Since then…nothing? What about the '70s when Cheech & Chong were popular?
I don’t know why there aren’t more popular comedy duos now. Maybe it’s because radio has become so hyperfocused that there isn’t a format where they could get airplay. You used to be able to hear a bunch of songs of various genres, then “Earache My Eye” on AM radio. That kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore. I think you’re right about the death of the variety show, though. And since A&E stopped showing “Evening At The Improv” and shows like that (boy, I miss Richard Jeni!), there isn’t anywhere for comics to be seen but in 22-minute excerpts of their shows on Comedy Central. I can’t think of a duo that I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Modern venues, like small comedy clubs, really don’t seemm suited for duos. It seemed like duos faded away when the last of their venues – vaudeville-like television variety shows – list popularity towards the end of the 1970s. I wonder of comedy duos are still a staple in countries where variety shows are still a staple of television programming, like Mexico and Italy.
Improv comedy theater seems more common today than in the days of variety shows, so there’s still comedy teams.
Hm, good point on improv, elmwood – the first example to pop into my mind is Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles, who tend to be much funnier together than either is alone, or with others. (Though I do like Colin’s Nabisco ads – there was one last night where he came into some bachelorette party in his tutu and they thought he was a stripper… Heh. I laughed.)
And, yeah, fishbicycle, I’d forgotten about Cheech and Chong – but hell, there’s a lot about the '70s that I’ve forgotten about.
The comedy duo or brother act has been dying since vaudeville, not because nightclubs are a bad venue for it, but because the art itself depends on a very long, difficult process of working up an act, achieving timing undreamt-of by improv comics, and the suppression of egos by both performers but especially of one. That last is the hard part. It always was, but the resurgence of comedy clubs in the 1980s created successful comedians out of some pretty marginal talent. This created an expectation of individual stardom that steered a lot of natural second bananas into solo careers. And, to be honest, a lot of the double acts most of us can remember were just not that great. Burns and Schreiber, Franken and Davis, Martin and Lewis, were all frequently painfully unfunny. Martin and Lewis’ club act can be partly excused for this, because they rarely strayed outside Las Vegas, where audiences were satisfied just to see them. If you wanted to see them do something worthwhile, you bought a ticket to At War With The Army or one of their other fifteen (or however many it is) movies.
The movies is where a lot of comedy-duo talent went and stayed. Laurel and Hardy had a stage act, but their public appearances came to be fueled by their movies and were largely mere promotional “show-ups.” Abbott and Costello had the live act, both the material and the chops to kill with it, but their movie career took over. Hope and Crosby both knew live performance, but the comedy team was strictly on the screen. From there, you get movie comedy “teams” like Pryor and Wilder, and even, may Heaven sustain us, Farley and Spade.
The big exception through the period you’re concerned about, mid-60’s on, is the Smothers Brothers. Longevity, material, and few outside projects. They’ve pretty much owned the form for forty years, and there’s no one very close.
What about radio jockeys? I don’t actually listen to much radio but it seems the sterotypical depiction of a radio comedy show is a two person act (Simpsons, Groundhog day etc.)
Still, it’s hard for me to say “whatever happened to. . .” when it doesn’t seem like there were ever a ton.
Farley & Spade are definitely a modern one, and I wouldn’t put them too far below Laurel & Hardy.
There still are comedy troupes nowadays. . .The State, The Kids in the Hall, Broken Lizard.
Jay & Silent Bob were in several films, and even starred in one themselves.
We’re also in a wave of a sort of comedy team that’s been as consistent as anything for a while. . .Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughan. They’re practically a 4 man IMDB squad.
Jon Favreau & Vince Vaughan put out two movies together and were a very funny pairing in both.
Still, none of that is anything like Smother’s Brothers or even Cheech & Chong. . .yet.
Having survived the 1980’s comedy-club boom-bust cycle, I can say that there was a comedy team every now and then at the open mike nights. However the process winnowed them out pretty quickly.
The act of a 2-man team has to be more structured and more tightly written than a single person. it’s easier for an single amature to wing it in the event of a joke fizzling than 2 amatures.
A single comedian can get by on personality, a team basically has to write skits. Not easy to do when you are just starting out and you only have 3-5 minutes to perform.
The budget of the comedy clubs of the time was usually a sliding pay scale based on the act, not the amount of people to put on that act, so if you were the opening act/emcee you might get anywere from $75 to $150 per night. Split that between 2 people and it doesn’t even cover hotel/food/travel expenses. So a comedy team might be good, they might get work, but they found that it was expensive to keep working. Dedication to the craft can only sustain you for so long.
For the record, I love the Smothers Brothers, their albums are still great and I often put them on while driving.
I don’t know about The D. Their TV show is more akin to sketch comedy than it is vaudeville (though they are certainly derivative), and their concerts are much much more, well, concert than comedic act. I’d vote them as related, but as you probably know they’re not really the descendants of comedy duos, they’re the love child of a triumverate sexual orgy involving drugged-out rockers.
Thanks, everyone, for your answers – there are obviously a lot of different factors involved. I was esp. struck by Shalmanese’s reminder about the role of two-person teams in radio. (And let’s add Bob and Ray to the list of early examples.)
If we limit the discussion to movie duos–and I submit that while earlier examples were not as limited to one medium, most entertainers in general were by the late 60’s/early 70’s becoming confined to either TV, movies, or stage, so it’s worthwhile to look at the decline of the movie duo–another example could be Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor.
Although now that I look at it, they really only did two good movies together, “Silver Streak” and “Stir Crazy”. And they could have been in a third, but Pryor was thought to be too edgy for “Blazing Saddles” and ended up with just a writing credit.
So maybe never mind.
Still, for a while in the mid-70’s, those two made a powerful partnership.
Don’t know about Mexico and Italy, but variety TV is still big in Japan and so are comedy duos are still big in Japan. The form is known as manzai and was originally a staple of clubs and vaudeville theaters in the Osaka area. Manzai pairs consist of a Bokke (idiot) and a Tsukomi (straight man, who often smacks his parnter around when he gets exasperated).It started appearing more on TV in the 80s and there was a huge manzai boom in the 90s, leading to overexposure.
Takeshi “Beat” Kitano got his start in a manzai act called the Two Beats.
