Olsen and Johnson
Encyclopedia
John Sigvard "Ole" Olsen and Harold Ogden "Chic" Johnson were zany American comedians of vaudeville
, radio
, the Broadway
stage, motion pictures and television
. Their shows were noted for their crazy blackout gags and orchestrated mayhem ("anything can happen, and it probably will"). Their most famous concept, Hellzapoppin', has become show-business shorthand for freewheeling, anything-goes comedy; it enjoyed a lengthy run on Broadway and spawned a movie version.
(1892- 26 January 1963, aged 70) and Chic Johnson
(1891- 26 February 1962, aged 70) began as musical entertainers: Olsen played the violin and Johnson played ragtime piano. They met in 1914, when Olsen hired Johnson to replace the pianist in his College Four quartet. Ole and Chic hit it off immediately and joined forces for a vaudeville act. No joke was too old, no song too corny for Ole and Chic, and the two engaging comics became a minor sensation in the Midwest. Radio enlarged their audience and led to appearances in early talkie movies for Warner Bros.
and two more minor features for Republic Pictures
. The movies of the 1930s were much too confining for Olsen and Johnson's special brand of nut humor. Ole and Chic recited their lines and played off each other well, but their scripts were too formal, leaving the team little room for their nonsensical comedy.
Comedy teams traditionally had a straight man and a stooge. However, Olsen and Johnson both took on the comic role, goodnaturedly chuckling their way through the steady barrage of gunshots, explosions, props plummeting to earth, intrusions from other performers and input from the audience.
In 1938, they mounted their revue, Hellzapoppin'. Sophisticated Broadway audiences were unprepared for such chaos: stray props came out of nowhere; comic characters were planted in the audience and disrupted the action; Olsen and Johnson dashed on and off the stage in crazy costumes and indulged in cheerfully earthy humor; chorus girls lost their skirts, and vaudeville acts did their trick specialties. The show never played the same way twice. On some nights, songs would be pre-empted by jokes, and on others, jokes would interrupt the songs.
In 1941, Universal Pictures
decided to commit Hellzapoppin'
to film, with plenty of crazy and sometimes innovative gags. A cab driver literally goes to hell, with Olsen and Johnson as his reluctant passengers. A serious song by Robert Paige and Jane Frazee is interrupted when a title card crashes on the screen, advising one Stinky Miller to go home. Man-chasing Martha Raye
pursues Mischa Auer
, who finds himself suddenly stripped down to his underwear and running a mock track meet. The film goes out of frame, and Olsen and Johnson try to correct the problem themselves. Despite Universal's insistence on a then-customary romance and a 'serious plot', somewhat diluting the Olsen and Johnson onslaught, Hellzapoppin is still fresh and funny. Copyright issues involving the original stage production have forced the film version out of general circulation in the United States, although a European DVD has entered circulation.
Universal made three more comedies with the team. Crazy House (1943) had Olsen and Johnson running amok through the Universal studio and evacuating the staff, including Universal regulars Basil Rathbone
and Nigel Bruce
, Johnny Mack Brown
, and Andy Devine
. In Ghost Catchers (1944), Ole and Chic help singer Gloria Jean
make her Carnegie Hall debut, despite strange happenings in a spooky old house. See My Lawyer (1945) was a patchwork of vaudeville acts, with Olsen and Johnson noticeably absent from most of the proceedings. After completing this last film, Olsen and Johnson resumed their stage career, mounting variations of Hellzapoppin.
's 46th Street Theatre on September 22, 1938 and ran for 1,404 performances, transferring to the Winter Garden Theatre mid-run.
The show had its start in a revue called Monkey Business where the team began developing their signature style of observing and commenting on the lunacy taking place around them. The gags and comic premises were borrowed from classic variety entertainment, but Olsen and Johnson put an original spin on the material through their inspired improvisation in live performance.
Described as a rule-breaking exercise in hysteria, Hellzapoppin was a comic amalgam of the best - or worst - of vaudeville and burlesque. It gloried in the broadest type of comedy, with no sketch too lowbrow to be included. Technically a musical
because it included a score by lyricist Charles Tobias
and composer Sammy Fain
, it was best known for its crazy combination of comedy acts, which included clowns, midgets, animals, and an audacious mock newsreel making fun of Adolf Hitler
. Stylistically, the show consistently broke the fourth wall
utilizing shills, plants, and zany audience-participation gags. It also made heavy use of prop comedy
including rubber snakes and breakaway pants.
Olsen and Johnson's shows were so popular that the team franchised them, with road companies headlining similar vaudeville acts and comedians. (The road company of Hellzapoppin starred Jay C. Flippen
and Happy Felton in the Olsen and Johnson roles.)
