“From the Archives of Keystone Memory”: Slapstick and Re-membrance at Columbia Pictures’ Short-Subjects Department

This chapter turns to the old-time slapstick vogue of the mid- to late 1930s and the role of nostalgia in the “re-membering” (Barbara Myerhoff) of slapstick’s meaning and function as a residual cultural form. The focus falls on Columbia Pictures’ short-subject department, which, from its reorganization in the early 1930s, gradually built a reputation as one of the industry’s chief restorers of “throwback,” Mack Sennett-style slapstick traditions. The chapter reconstructs the terms of that restoration through a formal comparison of Buster Keaton’s shorts for the studio with those of Columbia’s star slapstick team, the Three Stooges. But it also examines a political vector to Columbia’s throwback house style by assessing the relationship linking popular comedic forms to the populist imaginaries of New Deal-era America.