If you recall the old Ed Sullivan Variety Show on Sunday Nights (which is where Elvis Presley and the Beatles made their American television debuts) you will remember that Sullivan picked many acts again and again that he liked. The most notorious one that we all recall was the "Italian" mouse puppet Topo Gigio, but there were others. One was the Canadian comedy team of Johnny Wayne and Frank Schuster, who appeared dozens of times on Sullivan's program. To be fair they weren't bad comedians, but compared to others around at the time (say Jerry Stiller and his wife/partner Anne Meara) they were not the best. But they weren't awful (like Topo Gigio was).
In the summer of 1965 this series was presented as a summer replacement show hosted by Wayne and Shuster. As they explained in the opening of the shows, they liked to look at various comedians of the past to see how they handled material. So each hour of this series dealt with a leading comic or pair of comics from the sound film period (Chaplin and Keaton and Lloyd and Langdon all made sound films but were best recalled for their silent films). Episodes of the series included the present one listed (W.C.Fields), the Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, Jack Benny, Burns & Allen, Hope & Crosby, and the Three Stooges. Oddly enough some names were totally ignored (most notably Wheeler & Woolsey and Clark & McCullough). But what the episodes were were looks at these comics going through their paces, and showing scenes from films that were not necessarily released to the public at the time (MONKEY BUSINESS and ANIMAL CRACKERS were not shown much - the latter was tied up in legal red tape - in 1965 television, and I remember seeing portions of both, such as Groucho and Zeppo in the "Hungerdunger, Hungerdunger, Hungerdunger, and McCormick" letter taking scene, which is one of the few that shows Zeppo could actually contribute well to the brother's films.
The Fields' episode showed scenes also not frequently seen on television in 1965 (the most commonly shown Fields' movies in those days were his later films, THE BANK DICK, MY LITTLE CHICAKADEE, NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK, and YOU CAN'T CHEAT AN HONEST MAN). While scenes from the four commonly showed movies were shown in the Field's episode, they also showed portions of some obscure films, such as his shorts for Mack Sennett (such as THE GOLF SPECIALIST, wherein the scene they showed was with the sticky paper that Fields' can't get off his club, his shoes, or his hands).
I am glad to say that within a few years of 1965 Channel 5 in New York had a series of old Paramount Fields movies, such as POPPY, THE OLD FASHIONED WAY, THE MAN ON THE FLYING Trapeze, and TILLIE AND GUS, co-hosted by television personality and old movie comedy fan Chuck McCann. I don't know if there was any connection between the reappearance of those films and the Wayne and Shuster series, but if the latter helped cause the former it was all to the good. Much work of a great comic finally was introduced to a new audience, which is as it should be.
The series, as the other comment on this thread mentions, did not do elaborate critical analysis. Probably that is just as well. But the show was an entertaining moment in an anthology series, and that is worth remembering.
In the summer of 1965 this series was presented as a summer replacement show hosted by Wayne and Shuster. As they explained in the opening of the shows, they liked to look at various comedians of the past to see how they handled material. So each hour of this series dealt with a leading comic or pair of comics from the sound film period (Chaplin and Keaton and Lloyd and Langdon all made sound films but were best recalled for their silent films). Episodes of the series included the present one listed (W.C.Fields), the Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, Jack Benny, Burns & Allen, Hope & Crosby, and the Three Stooges. Oddly enough some names were totally ignored (most notably Wheeler & Woolsey and Clark & McCullough). But what the episodes were were looks at these comics going through their paces, and showing scenes from films that were not necessarily released to the public at the time (MONKEY BUSINESS and ANIMAL CRACKERS were not shown much - the latter was tied up in legal red tape - in 1965 television, and I remember seeing portions of both, such as Groucho and Zeppo in the "Hungerdunger, Hungerdunger, Hungerdunger, and McCormick" letter taking scene, which is one of the few that shows Zeppo could actually contribute well to the brother's films.
The Fields' episode showed scenes also not frequently seen on television in 1965 (the most commonly shown Fields' movies in those days were his later films, THE BANK DICK, MY LITTLE CHICAKADEE, NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK, and YOU CAN'T CHEAT AN HONEST MAN). While scenes from the four commonly showed movies were shown in the Field's episode, they also showed portions of some obscure films, such as his shorts for Mack Sennett (such as THE GOLF SPECIALIST, wherein the scene they showed was with the sticky paper that Fields' can't get off his club, his shoes, or his hands).
I am glad to say that within a few years of 1965 Channel 5 in New York had a series of old Paramount Fields movies, such as POPPY, THE OLD FASHIONED WAY, THE MAN ON THE FLYING Trapeze, and TILLIE AND GUS, co-hosted by television personality and old movie comedy fan Chuck McCann. I don't know if there was any connection between the reappearance of those films and the Wayne and Shuster series, but if the latter helped cause the former it was all to the good. Much work of a great comic finally was introduced to a new audience, which is as it should be.
The series, as the other comment on this thread mentions, did not do elaborate critical analysis. Probably that is just as well. But the show was an entertaining moment in an anthology series, and that is worth remembering.