. Unlike the previous Olsen and Johnson hits, Pardon Our French ran only three months, and closed on January 6, 1951.
Television hired Olsen and Johnson to star in an ambitious variety show, Fireball Fun for All. It was hard to adapt Olsen and Johnson's unpredictable, prop-laden humor to a rigid time slot. Surviving kinescopes of the expensive, short-lived show demonstrate just how hard everyone tried to recapture the old, large-scale Hellzapoppin magic under the limitations of live television. At least the series reflected on the stars' achievement: they had now performed in every form of popular entertainment. The team tried TV again, appearing semi-regularly on NBC's All-Star Revue .Their last regular TV series was ABC
's 1957 children's series, Popsicle Five Star Comedy. Seen Saturday evenings, the short-lived series also featured ventriloquists Paul Winchell
and Senor Wences
, and cartoonist-storyteller Bob Bean
. (All-Star Revue is listed in "The Complete Encyclopedia of Television Programs: 1946 to 1979" by Vincent Terrance, published by
Arlington House; Popsicle Five Star Comedy is referenced in "Children's Television: The First 35 Years: Live, Taped and Filmed Shows" by George Woolery, published by Scarecrow Press.)
Olsen and Johnson continued to preside over rowdy revues into the 1950s, mostly in Las Vegas
. In the late 1950s illness forced Johnson to retire from the hectic show-business lifestyle, while Olsen continued to work as a solo performer. When Milton Berle
was hosting NBC's Jackpot Bowling, Ole Olsen was on hand to play straight to Berle's antics. This was really a surprise for Olsen, as his live comic routine was interrupted by Ralph Edwards
and a This Is Your Life
tribute. The flabbergasted Olsen greeted family and friends, with frequent breaks for time-honored O & J sight gags. The final guest was Chic Johnson, who ran on-camera in his familiar stage costume and joyfully reunited with his old friend and partner.
Johnson died in 1962; Olsen less than a year later. The two partners had always been close, and fittingly enough, their final resting places (in Las Vegas) are adjacent.
in Montreal
, Canada
featured a stage presentation of Hellzapoppin, featuring comics Soupy Sales
and Will B. Able; the show closed after only a few performances. A one-shot TV revival produced by ABC
co-starred Jack Cassidy
and Ronnie Schell
. Jerry Lewis
secured the stage rights and NBC
planned to telecast his version of Hellzapoppin live, in 1980. The show closed prematurely, however, and never aired on television.
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
, radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
, the Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
stage, motion pictures and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
. Their shows were noted for their crazy blackout gags and orchestrated mayhem ("anything can happen, and it probably will"). Their most famous concept, Hellzapoppin', has become show-business shorthand for freewheeling, anything-goes comedy; it enjoyed a lengthy run on Broadway and spawned a movie version.
Overview
Ole OlsenOle Olsen (comedian)
John Sigvard "Ole" Olsen was an American vaudevillian and comedian.Born in Peru, Indiana, he graduated from Northwestern University in 1912 with a degree in music and hit the Vaudeville circuit...
(1892- 26 January 1963, aged 70) and Chic Johnson
Chic Johnson
Chic Johnson was the barrel-chested half of the Swedish-American comedy team of Olsen and Johnson, known for his strangely infectious, high-pitched laugh.-Background:...
(1891- 26 February 1962, aged 70) began as musical entertainers: Olsen played the violin and Johnson played ragtime piano. They met in 1914, when Olsen hired Johnson to replace the pianist in his College Four quartet. Ole and Chic hit it off immediately and joined forces for a vaudeville act. No joke was too old, no song too corny for Ole and Chic, and the two engaging comics became a minor sensation in the Midwest. Radio enlarged their audience and led to appearances in early talkie movies for Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
and two more minor features for Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures was an independent film production-distribution corporation with studio facilities, operating from 1934 through 1959, and was best known for specializing in westerns, movie serials and B films emphasizing mystery and action....
. The movies of the 1930s were much too confining for Olsen and Johnson's special brand of nut humor. Ole and Chic recited their lines and played off each other well, but their scripts were too formal, leaving the team little room for their nonsensical comedy.
Comedy teams traditionally had a straight man and a stooge. However, Olsen and Johnson both took on the comic role, goodnaturedly chuckling their way through the steady barrage of gunshots, explosions, props plummeting to earth, intrusions from other performers and input from the audience.
