Nobody has yet mentioned the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Very Marx-like, with slapstick, puns, and high verbal wit. I once told them backstage after a show that seeing them must have been what seeing the Marx Brothers on Broadway was like. (Do you want to know what performers talk about after a show? Same thing that writers do when they get together. Money. It’s very disillusioning if you aren’t a professional yourself.)
Python is the cliche response and has been, sadly, heavily co-opted by an underclass of basement nerds, but it’s still probably the right answer. Their skits are textbook studies in how to write comedy.
Anyone who doesn’t think The Firesign Theater isn’t far and away The Greatest Comedy Troupe of the Twentieth Century either hasn’t listened to them carefully enough or hasn’t listened to them at all! Four or five run-throughs isn’t nearly enough, and you must be prepared for asynchronous plots and some forays into surrealism. But oh, the rewards!
Just look at some of their album (yes, I still call them that) titles:
Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him
Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers!
How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All?
I Think We’re All Bozos on this Bus (a Disneyesque favorite from the days when SCIENCE knew all!)
Everything You Know Is Wrong! (another favorite, gleefully bashing the Art Bells and New Agers of the world!)
In the Next World, You’re On Your Own
Eat or Be Eaten
Give Me Immortality, or Give Me Death!
They’re not nearly well enough known today because they originated in the late '60s (though they’re still working) and because they’ve stuck almost entirely with audio (and the few video thinks they’ve done have been quite horrible).
Do yourself a favor and explore these 4 or 5 Crazy Guys.
I’ll cast a third vote. And say you really need the vinyls so that you can enjoy the very detailed covers.
I especially like “Shakespeare’s last Comedie.”
And while I was far too young to hear them do this I understand they also did lots of stuff live with only the basest of scripts. I’ve heard a recording or two, incredible. It’s a damn shame they aren’t more recognized.
I saw Procter and Bergman live, and they were amazing. And their album Dear Friends is fascinating: it’s from their live radio shows before they started doing albums, and they did, indeed, seem to be ad libbing 80% of it.
I’m old enough to have bought their albums when they first came out. Lots of hours in the dorm with my roommate trying to figure out what each and every line meant. They had that unbelievable 60s-style brilliance: the five years of transcendent genius that they never could recapture. Just like a lot of other folks. I don’t know what it was about the 60s, but in a lot of ways they really were magic, and inexplicable.
It’s always difficult to compare across different generations.
I would put the Marx Brothers first, then the Goons, then Monty Python.
They were all original and extremely funny, but I think you can trace a line of inspiration between all three. And that means the ones who paved the way deserve slightly more credit.
P.S. Does Phil Silvers army show count as an ensemble. Because it regularly cracked my Dad and I up. Just simple greed and perfect timing…
Nice choice. They were at least as good (and often better) than SNL, and the members have have plenty of success individually.
John Candy: Big star before his early death.
Joe Flaherty: Some supporting roles and general TV work.
Eugene Levy: Star.
Andrea Martin: Voice work and TV, and has had a successful Broadway career (Oklahoma, Fiddler, etc.)
Catherine O’Hara: Lots of supporting roles, with Levy, part of the Chistopher Guest stock company.
Rick Moranis: Several starring roles, most memorably in Little Shop of Horrors.
Dave Thomas: TV work
Harold Ramis (on the show the first season only) Film director: Caddyshack, Groundhog Day, Analyze This, Analyze That.
I recently re-watched the first season of SCTV, it didn’t hold up well at all. Very few skits were funny. The strangest thing was watching them do a fake quiz show imitating Alex Trebek when he was doing a Canadian game show in the 70’s and realizing that the funniest recent SNL skit was a rip off of Season 1 SCTV in many ways.
I have re-watched much of the original cast of SNL and it is still funny and sometimes still edgy. There is no fair comparison. Individually the Original Cast of SNL had huge success collectively. Including Oscars.
Dan, John, Gilda and Bill Murray are bigger talents than anyone on SCTV and Chevy & Jane have had more success than anyone but Rick Moranis and maybe Harold Ramis.
Definitely the Marx Brothers #1 for me - even in their average films, you can see their greatness, and I recommend that if you get the chance, see any of the films in a public theatre, where they were intended to be seen. Even the mediocre films shine there.
Not wanting to start a holy war … but Shemp era Stooges is far superior to the Curly years, but yes - overall I’d put them at #2.
nitpick: Bill Murray wasn’t on the original cast. He was Chevy Chase’s replacement.
Harold Ramis, also, it should be noted, is an incredible screenwriter in addition to director.
But SNL, even though it was groundbreaking (in terms of stretching what fit on American TV), is nothing compared to the bounds-stretching og Monty Python. Monty Python stretched the bounds of comedy itself.
Boy, I don’t know anything about the Goons, but they musta been something, because I don’t see any connection between the Marx Brothers and Monty Python.
