One of the clichés of film history holds that Hollywood’s conversion to sound effectively “killed” the slapstick tradition of live-action comedy. The coming of sound, it is said, represents a decisive turning point at which the art of the great silent clowns – Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and others – came to an end, hinging instead into the crude realism of supposedly lesser talents like the Three Stooges. In my book Hokum! The Early Sound Slapstick Short and Depression-Era Mass Culture, I take a broader view to situate the slapstick short’s sound-era development against a backdrop of changes in film industry practice, comedic tastes, and moviegoing culture.

While there were indeed many material consequences for slapstick filmmakers arising from the new technology, sound also had an overlooked symbolic impact: it ushered in a new style of Broadway-derived screen comedy that, although short-lived, had the immediate effect of dating previous slapstick traditions. Subsequent industry developments exacerbated this marginalization, none more so than the Depression-era trend of double bills. With a double bill consisting of two full-length pictures and a newsreel, exhibitors now found little room for comedies, which were standardized at two reels. By the mid-1930s, the prognosis for slapstick shorts was dire: prestige studios like Paramount and MGM were beginning to cut two-reel comedies from their product lines altogether, and the format primarily survived only at studios like Columbia that catered to conventionally “downmarket” small-town audiences. By the end of the decade, the live-action slapstick short had become a nostalgic byword for the industry’s silent-era past.