In his book Lame Brains & Lunatics, film historian Steve Massa describes the comedic trio known as A Ton of Fun thusly: “{T]he idea being that if one fat guy was funny, then three would be a riot.” The corpulent threesome was comprised of Frank “Fatty” Alexander, Hillard “Fatt” Karr, and Bill “Kewpie” Ross, with Alexander and Karr the silent comedy veterans. (Karr had a starring series of “Funny Fat Filbert” comedies for Josh Binney Comedies before moving on to Fox and then Universal; Alexander was a Mack Sennett veteran in addition to stops at Century and Vitagraph. He then worked as a foil for Larry Semon for nearly a decade.) From 1925 to 1928, the plus-sized mirthmakers appeared in thirty-six two-reel comedies for producer Joe Rock and his Standard Cinema Corporation. (That’s why seeing “A Standard Comedy” at the bottom of some of the comedies’ title cards is often funnier than the content in those two-reelers.)
I sampled some of A Ton of Fun’s clowning this week in an
Alpha Video Classics release available from Oldies.com entitled Three Fatties (the
alternate name for the chubby trio). The
DVD box boasts that it’s an “exclusive collection of nine vintage shorts” which
is a bit of an “expedient exaggeration,” to quote Cary Grant’s character from North by Northwest. I’d seen two of the two-reelers previously in
other collections: Heavy Love (1926)
is available on the American
Slapstick DVD, while Three
of a Kind (1926) is among the many comedies spotlighted on Slapstick
Encyclopedia. Fatties
does include the first Ton of Fun collaboration, Tailoring (1925)—and while I’ll freely admit I don’t have the
inside skinny (sorry about that) on how Alpha decides which shorts will make
their DVD’s final cut, they might have wanted to strike this from the list. The print is in abysmal shape, so bad it’s a
chore reading the title cards at times (which is a shame, since they actually
provide a few laughs; one describes a character as so cheap he “fired a shot Christmas
Eve and told his children Santa Claus committed suicide”). Tailoring
is a pretty incoherent affair with a Katzenjammer
Kids vibe; one of the Fatties (the print is so bad I can’t tell which
member it is) is made up to look like “The Captain” from that classic comic
strip while the other two are dressed like overgrown children.
Massa describes the Ton of Fun comedies as “a clever and fun
series” …though I think the jury is still out on the “clever” part. He further observes that “[t]he usual format
for the shorts consisted of putting the Fatties in situations and locations
where fat men should fear to tread and then milking all the weight-related gags
possible...” Maybe I’m being a bit too
harsh (or maybe I haven’t seen the Fatties at their best) but I didn’t find
many of the shorts on the collection particularly outstanding…though they do
provide some amusement from time to time.
The aforementioned Heavy Love
features the plumpish threesome as carpenters, building a house for Lois Boyd
(another Sennett veteran, and a frequent leading lady in their comedies); I
examined Boyd during Love, and she
didn’t seem to exhibit any signs of mental illness—so why she employed these
jamokes in the first place is a complete mystery. Heavy
Love does wrap things up with a funny closing gag involving an eccentric
who informs Lois and the boys the house has been built on the wrong lot and
will have to be moved.
There are some risible moments in Old Tin Sides (1927)—the porcine trio help out in a general
store—including a little old lady who somehow gets a leaping fish down her
skirt (it’s a long story) and goes through some hysterical gyrations and leaps
courtesy of a stuntman. The two-reeler
also features hilarity as the TOF and their boss flood the cellar with homemade
applejack and drunkenly break out in a chorus of “Sweet Adeline.” In addition, I liked Standing Pat (1928)—the penultimate Ton of Fun comedy—in which our
heroes use a miracle cleaner to destroy both suits of clothes and cars of
unfortunate customers, then later have to deliver a crated piano to a music
professor (one of their earlier victims).
The stunt work featuring the team losing control of their car and then
the runaway piano as it meanders down steep hills will appeal to anyone who
enjoys physical comedy.
The cleaning fluid plot in Standing is reminiscent of the “Bright-O” gags featured in the
Three Stooges short Dizzy Doctors (1937)
…and to be honest, much of A Ton of Fun’s shtick is similar to that of the later comedy
trio who made a cottage industry out of face-slapping and eye-pokes. Both teams relied on physical destruction for
comedy, and as someone once observed of the Stooges, at times the titles of
their shorts were funnier than the finished product (the Ton of Fun comedy The Heavy Parade [1926] is a take-off
on the 1925 M-G-M classic The Big Parade.) Two of TOF’s shorts are titled Three of a Kind and Three Wise Goofs (1925), which could
easily be appropriated for Stooges shorts.
(They actually do share one title: A Ton of Fun’s Three Missing Links [1927] features the boys as motorcycle
patrolmen…though the Stooges’ similarly-titled comedy in 1939 has Moe, Larry,
and Curly loose in the jungle making a movie.)
I did get a kick out of seeing a few familiar names in the
credits of these shorts: Tay Garnett, who would later direct films like The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946),
is credited with the title cards on Three
Wise Goofs, while Raymond McCarey
(brother of Leo) and Pinto Colvig are credited as writers on Standing Pat. Ray would go on to direct such funsters as
Laurel & Hardy (Scram!), Our
Gang (Free Eats) and the Three
Stooges (Three Little Pigskins),
while actor-animator Colvig is best known as the voice of Goofy in those classic
Walt Disney cartoons. Harry Sweet was in
the director’s chair for Three of a Kind;
he also acted in silent films but is perhaps best remembered for starting up
the shorts department at R-K-O and helming many of the early Edgar Kennedy two-reelers
until his untimely death from a plane crash in 1933.
I picked up Three Fatties during the Oldies.com
continuing-in-perpetuity 5 for $25 sale (though I think it’s now 10 for
$39.90), and while the print quality isn’t particular sparkly (the screen grabs
probably tipped you off to that) the comedies are mostly watchable (Tailoring is the only one that’s really
terrible). If you’re looking for a way
to sample the work of a forgotten comedy trio for pennies on the dollar, this
is the advisable way to go.
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