Ugly crowd tonight!Barry Soerto.
Ugly crowd tonight!I’ve got to go with Groucho for this one.
Best ensemble cast: It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
Spencer Tracy as Captain T.G. Culpeper
Edie Adams as Monica Crump
Milton Berle as J. Russell Finch
Sid Caesar as Melville Crump
Buddy Hackett as “Benjy” Benjamin
Ethel Merman as Mrs. Marcus
Dorothy Provine as Emmeline Marcus-Finch
Mickey Rooney as “Dingy” Bell
Dick Shawn as Sylvester Marcus
Phil Silvers as Otto Meyer
Terry-Thomas as Lt. Col. J. Algernon Hawthorne
Jonathan Winters as Lennie Pike
Supporting cast[edit]
Eddie “Rochester” Anderson as a cab driver
Jim Backus as airplane owner Tyler Fitzgerald
Barrie Chase as Sylvester Marcus’ sexy, laconic dancing girlfriend
William Demarest as Aloysius, Chief of the Santa Rosita Police Department
Jimmy Durante as “Smiler” Grogan, the robber who buried the money.
Peter Falk as a cab driver
Paul Ford as Col. Wilberforce
Cameo appearances[edit]
Jack Benny as man driving a 1931 Cadillac Fleetwood
Paul Birch as a Santa Rosita police officer at the intersection (with binoculars)
Ben Blue as the vintage biplane pilot
Joe E. Brown as the union official giving a speech at a construction site
Alan Carney as a sergeant with the Santa Rosita Police Department
Chick Chandler as the policeman at Ray and Irwin’s service station
Stanley Clements as a local reporter at police station
Lloyd Corrigan as the mayor of Santa Rosita
Howard Da Silva as police officer at airport
Andy Devine as the sheriff of Crockett County, California
Selma Diamond as Ginger Culpeper, Captain Culpeper’s wife (voice only)
Minta Durfee as a crowd extra watching the fire escape rescue
Roy Engel as a Santa Rosita Police Department officer at the intersection
Norman Fell as primary detective at the “Smiler” Grogan accident site
James Flavin as a crossroads patrolman (scene deleted from general release version)
Stan Freberg as a deputy sheriff of Crockett County
Nicholas Georgiade as supporting detective at the “Smiler” Grogan accident site
Louise Glenn as Billie Sue Culpeper, the daughter of Captain Culpeper (voice only)
Leo Gorcey as the cab driver bringing Melville and Monica to the hardware store
Stacy Harris as police radio voice unit F-7 (voice only), and as a detective outside of Mr. Dinkler’s hardware store
Don C. Harvey as a Santa Rosita Police Department officer
Sterling Holloway as the Santa Rosita Fire Department fireman
Edward Everett Horton as Mr. Dinkler, owner of the hardware store
Allen Jenkins as a policeman
Marvin Kaplan as service station co-owner Irwin
Robert Karnes as Sammy, a Santa Rosita Police Department officer in helicopter
Buster Keaton as Jimmy, Culpeper’s boatman friend
Tom Kennedy as a Santa Rosita traffic cop
Don Knotts as the nervous motorist
Charles Lane as the airport manager
Harry Lauter as a Santa Rosita Police Department police dispatcher
Ben Lessy as George the steward
Bobo Lewis as vintage biplane pilot’s wife
Jerry Lewis as the motorist who runs over Culpeper’s hat
Mike Mazurki as the miner bringing medicine to his wife
Charles McGraw as Lt. Mathews of the Santa Rosita Police Department
Tyler McVey as a police radio voice (voice only)
ZaSu Pitts as Gertie, the Santa Rosita Police Department Central Division’s switchboard operator
Carl Reiner as the Rancho Conejo airport tower controller
Madlyn Rhue as secretary Schwartz of the Santa Rosita Police Department
Eddie Ryder as Rancho Conejo air traffic control tower staff member
Arnold Stang as service station co-owner Ray
Nick Stewart as the migrant truck driver forced off the road
The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Joe DeRita) as Rancho Conejo Airport firemen
Sammee Tong as a laundryman
Doodles Weaver as a Dinkler Hardware Store employee
Lennie Weinrib as a police radio voice, and as a fireman (voice only)
Jesse White as a Rancho Conejo air traffic controller
Groucho.
