been associated with some real dogs (Patch Adams!!!!), but his appearance on "In The Actors Studio" remains one of the funniest things I have ever seen (check it on Youtube, but be prepared to hurt yourself by laughinh so much). But look at something like the first Ghostbusters film, a true original, inventive, intelligent - it can still be done. At the moment some of the most innovative & intelligent comedy is coming from the small screen and from radio, on both sides of the Atlantic; over here we have had a succession of programmes over the years from Channel 4 (Desmonds, Father Ted, Spaced etc) and from the BBC (The Office, League of Gentlemen (initially on radio), Goodness Gracious Me (also radio first), The Mighty Boosh (ditto) - in the US you have an equally good track record, my particular favourite at the moment is Big Bang Theory, comedy really does get more intelligent than that!!
So comedy still is REALLY comedy; there is a lot of dross, but then there always was (Keystone Cops anyone?). But the comics of today are every bit as capable, intelligent, innovative and (potentially) dangerous; who knows, 50 years from now people may be looking back on this as a golden age?
