Keeping Quiet: Visual Comedy in the Age of Sound

Julian Dutton

Jul 2015 · Andrews UK Limited

About this ebook

Keeping Quiet is a love-letter to the modern sight-gag on film and television, tracing the history of physical clowning since the advent of sound. Taking up the story of visual humour where Paul Merton's Silent Comedy leaves off, Julian Dutton charts the lives and work of all the great comedians who chose to remain silent, from Charlie Chaplin - who was determined to resist the ‘talkies' - right through to the slapstick of modern-day performers such as Rowan Atkinson, Matt Lucas and Harry Hill. This fascinating chronicle - spanning nine decades - shows how physical comedy, at first overshadowed by dialogue-films in the 1930s, reinvented itself and how this revival was spearheaded by a Frenchman: Jacques Tati. Julian Dutton draws on his own experience as a comedy writer and performer to give an expert analysis of the screen persona and the comedy style of dozens of the screen’s best-loved performers including Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton, Harpo Marx, Norman Wisdom, Jerry Lewis, Benny Hill, Peter Sellers, Eric Sykes, Ronnie Barker, Marty Feldman - and many more. This book will appeal both to the serious student of film, television and theatre - including those aspiring to write or perform comedy - and to the general reader and comedy fan.

About the author

Julian Dutton is a screenwriter and actor whose work has won a BAFTA, a British Comedy Award and a Radio Academy Gold Award. With Matt Lucas and Ashley Blaker, he created and wrote the BBC visual comedy series Pompidou. He co-created, co-wrote and guest-starred in The Big Impression on BBC1, and his sitcom for CBBC, Scoop, ran for three series. He has worked extensively in radio comedy including The Secret World, the award-winning impressions show for BBC Radio 4.