Fred Allen, the consummate radio comedian, called television a “medium,” to which he added that nothing about it is “well-done.” Amusing but also, for the most part, true. Apart from a small number of ...

The great silent comics—Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon—were compact men, resilient and sprung-wound yet graceful as they coped with menaces like recalcitrant umbrellas, ...