I don’t know what the point of this question is.
Just to get a bunch of answers?
Okay.
Harold Lloyd who is still considered by critics as great comedian today as he was in the silent era.
The first name that jumped into my mind was Robin Williams.
I haven’t read the thread yet, so I can probably change my mind, but I still miss the man. He was so talented.
Not sure who is the funniest, but this is fun - Totie Fields https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=velqgpw6PTY
Oliver Hardy.
W.C. Fields is my runner up.
Phil Silvers deserves a mention.
He would be in my top 10.
I can only go by what I have seen so here goes. Best Comedian, Bill Cosby. Best Actor John Wayne. Best Comedic Actor, Peter Sellers...but he was British. American comedic actor, Cary Grant...he was British also? Eddie Murphy has been in some of the bust your stomach funny movies ever, and he is the star so I go with him.
Jonathan Winters has made me laugh the hardest as a straight comedian. Jackie Gleason could do it all...comedy, and serious acting.
1) Stan Laurel
2) Richard Pryor *
(Asterisk for un-PC language and some adult content, more than offset, IN MY OPINION, by his unique ability to get white people and black people to laugh at each other all in good fun. Where is he now when we need him?)
3) Lucille Ball
4) Cheech Marin
5) John Belushi
=====================
However, (I'm sure I'll get scolded over this but here goes...) I believe that The Lord Jesus, when he wanted to, was really good for a good hilarious laugh whenever he really put his mind to it, the kind you remember the rest of your life, and that this might be (hey, it's just MY SUPPOSITION, and who am I to say for sure?) the most under-rated part of his ministry on earth. Why would he not have been?
John leaves the door open in the last sentence of his gospel, when he says that there (at least at the time) weren't enough books in the world to write down all the good things Jesus did for people. How about helping a kid out who's got a thorn in his foot by getting him to laughing first and then pulling the thorn out while the kid's laughing... then a minute later when the kid asks when he's going to pull the thorn out saying, "Oh, you mean this one?" I saw a man do that once and had to leave the room, why wouldn't Jesus have been able to do the same thing in the same situation?
Also the time that Jesus talked about the Pharisees being "concerned" about the mote in "your" eye, but being ignorant of the plank in their own eye? I believe (okay I know I'm gonna get it) that in the sensibilities of the times that he was just cracking them up, the faithful that is, and that having no sense of humor had a little to do with the Pharisees being unable to accept criticism.
Putting on my flame suit... fast...
Dave down at the gas station.
“We’re having a special on cough drops. Do you want some?”
Bob Hope ,Jonathon Winters ,
Bob Hope
Norm MacDonald is the best of the current crop of comedians, by a mile.
He was also very good in Dirty Deeds.
Stan Laurel.
Only 2 comedians could literally have me rolling on the floor - Rodney Dangerfield and Steven Wright.
Different styles but one non-stop zinger after another.
Rodney on Carson - non-stop rapid fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQLv7CG10B4
Steven Wright quotes:
“When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.”
“There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.”
“If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is that considered a hostage situation?”
“If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?”
“Why isn’t the word “phonetically” spelled with an “f”?”
“Support bacteria - they’re the only culture some people have.”
“What happens if you get scared half to death twice?”
“When I was a kid we had a sandbox. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child...eventually.”
“Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.”
“If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?”
“You can’t have everything ... where would you put it?”
“Can you buy an entire chess set in a pawn shop?”
Probably the best comic actor active these days is Roberto Benigni.
I have given my top two (Groucho Marx, John Cleese). Kind of surprised not to my third funniest comic. Mike Myers.