One old movie I discovered, and still laugh at, is My Man Godfrey; and that has the funniest closing line, ever.
It’s on TCM tonight if anyone wants to check it out.
It’s still possible to portray a donkey eating figs in a hilarious manner. Probably not fatally funny, though.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Bob Newhart Show
Catch 22
Not a show per se but Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First” routine is still hilarious. It has been riffed on countless times over the decades but the original is still hysterical. One of my teenagers watched a clip of the two performing it on Youtube with me and she laughed so hard she couldn’t talk.
Show her their 13x7=28 bit. It’s another classic.
I only recently watched Dr Strangelove so I had no nostalgia for it; it’s great. I was younger, but still an adult when I saw the Who’s on First skit. Also great.
I have never seen that! Will have to find it.
Argh, I read through the whole thread thinking "nobody mentioned AaOL, I’ll be the first! Then I do a thread search just to be sure and see I missed the mention in post #4 somehow 
AaOL was one of the few old comedies I loved as a kid- that, the Abbot & Costello movies and the Three Stooges shorts. I had not seen the movie since I was maybe 11, and recently did a rewatch as an adult. I thought it held up pretty well. The movie had what would have been, to my thinking, a fairly modern, ‘meta’ fourth wall-breaking, running joke: people kept saying the creepy evil brother Jonathon Brewster looked like Boris Karloff. I’ve heard that the character was actually played by Karloff in the stage play, but he had a scheduling conflict for the movie, so they had to settle for Raymond Massey playing brother Jonathon, unfortunately torpedoing the effectiveness of the joke.
What didn’t hold up? Well, I imagine that even in its day, the movie probably was not exactly embraced by the psychiatric community. Not only is mental illness played for laughs, but 3 out of 4 of the ‘crazy’ Brewster family members are active killers.
Here you go.
I watched a few Buster Keaton clips on YT yesterday, and they stand up very well. I literally laughed out loud. Much funnier than most of today’s stuff.
Yes, this was a game-changer at the time, for sure. I don’t know that I’d consider it particularly hilarious by modern standards, but there’s something endearing about it and I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I recently re-watched all six seasons. I did it in the same juvenile and nostalgic spirit in which I’ll occasionally watch Bugs Bunny. Although Lucy is frequently silly (in the sense of “stupid”) and reflects a certain lack of sophistication in 1950s viewership, the writing was often quite creative and Lucille Ball was a genuinely talented comic actress.
Casting her real-life Cuban husband, Desi Arnaz, as her on-screen husband – something the network initially had strong objections to but Ball insisted on – turned out to be a serendipitous decision responsible for the show’s memorable uniqueness and much of its comedy. Arnaz’s sarcastic quips, delivered in a heavy Cuban accent with exaggerated facial expressions, are part of the show’s comedic charm.
One does have to look past the annoying undercurrent of male dominance – Ricky is the absolute master of the house, and Lucy is often treated like a child – but hey, this was the 50s! The show began its first season in 1951.
From Wikipedia:
The show – which was the first scripted television program to be filmed on 35 mm film in front of a studio audience, by cinematographer Karl Freund – won five Emmy Awards and received many nominations and honors. It was the first show to feature an ensemble cast. As such, it is often regarded as one of the most influential television programs in history. In 2012, it was voted the ‘Best TV Show of All Time’ in a survey conducted by ABC News and People magazine
On the subject of humorous books, I’m surprised that P.G. Wodehouse hasn’t been mentioned yet. Not just a very funny writer, but a master of language, and much of the humour comes from his beautiful ability to turn a phrase. And while he’s probably best known for the Jeeves and Wooster novels and short stories, there is so much more to his writings than that, and some of it much funnier. The Blandings novels and short stories were as extensive and richly delicious as the Jeeves ones, and I think probably the funniest stuff he ever wrote was the three Mr. Mulliner collections of short stories.
“…she always called me Elwood…” Presumably because it was his name. I love this film.
Would you rather be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant?
Well, there’s two schools of thought.
Years ago Mrs. Cretin urged me to read Empress Of Blanding. For some reason I’d gotten it into my head that I wasn’t interested in Wodehouse, but she was so insistent that I gave in. I was hooked by page three and ended up bingeing on all the Blanding books, Jeeves and Wooster stories, and nearly all the rest of Wodehouse except for the very early stuff.
If I missed the Mulliner stories, I’ll fix that soon (and thank you for the tip).
One of his characters (Lord SomethingOrOther, quite portly and proper) is leaving the club and someone asks him where he’s going. And in a stentorious voice he intones “Spreading sweetness and light, m’boy. Sweetness, and light.”
(Only an old school British reader like Jonathan Cecil or Martin Jarvis can do it justice)
Since I retired, that’s my daily assignment.
Harold Lloyd is another member of the “Big Three” silent comedy stars, and his films are well worth checking out on YouTube. By the mid-1920s, Lloyd’s box-office success often rivaled—and at times even surpassed—that of both Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. However, when television arrived, Lloyd refused to let his movies air on TV, fearing that the small screen and commercials would diminish their comedic impact and artistic value (he had very high standards). As a result, his fame dipped more than that of his contemporaries. Still, his iconic “glasses character” remains as funny and timeless as ever.
Another vote for
The Gold Rush
The General
One, Two, Three
Arsenic and Old Lace
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Casablanca
The only Harold Lloyd film I have seen is The Cat’s-Paw. It was hilarious, although it is probably too politically incorrect for modern audiences.
When I was a kid, I thought Abbott and Costello were the best in the business. Re-watching them, I now find their films a bit too slow-paced. But individual scenes, like “Who’s On First” and the catfish scene from The Naughty Nineties, are still hilarious.
Chefguy mentioned the book Auntie Mame. I think Rosalind Russell’s film is great. Lucille Ball’s version is not as good, but not bad.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned Ninotchka yet.
“Not bad” is a good way to describe the Lucy version, but like at least one other (1973’s Lost Horizon), it was a story that did not need the musical treatment. I certainly agree that the Rosalind Russell version is great, and the book is also a treat that holds up well.
Laurel and Hardy. I don’t care that they were “slowly paced.” Sometimes slower is just right.
The Three Stooges. At the radio station where I worked back in the '90s, I could make my colleagues laugh just by saying “Oh, a wise guy, eh?” and “Shaddup, ya moron!”
Burns and Allen. I had a roommate in college who walked in our room one night and asked something like “Why are you watching THAT?!?” I told him to sit down for a few minutes and pretty soon he was laughing too.
The Jack Benny Program, as it was called. I always looked forward to seeing what Mel Blanc was going to do.
Anything Steve Allen did. He had a syndicated show in the late '60s that I used to stay home from school to watch.