Laughing Hysterically: American Screen Comedy of the 1950s

Rejecting the notion that the 1950s was a bleak, comformist decade in the U.S., this engaging, sophisticated study argues that the era's film comedies reflect the period's underappreciated artistic and social rebelliousness. Sikov focuses on four directors-Howard Hawks (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot), Alfred Hitchcock (The Trouble With Harry) and Frank Tashlin (Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?)-whose comedies undercut drab normality, attack moral hypocrisy, satirize the powerful, and expose sexual repression and frustration. Sikov (Screwball: Hollywood's Madcap Romantic Comedies) also examines filmic references to homosexuality in the context of the period's antigay obsessions, exploring, for example, the ``homophilic'' bond between screen buddies Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Illustrated. (Oct.)