The list is both endless and consistent:
Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Ed Wynn, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Donald Duck, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote, Woody Allen, Richard Pryor, Robin Williams.
Why are they so enduring, so endearing? Because they are so much like what we suspect we are, so much like what we are afraid we are.
Most important, I think, they are frail—sometimes heroically frail. Like all the rest of us, they are more recognizable by their mistakes than by their triumphs.
Even James Bond is one of the world’s greatest screwups, to put it mildly, of this or any other century. With every advantage that modern technology can provide, he manages to stumble over the same rake handle we do, only he falls into a swimming pool of piranhas, while we flap into a cow flop.
Fortunately for 007, however, his enemies are just as ham-fisted as he is. On one filmic occasion they attempted to spoil his sleep with an attack by a poisonous spider, a simple enough task, one might say—just push a black widow spider through a keyhole—but no, these KGBirds employed a muscular tarantula the size of a cat, a sort of Arnold Schwarzenegger with fur. This gargantuan joker lumbering over the bed awakens even James Bond. The result? A mano-a-mano bit of arm wrestling which the tarantula would have easily won—if it hadn’t tripped over five of its unoccupied legs.
James Bond and Daffy Duck—the only difference is that Daffy fails to succeed, while Bond ultimately succeeds in spite of two hours of unmitigated, illogical failures.
“Don’t you even know a rabbit when you see one?”: RABBIT FIRE (1951)
I always thought a dog-lover was a dog who loved another dog.
—JAMES THURBER
When I was seven years old, my brother actually hit me with a pie. He didn’t mean to. But I had aggravated him and it was the only weapon at hand. He didn’t remove the tin plate either, which flattened my face to the point where I could glance into my own ears without discomfort.
The odd thing was that nobody in the family thought it funny at the time, and Mother still thought of it as a waste to the day she died, and set it in her memory as “the time Charles spoiled Sunday dinner for the preacher.” The preacher was a pure figment of her imagination, since no preacher could safely enter our house on Sunday. Father said Sunday was a day of rest; six days of religion was enough, and he intended to rest on the seventh, according to the Scriptures. My sister remembers the incident as involving our dog Teddy. She contends I threw Teddy at my brother, who retaliated with the pie. This is obviously untrue. Teddy was a retriever and weighed at least two stone; I could lift him, but I couldn’t throw him. For one thing, he was the kind of dog that melts in the middle when you lift him. No matter how high you raised his stomach, his four feet still rested on the ground, and so usually did his ears and, in hot weather, his tongue. No one can throw such a dog … it’s like throwing a gunnysack full of wet liver.
My point in relating this incident is that humor is a mishap, considered in the proper light. In the past you can be funny even though you are the principal. In the present, mishaps are always funnier if they happen to someone else.
Mike Maltese and I had been playing with the idea of a dog who is the absolute antithesis of all the Noble Hound and Friend of Man persuasion. Charlie was a sort of horizontal Daffy Duck with one purpose in life: to be adopted into a cushy, never-more-to-roam pied-à-terre. To be petted, scratched, fed, and spoiled forevermore. Not a bad ambition, and Charlie’s failure to accomplish his purpose in his meeting with Farmer Porky Pig is in no wise due to lack of enthusiasm, bravado, overwhelming egotism, or deep lack of the comfort and ease of mind of others, particularly agrarian pigs, as follows:
Teddy at peace
OFTEN AN ORPHAN 1949
(A Looney Tune)
Charlie trots confidently up to Porky, preoccupied with his farm chores.
CHARLIE: Look, chum, you ain’t got no pet, I ain’t got no master. (Looks around patronizingly) What a pity, such a lovely farm and no dog. (Taps Porky on chest in a confidential manner) I tell you what I’ll do. (Very brightly) I’ll make you a preposition: you can be my master and I’ll be your dog.
PORKY: (Glances at audience, à la Edgar Kennedy) No! N-n-no! I don’t want a dog, I don’t n-need a—d …
CHARLIE: (Strikes elegant pose, taps his own chest, continues inexorably) I am fifty percent pointer. (He points in all directions) There it is! There it is! There it is! (Into fighting stance) Fifty percent boxer. (Hits nose with thumb, strutting around an imaginary ring, sniffing and sparring) Fifty percent Irish setter. (Jams clay pipe into mouth, bowl down) Fifty percent watchdog. (Pulls out a pocket watch, checks it carefully) At the tone the time will be—but mostly I’m all labrador receiver!
PORKY: (Disgustedly) Oh—you a-are not a labrador receiver!
CHARLIE: (Crestfallen, hurt) I—I’m not?
PORKY: (Angrily) No! You are n-not n-ne-neither no l-labra-d-d-dor retriever!!
CHARLIE: (Blinks, wipes brow, then very reasonably) Look, if you doubt my word, get a labrador and I’ll retrieve it for you—that’s fair, isn’t it?
PORKY: (Somewhat confused and getting more so) A-a-ah-uh-a labra-d-dor … Why, uh, sure … I-I … Ya-you-huh …
CHARLIE: (Very quietly) Have you got a labrador?
PORKY: (Scraping foot, embarrassed) N-no.
CHARLIE: Know where you can get a labrador?
PORKY: (Not knowing why, but on the defensive) N-no.
CHARLIE: (Quietly venomous, like George Raft) Then shad-dap.
PORKY: (Begins to boil—rumbling sound of earthquake, kettledrums, steam blows his top) Get out! Out! Out! Out! Get out!! Out!! Get!! Out!! (Subsides into hysterical panting)
CHARLIE: (Falls back cringing, looks up piteously at Porky) Y-you mean?
PORKY: Yes! I mean! Out! Out!! Out!! Ge-get out!! (Hysterical panting)
CHARLIE: (Hesitantly) Bu-but I thought … (Breaks down and cries.
