Mixed N'yuks... the very idea. Well, I coulda sworn they were brothers, but apparently it's a father-son directing team. Frankly, no one could have seen this coming... sorry again. Must've been that 9/11 documentary I saw this weekend. Anyway, father Archie Gottler is the type of person I've often heard about, like Irving Cohen or the two guys in that Stan Freberg special. He's written over 80,000 songs for Ziegfeld, did a brief stint for Gershwin as a piano tuner, you get the idea. Composer of such classic hits as "Don't Forget to take your Comet Pills" and "The Fall of the Irish Boxer", he decided to broaden and expand his horizons into this new invention called "movies." And why not get the progeny involved? Little Jerome S.'s first gig was on the first solo Stooge effort, Woman Haters. Viewed by the effete intellectuals as a nice subtle dig against FDR seemingly turning every aspect of human life into a massive government jobs program, but ultimately viewed by the Gottlers and the public at large as a sorry excuse to see three idiots hitting each other. Frankly, the trail runs cold for both Gottlers after their run-in with the Stooges, young Jerome S. more so than the slightly more resilient father Archie. Jerome didn't work again until the 1950s, for God's sake! And even then, work was kinda intermittent. As for Archie, after working with the Stooges, he knew it was time to retire. He no longer recognized his show business that he thought he was a part of, so he wrapped up his remaining commitments and got on the trolley to home. Everyone's got a story, and now it's time to move on to the next one.
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Auteur Watch - Archie Gottler and Jerome S. Gottler
Mixed N'yuks... the very idea. Well, I coulda sworn they were brothers, but apparently it's a father-son directing team. Frankly, no one could have seen this coming... sorry again. Must've been that 9/11 documentary I saw this weekend. Anyway, father Archie Gottler is the type of person I've often heard about, like Irving Cohen or the two guys in that Stan Freberg special. He's written over 80,000 songs for Ziegfeld, did a brief stint for Gershwin as a piano tuner, you get the idea. Composer of such classic hits as "Don't Forget to take your Comet Pills" and "The Fall of the Irish Boxer", he decided to broaden and expand his horizons into this new invention called "movies." And why not get the progeny involved? Little Jerome S.'s first gig was on the first solo Stooge effort, Woman Haters. Viewed by the effete intellectuals as a nice subtle dig against FDR seemingly turning every aspect of human life into a massive government jobs program, but ultimately viewed by the Gottlers and the public at large as a sorry excuse to see three idiots hitting each other. Frankly, the trail runs cold for both Gottlers after their run-in with the Stooges, young Jerome S. more so than the slightly more resilient father Archie. Jerome didn't work again until the 1950s, for God's sake! And even then, work was kinda intermittent. As for Archie, after working with the Stooges, he knew it was time to retire. He no longer recognized his show business that he thought he was a part of, so he wrapped up his remaining commitments and got on the trolley to home. Everyone's got a story, and now it's time to move on to the next one.
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