Link courtesy of Elliot Feldman and Michael Karp
A scene that helps to illustrate just how big an influence Bert Lahr was on many comics. Squint your eyes and tell me that that you are not watching Shemp Howard.
Sadly, Mr. Lahr's greatest moments were on the stage, not on the screen. If I remember correctly, the sequence above ended up on the cutting room floor.
From Michael Karp...
"A tutorial on delivering pretty sophisticated material in the broadest possible way, with the full comic arsenal of a great clown... A rip on the "hep cat jive" and scat numbers of the late 30s (Cab Calloway's call-and-response, "Shoeshine Boy," references to "Mississippi Mud" and other standards--all there) given the ...full "nut" comic treatment, and a hint of why Lahr was so perfect in "Waiting for Godot"... (Oh, what could he have done with rap and heavy metal!!!)..."
putt em up putt em up!!!!
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