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Here's a Christmas Present for you, out latest issue of COMIQUE, featuring articles by Ed Watz, Lea Stans, Paul Gierucki, and yours truly.

Enjoy!

https://archive.org/details/comique-the ... 5/mode/2up

RICHARD M ROBERTS

After a three year hiatus, we are back with issue #3 of Comique - The Classic Comedy Magazine -- featuring 236 pages of original articles, fascinating stories, and hundreds of rare images!

In this issue:

Founders Messages from Gierucki and David B. Pearson

Raymond Rohauer Redux by Edward Watz

Louise Fazenda - The Forgotten Queen of Slapstick by Lea Stans

What’s Stooge? Ted Healy Tells You! by Robert Fender

COVER STORY: Lloyd V. Hamilton – Silent Comedy’s Poor Soul by Richard M. Roberts

The Hamilton Filmography – Robert Farr, Richard M. Roberts, Joe Moore

Centerfold – The Comique Cutie

Polly Moran – A Bassoon in “Hollywood’s Symphony of Sweet-Tuned Violins” by Joanna E. Rapf

Buster Keaton in the USSR by Olga Egorova

Minta Durfee Arbuckle – In Person by Paul E. Gierucki

Vernon Dent Speaks by Alice Morse

In Their Own Write – Letters From Hollywood: Stan Laurel

When Bud Was Funnier Than Lou by Edward Watz

and much more!

Read or download COMIQUE – THE CLASSIC COMEDY MAGAZINE here for FREE:

https://archive.org/details/comique-the ... sue-3-2025

Back issues available here:

https://archive.org/search?query=creato ... e+Group%22

Enjoy!

A wonderful Christmas present. Thank you to all!

Give the recent demise of CLASSIC IMAGES, this is a welcome Christmas present. Thanks to all the contributors; its always a happy day when we can get nice things! Happy Holidays, one and all!

You know, one of the articles in this latest issue of COMIQUE that I not only really like, but wholeheartedly agree with, is Ed Watz’s article on the second season of THE ABBOTT AND COSTELLO SHOW. I’ve always felt that the first season was too many disjointed shows with retreads of the standard A and C routines, not even always performed all that well (including yes, what is probably the lamest version of WHO’S ON FIRST ever filmed in the episode called THE ACTOR’S HOME), But Ed and I have also shared a similar opinion regarding Bud and Lou’s performances in their later films as frankly being preferable to their work in their earlier films.

My partner and I always shared a similar bond, and she was a woman who loved Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, most vintage comedy silent and sound (except Ben Blue), B westerns, serials, and most pre-1970’s cinema. I recall one night screening A and C’s HOLD THAT GHOST for her, and about a half hour into the viewing, she turned to me and asked, “Can we watch something else? If I hear Lou Costello yell or scream again as he has endlessly done about every 90 seconds in this movie so-far, I’m gonna throw something at the screen”. I hadn’t watched the film in some time, and I realized that Lou was getting on my nerves as well.

And as we went through much of Bud and Lou’s filmography, it became increasingly apparent that they were much more palatable to us post-1946 than they were before, and it was for basically two reasons, one was that Costello’s near constant noise making, bouncing off walls, always trying to pull focus from everything around him was really a turn-off, gad, he and Bud went through nearly all the branches of the WW2 military and unfortunately Lou was never gunned down, blown-up, head-injuried by schrapnel that would at least make him be quiet and catatonic, no respite. Couple that with the horrible way Universal’s writers continued to portray Bud, who was indeed a great straight man and actually a good actor when given the opportunity, as a crum who’d sell Costello out on a whim, made the pair rather unpalatable to us.

Then, everything began to change in late 1946, maybe with THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES, where both of them are more subdued, split up, and we get to see both of them in a better light, Lou showing a little more discipline, and Bud shining in a genuine and not unsympathetic supporting role. This seemed to get better as the late 40’s progressed, certainly A AND C MEET FRANKENSTEIN, but everything else as well: THE NOOSE HANGS HIGH, MEXICAN HAYRIDE, A AND C MEET THE KILLER BORIS KARLOFF (the first Bud and Lou I ever saw and still one of my favorites) and frankly it continues into the 1950’s, MEETS THE INVISIBLE MAN is near the top of the list of my favorites, and I don’t even have a problem with the other 50’s films. Perhaps it’s the fact that Lou’s rocky health took a lot of his nervous energy away, though it is still a bit disconcerting watching him sweating and trying to kill himself through a lot of overblown overplaying to the audience on the COLGATE COMEDY HOUR’s and watching Bud be the great professional straight man he was working hard to keep Lou focused and within the bounds of whatever sketch they are doing on live television. It’s also nice in the later films to start seeing them working more as a team, actually on the same side, Bud stops selling Lou out, it’s much funnier just watching him not believe Lou whenever Costello is confronted by whatever monster they are meeting and tried to warn Abbott about it, at least you get the feeling Bud wouldn’t feed Lou to the wolfman to save his own skin if he did see the creature.

The 50’s films are more relaxed, they are more palatable as a team in them, and I find nothing wrong with those unlike some of the more rabid and vocal Bud and Lou fans. One of the pleasures in those films is seeing them work with other seasoned performers, Lou’s scene with Margaret Hamilton in COMIN’ ROUND THE MOUNTAIN is a delight, as is their work with Charles Laughton in A AND C MEET CAPTAIN KIDD (I’ve always said Laughton showed off what he learned from Bud and Lou when he did HOBSON’S CHOICE a year or so later). I like them dealing with Fred Clark in A AND C MEET THE KEYSTONE KOPS (another film I share an opinion with Ed on that it is underrated) , because it makes them work as a team to defeat him.

