What Made Pistachio Nuts?

Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic

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by Henry Jenkins

Type: Essays
Subject: Genre > Comedy/Humor
Keywords: comedy, humor, Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields
Publishing date: 1992
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Collection: Film and Culture
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 382 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN-10 ISBN-13

0-231-07855-2
978-0-231-07855-9

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Book Presentation:
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.

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.

See the publisher website: Columbia University Press

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