The life of the film-comedian is growing gradually more arduous. It is much more difficult to make a comedy nowadays than it was five years ago. The reason for our distress is Walt Disney.
Disney has brought slapstick to such a state of perfection that no flesh and blood comedian can compete with him in this field.
A few years ago, if a comedian fell flat on his back, or was seen to run the wrong way down a moving staircase, the average audience went into fits of laughter. Disney has put an end to all that. Cinemagoers have seen Mickey Mouse fall a thousand feet from a precipice and get up unhurt. They have seen Donald Duck dissolve into thin air, and they have watched a whole orchestra carried up into the clouds by a cyclone. The gags of flesh-and-blood comedians fall pretty flat after that.
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