And yes, I agree with Ed about THE ABBOTT AND COSTELLO SHOW Season Two, where Bud again becomes a more interesting and likeable teammate for Lou. The shows have better constructed plotlines, supporting casts, and we’re not trudging out the same boatload of pilfered Burlesque routines that we can see done better by them elsewhere. I agree that it is too bad that they did not have a Season Three where they might have explored the possibilities shown in Season Two further.

I think much of the rabid fan-noisemaking regarding their feeling that the early A and C films are the best come from the same East Coast types who tend to like their comedians loud, spastic, bombastic, annoying, and subtle as a sock full of manure, the ones who actually like The Ritz Brothers and always scream when the Third Stooge is not Curly Howard (and you know, I always found Shemp Howard the funniest Third Stooge, Curly is okay, but let’s face it, it’s a real limited bag of tricks, and since Joe De Rita was the first Third Stooge I ever saw, he makes me laugh too). So the rest of us who do not think that way, and I have the feeling there are more of us than many realize or want to admit, need to speak up and stand up for the others who speak up as well. So I say, well done Ed, great article and I agree with you.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

I really enjoy A&C's first few films, the performances are crisp and electric, but my personal favorites tend to be the later titles too. How can anyone not enjoy THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES? Or MEET THE KILLER, BORIS KARLOFF? And MEET FRANKENSTEIN is a straight up classic by any measure. One of the other titles I really love is MEET THE KEYSTONE KOPS. The nickelodeon sequence in which Lou sobs uncontrollably during a screening of ELIZA AND THE BLOODHOUNDS, actually footage from Universal's UNCLE TOM'S CABIN (1927), was almost certainly the first silent footage that I ever saw.

The slower pace of the later titles just works for me.

Thank you Richard and Paul -- and Richard, I do believe you eloquently stated the case for Season 2 even better than I did!

I hope Abbott & Costello fans are open-minded enough to give those 26 episodes a chance and not fall into the trap of repeating what one author wrote about them over 50 years ago. Remember when many L&H fans claimed THE BIG NOISE was the team’s “worst" until they finally sat down and watched the film? I’d take THE BIG NOISE over SWISS MISS or THE BOHEMIAN GIRL or BONNIE SCOTLAND (to name a few of their less than luminous Roach features) any day.

Paul’s mention of the nickleodeon scene in A&C MEET THE KEYSTONE KOPS reminded me that I found this still in a Burbank bookshop about 40 years ago; it’s always been a favorite of mine:

Speaking of the latest COMIQUE magazine - this engaging ad I just saw on eBay reminded me of Richard’s delightful Lloyd Hamilton article (which is more like a magnificent full-length book to me):

Was just alerted to an incredibly kind review of the most recent issue of COMIQUE MAGAZINE (Volume 2, No.1) courtesy of Matthew Ross at THE LOST LAUGH. If you have not yet seen his excellent blog, or the top flight e-zine of the same name, you are really missing out! Both are available here -- for FREE:

https://thelostlaugh.com/


Lloyd Hamilton, Louise Fazenda, Vernon Dent & more! Comique magazine is back!

Want some more classic comedy reading? Well, in case you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a new – and wonderful – issue of Comique magazine out now, for free download. The magazine is a collaborative effort by some of the heavy hitters in the film comedy community: researchers, authors and experts like Paul Gierucki, David B Pearson, Richard M Roberts, Edward Watz, Lea Stans and more.

Well, actually, the word ‘magazine’ doesn’t really do this justice. At almost 250 pages, it’s longer than many books. Richard M. Roberts’ superb – and definitive – article on Lloyd Hamilton comes in at almost 100 pages, for instance. And then there’s an extra twenty pages of Hamilton’s filmography!

Hamilton is the perfect cover star for the issue – he’s a totem for the kind of superb, but neglected, comedians that Comique (like The Lost Laugh) is aiming to celebrate, rehabilitate and put into the limelight once more. Among the other wonderful comedy second (and third) bananas getting their dues here are Polly Moran, Vernon Dent and Louise Fazenda. It’s also great that there are plenty of female performers, so often neglected next to male comedians, being celebrated here. Miss Fazenda, especially, is a great talent who deserves the quality article that Lea Stans has contributed here.

The remit isn’t just silent comedy, but extends into the sound era with an article on Ted Healy by Robert Fender. There’s even a discourse on Abbott & Costello’s TV series by Edward Watz.

I also really enjoyed the articles putting a bit of a personal spin on the film history, and making a tangible connection between the authors and the films they are writing about. Paul Gierucki’s article on Minta Durfee Arbuckle, for instance, and Edward Watz’s memories of working with the notorious Raymond Rohauer.

As well as the text, the whole magazine is chock full of wonderful, high quality still photos, posters and other reproduced artefacts. It’s also designed beautifully. So much work has clearly gone into the publication that it’s astounding – and very generous – that it is being given away for free. So, do download it and enjoy it, and then – as always – tell your friends about it, share it on whatever media/forum you use, and make sure that the word gets out.

Head to Internet Archive to download the issue (and the two previous ones) here: https://archive.org/details/comique-the ... sue-3-2025

Posted on February 15, 2026