Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. List of Illustrations and Audiovisual Media ix
4. Acknowledgments xi
5. Introduction 1
6. PART I. CONTEXTS
7. 1. “The Cuckoo School”: Humor and Metropolitan Culture in 1920s America 21
8. 2. “The Stigma of Slapstick”: The Short-Subject Industry and Its Imagined Public 55
9. PART II. CASE HISTORIES
10. 3. “The Spice of the Program”: Educational Pictures and the Small-Town Audience 95
11. 4. “I Want Music Everywhere”: Music, Operetta, and Cultural Hierarchy at the Hal Roach Studios 125
12. 5. “From the Archives of Keystone Memory”: Slapstick and Re-membrance at Columbia Pictures’ Short-Subjects Department 157
13. Coda: When Comedy Was King 191
14. List of Abbreviations 201
15. Notes 202
16. Index 245