Yes, I love Laurel and Hardy, too. I met Stan’s daughter Lois several times, and had some nice discussions with her.
Might be a valid point about stand-up type performers as opposed to actors. The track-record seems far worse with them. But as with performers, before Danny Kaye, there was the equally insufferable Frank Fay.
And then there’s also the generational aspect. So many performers from the pre-war days lived through some pretty hard times. Working on farms, fighting in wars, going to bed with empty stomachs. I mean, David Niven, just a few short years before becoming a “movie star” was digging ditches in a road-construction crew. Glenda Farrell had to use potato sacks for diapers for her baby. So many stories like this. It was virtually the norm for that older crowd. Hence, when these people achieved fame and success, they really APPRECIATED it. No sense of ‘entitlement’ with them, and they knew full well it was the fans that made them, and they behaved with people and the public accordingly, for the most part.
Very true. Also, the vaudeville circuit was terrible - filthy hotels, managers and theater owners who cheated people out of their money. The play/movie “Gypsy” gets into this. I think the Marx Brothers only married hookers and chorus girls - I don’t think there was one “nice” lady in the bunch - including Frank Sinatra’s wife, Barbara Marx, who is rumored to have been a high-class hooker.
I’ve heard about Frank Fay. Al Jolson was considered one of the meanest men in show biz along with Irving Berlin, lol!