Clark and McCullough (2015)

Clark and McCullough were two vaudevillians transplanted onto the silver screen of the Depression-devastated 1930’s. A sort of forgotten (or buried?) Laurel and Hardy, they specialized in Marx Brothers’-style slapstick and screwball shenanigans. Clark went about the picture dressed in a bowler hat, coat and tails, and with a couple of greasepaint glasses drawn creepily around his eyes. McCullough was his seemingly mute counterpart.

They starred in a number of successful two-reelers up until 1933. According to author and filmaker cum black magician Kenneth Anger, the manic-depressive McCullough went, one fine day, into his customary barbershop.

He seemed happy, cheery.

His barber turned his back.

MCullough grabbed the razor out from under his nose. He then sliced his own throat from ear to ear.

Hence, his career came to a rather inauspicious end. I suppose the recent celebrity comedian who decided to end his own life was not, after all, without precedent.

Clark and McCullough are forgotten now, a morbid footnote in the annals of film, a small mini-chapter in Hollywood Babylon. Can anyone watch their films and draw a few mild chortles or guffaws knowing what became of the comic duo’s pathetic straight man?