Lyric theater in ancien régime France was an eminently political art, tied to the demands of court spectacle. This was true not only of tragic opera (tragédie lyrique) but also its comic counterpart, opéra comique, a form tracing its roots to the seasonal trade fairs of Paris. While historians have long privileged the genre’s popular origins, opéra comique was brought under the protection of the French crown in 1762, thus consolidating a new venue where national music might be debated and defined. 

In The Comedians of the King, Julia Doe traces the impact of Bourbon patronage on the development of opéra comique in the turbulent prerevolutionary years. Drawing on both musical and archival evidence, the book presents the history of this understudied genre and unpacks the material structures that supported its rapid evolution at the royally sponsored Comédie-Italienne. Doe demonstrates how comic theater was exploited in, and worked against, the monarchy’s carefully cultivated public image—a negotiation that became especially fraught after the accession of the music-loving queen, Marie Antoinette. The Comedians of the King examines the aesthetic and political tensions that arose when a genre with popular foundations was folded into the Bourbon propaganda machine, and when a group of actors trained at the Parisian fairs became official representatives of the sovereign, or comédiens ordinaires du roi. 

Among the pioneers of television, Ernie Kovacs was one of the most original and imaginative comedians. His zany, irreverent, and surprising humor not only entertained audiences throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, but also inspired a host of later comedies and comedians, including Monty Python, David Letterman, much of Saturday Night Live, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Captain Kangaroo, and even Sesame Street. Kovacs created laughter through wildly creative comic jokes, playful characterizations, hilarious insights, and wacky experiments. "Nothing in moderation," his motto and epitaph, sums up well Kovacs's wholehearted approach to comedy and life.

In this book, Andrew Horton offers the first sustained look at Ernie Kovacs's wide-ranging and lasting contributions to the development of TV comedy. He discusses in detail Kovacs's work in New York, which included The Ernie Kovacs Show (CBS prime time 1952–1953), The Ernie Kovacs Show (NBC daytime variety 1956–1957), Tonight (NBC late-night comedy/variety 1956-1957), and a number of quiz shows. Horton also looks at Kovacs's work in Los Angeles and in feature film comedy. He vividly describes how Kovacs and his comic co-conspirators created offbeat characters and zany situations that subverted expectations and upended the status quo. Most of all, Horton demonstrates that Kovacs grasped the possibility for creating a fresh genre of comedy through the new medium of television and exploited it to the fullest.

An updated paperback version of the book heralded as “a new benchmark in Marx scholarship” by the Los Angeles Times

Before film made them international comedy legends, the Marx Brothers developed their comic skills on stage for twenty-five years. In Four of the Three Musketeers: The Marx Brothers on Stage, Robert S. Bader offers the first comprehensive history of the foursome’s hardscrabble early years honing their act in front of live audiences.

From Groucho’s debut in 1905 to their final live performances of scenes from A Night in Casablanca in 1945, the brothers’ stage career shows how their characters and routines evolved before their arrival in Hollywood. Four of the Three Musketeers draws on an unmatched array of sources, many not referenced elsewhere. Bader’s detailed portrait of the struggling young actors both brings to vivid life a typical night on the road for the Marx Brothers and illuminates the inner workings of the vaudeville business, especially during its peak in the 1920s.

As Bader traces the origins of the characters that would later come to be beloved by filmgoers, he also skillfully scrapes away the accretion of rumors and mythology perpetuated not only by fans and writers but by the Marx Brothers themselves. Revealing, vital, and entertaining, Four of the Three Musketeers has taken its place as an essential reference for this legendary American act. Now, the updated edition adds newly discovered performances—some submitted by readers—and additional information provided by descendants of long-departed vaudevillians mentioned in the book.

"A notable example of radio at its best." --Back Stage/SHOOT In 1954, James Thurber wrote: "You can count on the thumb of one hand the American who is at once a comedian, a humorist, a wit, and a satirist, and his name is Fred Allen." Several decades after his death and more than forty years since his radio program left the air, Fred Allen's reputation as a respected humorist remains intact. In this book, Alan Havig explores the roots of his comedy, the themes it exploited, the problems and challenges that faced the radio comedy writer, and Allen's unique success with the one-dimensional medium of radio. Tracing a career that lasted from 1912 into the 1950s and encompassed vaudeville, Broadway revues, movies, radio, and television, Havig describes the "verbal slapstick" style that was Fred Allen's hallmark and legacy to American comedy. More than a biography of Fred Allen, this is a study of the development of the radio industry, a discussion of American humor, and the story of how one relates to the other. Using a wide variety of published and unpublished sources, including the Allen Papers, Havig analyzes Allen's radio comedy of the 1930s and 40s within the context of the peculiar advantages and limitations of radio as a medium for comedy. He argues that Allen did not merely transfer vaudeville routines to a non-visual medium as did Eddie Cantor, Ed Wynn, and others. Allen developed a comedic style that depended on word play, sound effects, and on his audience's ability and readiness to imagine a visual world in which his eccentric characters operated. Havig illustrates his story with numerous examples of Allen's humor, with fascinating anecdotes, and excerpts from radio broadcasts. In accounting for the comedian's success, he deals with vaudeville, comedy writing, sponsor's demands and censorship of material, and the organizational world of radio broadcasting companies. Describing radio as "an instrument of wit," Fred Allen wrote: "on radio you could do subtle writing because you had access to the imagination...that was why I liked radio. we had some fun." Readers will also have some fun remembering or discovering for the first time Allen's Alley and the magic of radio comedy in its prime. "Fred was one of the greatest of vaudeville and radio comedians. Anyone even casually concerned with the state of American humor will be well advised to give his work, as Mr. Havig presents it, careful study." --Steve Allen "Alan Havig has done an intelligent, careful and exhaustive research job. This is a well-written, solid performance-biography." --J. Fred MacDonald, Curator of the Museum of Broadcast Communication, Chicago

For more than twenty years, Hoosier comic Red Skelton entertained millions of viewers who gathered around their television sets to delight in the antics of such notable characters as Freddie the Freeloader, Clem Kaddiddlehopper, Cauliflower McPugg, and Sheriff Deadeye. Noted film historian Wes D. Gehring examines the man behind the characters—someone who never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Gehring delves into Skelton's hardscrabble life with a shockingly dysfunctional family in the southern Indiana community of Vincennes, his days on the road on the vaudeville circuit, the comedian's early success on radio, his up-and-down movie career with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and his sometimes tragic personal life.

The American tent show, which flourished for over four decades, represents a brief but important phase of theatre. Harley Sadler played a significant role in the history of the "rag opries."