Laughing in the Dark: Movie Comedy from Groucho to Woody

by Ted Sennett

A beautifully designed and profusely illustrated tribute to the great comedic stars and films of Hollywood's sound era. Sennett offers one of the most complete surveys of sound comedy ever published, with a decade-by-decade overview, and looks at changing trends in humor and the various styles of noted actors and directors.

341 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1991

Reviews

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books that you can't quite figure out if you like it or not. It traces film comedy from the days of people slipping on banana peels, getting hit with cream pies, and chasing around town in cars to the more sophisticated films of the 1990s. The author takes each decade and dissects what type of comedy was "in style"....the sophistication of The Thin Man, the insanity of the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields, etc. I just felt that it should have explained how and why society's tastes changed but instead it targeted certain films and explained the plot and why it was funny or not. It is less a history of America's love of comedy than a repetition of films that most movie buffs have already seen. I didn't dislike the book but it didn't resonate much with me.