I remember ( Sue )Murphy-( Dan )St. Paul back in the day in the SF Bay Area at the peak of the comedy club boom. From an article on Murphy:
*Murphy gravitated toward theater first, and while at the Magic met Dan St. Paul, a fellow actor and funny guy with a thing for famous comedy couples like Nichols and May, Stiller and Meara. He suggested they try making an act together, and Murphy-St. Paul was born - a staple for nearly a decade on the Bay Area comedy scene. *
As I recall one of the issues was economics - duos and groups were often offered the same money as single performers, which unless you were immensely successful meant slim pickings once the take was divvied.
I’ve heard of Tenacious D and knew Jack Black was in it, but have never heard their stuff. I always thought it was a serious music project of his, not comedy. It’s comedy???
I thought of another comedy duo that hasn’t been mentioned yet: Stiller and Meara.
Tellingly, though, most of their success as a team has been in decades past while their more recent work has tended to be individual.
I remember seeing on cable TV probably in the late 1980s a standup duo that consisted of a blind Mexican guy and an Anglo guy. They were pretty funny but I can see where they would have trouble keeping such an act going, for the reasons mentioned previously in this thread.
Morecambe and Wise, Little and Large, Ade Edmondson and Rik Mayall, French and Saunders, Hale and Pace, Fry and Laurie… the British had duos right up to quite recently, and perhaps still do.
I don’t think it’s the Sklar brothers who have that bit about going back in time and doing things over and over and getting faster and faster.
I still miss the Higgens Boy and Gruber. I guess a trio really but they were great. Stella would also be a comedy trio.
I think another reason why you rarely see comedy duos nowadays is because one of them will eventually become a megastar on his own while the other one will languish in obsucrity. It’s a curse for one of them.
To wit, Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari in Bosom Buddies. They dressed up as chicks. Hanks went on to win Oscars. Scolari wound up in the TV version of Honey I shrunk the Kids or something.
Bill and Ted? Keanu Reeves is now a box office superstar, while the other guy, whatever his name was, is looking at the Matrix and screaming DAMMIT THAT COULD HAVE BEEN ME!!!
There’s also Wham…may not be known as a comedy duo, but they are a joke. George Michael became a success while the other guy probably considers himself lucky to get booked at the Holiday Inn lounge.
That would be “Slovin & Allen”, and that’s one funny bit. “Great! Twinkies!” And I think that one guy drank about five full bottles of Gatorade by the time the skit ended.
Bowser and Blue are the modern Canadian equivalent of the Smothers Brothers though, as with all political/topical humour, they don’t get as large or widespread an audience as more freeform comedians/musicians could.
Hey, Bowser and Blue are responsible for my username here! On the day when I signed up, I had been listening to “A Dyke Named Spike”, which goes:
I’m in like with a dyke named Spike
Who needs me like a pike needs a bike…"
And when I was prompted to enter a username, that’s what I entered.
Related story: I was working in inventory at A&A Records on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto, right next door to Sam The Record Man (where I also worked) when the first Bowser and Blue album came out. Somebody misfiled it in the Country section, where it languished, not selling any copies. There was a drawing of two guys on the front, one in cowboy getup, so it must be a country album, right? After I discovered that it was a comedy album and we moved it to Comedy, it started selling, although not a great deal. I have the single from that album, called “Polka Dot Undies,” a double-entendre takeoff on Bob Dylan.
