Trying to Remember an Old Movie Sight Gag

[Phhhpt]

Hey everybody, got kind of a head-scratcher here and I'm hoping someone might know the answer. There's an old sight gag that I vaguely recall from a movie, and I'm trying to place what the movie might have been (so I can find it and watch it again).

Gag is as follows: There's a guy in the foreground (can't remember what he's doing, possibly construction, but he's vaguely paying attention behind him). A second guy wanders on stage/into the shot carrying the end of a ladder on his shoulder. He keeps wandering through the stage/shot carrying the ladder, which continues on and on and on... The guy in the foreground notices the impossibly long ladder continuing to go through the scene, up until the ladder carrier then reappears again, carrying the opposite end of the ladder, and causes quite a bit of confusion to the guy in the foreground who just saw him carry off the other end of the extremely long ladder.

I know this is a old bit - I've found evidence of it showing up in cartoons and even the Muppet Show (70s/80s version), but I seem to recall this was from an early comedy film from the 30s/40s. It could've been Laurel and Hardy (I've found some posts by folks claiming that they remember Stan doing a bit like this), but if so - I can't remember which film it was in and haven't been able to find a direct reference to it, just folks with vague recollections of seeing the bit.

This ring any bells for anybody?

 

[2jakes]

Hey everybody, got kind of a head-scratcher here and I'm hoping someone might know the answer. There's an old sight gag that I vaguely recall from a movie, and I'm trying to place what the movie might have been (so I can find it and watch it again).

Gag is as follows: There's a guy in the foreground (can't remember what he's doing, possibly construction, but he's vaguely paying attention behind him). A second guy wanders on stage/into the shot carrying the end of a ladder on his shoulder. He keeps wandering through the stage/shot carrying the ladder, which continues on and on and on... The guy in the foreground notices the impossibly long ladder continuing to go through the scene, up until the ladder carrier then reappears again, carrying the opposite end of the ladder, and causes quite a bit of confusion to the guy in the foreground who just saw him carry off the other end of the extremely long ladder.

I know this is a old bit - I've found evidence of it showing up in cartoons and even the Muppet Show (70s/80s version), but I seem to recall this was from an early comedy film from the 30s/40s. It could've been Laurel and Hardy (I've found some posts by folks claiming that they remember Stan doing a bit like this), but if so - I can't remember which film it was in and haven't been able to find a direct reference to it, just folks with vague recollections of seeing the bit.

This ring any bells for anybody?

You are describing two different gags.
The first gag is a long ladder or it could have been a very
long board being carried by the same guy from each end.
The gag being that it's the same guy.

I have seen that film but cannot recall who made it.

The second gag that you are describing is from the comedy
“Busy Bodies” (1933) with Laurel & Hardy.
The long board is carried by two different guys,
& the gag is that the boys run into it by accident.
The original film was made in black & white.
I only found a colorized version.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The long ladder/board being carried by the same guy routine is a very, very, old bit. Ed Wynn used to do it on stage around the 1910s, and he picked it up from vaudevillians who'd picked it up from from minstrel shows. It's probably even a lot older than that -- likely the Romans and the Greeks had some variation of it in their comedy.

The most famous movie version is in the MGM musical "The Band Wagon," where the ladder is carried by no less a personage than pianist/raconteur/manic-depressive Oscar Levant.

 

[Phhhpt]

Thanks! I appreciate your feedback. This thing has been driving me crazy and I think someone on the IMDB board said Wynn used to do it, but nobody could confirm and there was debate concerning if it was true or not. Thanks again!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk