Two years ago on this blog, I linked to a clip of a short comedy and introduced it this way…
When you think of great comedy teams, certain names come to mind: Laurel & Hardy. Abbott & Costello. The Three Stooges. Nixon & Agnew. And of course, Biffle & Shooster.
Most of you are familiar with Biffle & Shooster but just in case there's someone reading this who isn't: Benny Biffle and Sam Shooster were a popular vaudeville comedy team and they starred in approximately twenty two-reel comedy shorts in the thirties, ending with the classic, It's a Frame-Up. That last one was once thought to be a "lost" treasure but the noted film producer-historian Michael Schlesinger located and, at great personal expense, restored the film and it is now available for viewing. In fact, Mike may have done too good a job of restoration…
The print is so good that folks unfamiliar with movie history think it was shot recently; that Biffle & Shooster weren't classic comedians of the thirties but that Mike wrote, produced and directed a film in that style. And it's true that Biffle looks somewhat like the current-day comic actor Nick Santa Maria and Shooster bears more than a passing resemblance to my pal, Will Ryan. But I also know Mike and know that he has way too much integrity to phony-up a film in the classic tradition and try to pass it off as an older masterpiece…and besides, he wouldn't get away with it.
Amazingly, Mike has continued to uncover lost Biffle & Shuster comedies — so many that he's now assembling an entire program of them. Here's a preview of this fine compilation that I hope will be playing soon at a theater near you. Their comedy is so fresh, you'd think these films were shot in the last two years…