To kick off a new series on the history of American comedy films, Alex and Jonathan travel back to the early days of cinema and look at the physical comedy of the early film clowns in Safety Last! (1923), City Lights (1931), and Duck Soup (1933). We discuss the transition from live performances in theater and vaudeville to the movies, how Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin helped to incorporate character development into comedy films, and how the Marx brothers blended physical and verbal comedy which set the stage for the new era of sound comedy.

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