Talikies

Two-time Oscar-winning producer Robert Youngson sifted through about a million meters of film to produce this "creme de la comedy," two unique anthologies of master comic scenes, many of them unfamiliar today. Youngson drew his material chiefly from the archives of Mack Sennett and Hal Roach.

WHEN COMEDY WAS KING includes Charlie Chaplin's 1914 Keystone comedy HIS TRYSTING PLACE; Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand adrift at sea; Gloria Swanson being tied to railroad tracks by Wallace Beery; Buster Keaton in COPS; the "Bathing Beauties," the movies' first all-women ballet; the Keystone Kops; and more hilarious scenes with Laurel & Hardy.


When Comedy Was King (1960) Written and directed by Robert Youngson Featuring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Fatty Arbuckle, Wallace Beery, Billy Bevan, Charley Chase, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Edgar Kennedy, Harry Langdon, Mabel Normand, Gloria Swanson, The Keystone Cops (archive footage)

Two-time Oscar-winning producer Robert Youngson sifted through about a million meters of film to produce this "creme de la comedy," two unique anthologies of master comic scenes, many of them unfamiliar today. Youngson drew his material chiefly from the archives of Mack Sennett and Hal Roach. WHEN COMEDY WAS KING includes Charlie Chaplin's 1914 Keystone comedy HIS TRYSTING PLACE; Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand adrift at sea; Gloria Swanson being tied to railroad tracks by Wallace Beery; Buster Keaton in COPS; the "Bathing Beauties," the movies' first all-women ballet; the Keystone Kops; and more hilarious scenes with Laurel & Hardy.