Woollcott the Crier

The funny thing about the past is that it's nothing quite like the present. And vice versa. Making a Merrie Melody like this one today, you'd need an entirely different set of authors and actors to portray -- forgetting, of course, that nobody would make this kind of cartoon today at all. You certainly wouldn't get a caricature of Alexander Woollcott as the Town Crier, that's for sure.

That's what the Treasury of Laughter Blog is going to be all about: Finding new in the old. Now, the authors featured in this anthology are varied, fromthe well-known today (Mark Twin, Ogden Nash, James Thurber, et cetera) to those who have slipped into obscurity, despite being very well-known in their day. (Anybody remember who Don Marquis, is, for example?)

But there are a lot of famous names and famous associations back then that still resonate today, albeit in different forms or for different reasons. We'll explore all that as time goes on.

Right now, I plan on two posts a week, each post focusing on an author featured in this anthology. We'll just follow Dusty Bottoms' admonition from "The Three Amigos:" We'll just relax and have fun with it.