In 1938, they mounted their revue, Hellzapoppin'. Sophisticated Broadway audiences were unprepared for such chaos: stray props came out of nowhere; comic characters were planted in the audience and disrupted the action; Olsen and Johnson dashed on and off the stage in crazy costumes and indulged in cheerfully earthy humor; chorus girls lost their skirts, and vaudeville acts did their trick specialties. The show never played the same way twice. On some nights, songs would be pre-empted by jokes, and on others, jokes would interrupt the songs.
In 1941, Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
decided to commit Hellzapoppin'
Hellzapoppin' (film)
Hellzapoppin' is a 1941 Universal Pictures adaptation of the musical of the same name directed by H.C. Potter. The cast includes Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson , Martha Raye, Mischa Auer, Shemp Howard, and The Six Hits.The credits for the movie assert that "any resemblance between Hellzapoppin and a...
to film, with plenty of crazy and sometimes innovative gags. A cab driver literally goes to hell, with Olsen and Johnson as his reluctant passengers. A serious song by Robert Paige and Jane Frazee is interrupted when a title card crashes on the screen, advising one Stinky Miller to go home. Man-chasing Martha Raye
Martha Raye
Martha Raye was an American comic actress and standards singer who performed in movies, and later on television....
pursues Mischa Auer
Mischa Auer
Mischa Auer was a Russian-born American actor.-Early life:Auer was born Mikhail Semyonovich Unskovsky in St. Petersburg, Russia...
, who finds himself suddenly stripped down to his underwear and running a mock track meet. The film goes out of frame, and Olsen and Johnson try to correct the problem themselves. Despite Universal's insistence on a then-customary romance and a 'serious plot', somewhat diluting the Olsen and Johnson onslaught, Hellzapoppin is still fresh and funny. Copyright issues involving the original stage production have forced the film version out of general circulation in the United States, although a European DVD has entered circulation.
Universal made three more comedies with the team. Crazy House (1943) had Olsen and Johnson running amok through the Universal studio and evacuating the staff, including Universal regulars Basil Rathbone
Basil Rathbone
Sir Basil Rathbone, KBE, MC, Kt was an English actor. He rose to prominence in England as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in over 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films...
and Nigel Bruce
Nigel Bruce
William Nigel Ernle Bruce , best known as Nigel Bruce, was a British character actor on stage and screen. He was best known for his portrayal of Doctor Watson in a series of films and in the radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes...
, Johnny Mack Brown
Johnny Mack Brown
Johnny Mack Brown was an All-American college football player and film actor originally billed as John Mack Brown at the height of his screen career.-Early life:...
, and Andy Devine
Andy Devine
Andrew Vabre "Andy" Devine was an American character actor and comic cowboy sidekick known for his distinctive raspy voice.-Early life:...
. In Ghost Catchers (1944), Ole and Chic help singer Gloria Jean
Gloria Jean
Gloria Jean is an American singer and actress who starred or co-starred in 26 feature films between 1939 and 1959. She also made radio, television, stage, and nightclub appearances.-Career:...
make her Carnegie Hall debut, despite strange happenings in a spooky old house. See My Lawyer (1945) was a patchwork of vaudeville acts, with Olsen and Johnson noticeably absent from most of the proceedings. After completing this last film, Olsen and Johnson resumed their stage career, mounting variations of Hellzapoppin.
Hellzapoppin
Although Olsen and Johnson were a leading act in vaudeville, their greatest achievement was their "legitimate theater" production of Hellzapoppin'. Assembled and produced by Olsen and Johnson, Hellzapoppin' opened at New YorkNew York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
's 46th Street Theatre on September 22, 1938 and ran for 1,404 performances, transferring to the Winter Garden Theatre mid-run.
The show had its start in a revue called Monkey Business where the team began developing their signature style of observing and commenting on the lunacy taking place around them. The gags and comic premises were borrowed from classic variety entertainment, but Olsen and Johnson put an original spin on the material through their inspired improvisation in live performance.
Described as a rule-breaking exercise in hysteria, Hellzapoppin was a comic amalgam of the best - or worst - of vaudeville and burlesque. It gloried in the broadest type of comedy, with no sketch too lowbrow to be included. Technically a musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
because it included a score by lyricist Charles Tobias
Charles Tobias
-Biography:Born in New York City, Tobias grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts with brothers Harry Tobias and Henry Tobias, also songwriters.He started his musical career in vaudeville. In 1923, he founded his own music publishing firm and worked on Tin Pan Alley...
and composer Sammy Fain
Sammy Fain
Sammy Fain was an American composer of popular music.-Biography:Sammy Fain was born in New York City. In 1923, Fain appeared with Artie Dunn in a short film directed by Lee De Forest filmed in DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process. In 1925, Fain left the Fain-Dunn act to devote himself to...
, it was best known for its crazy combination of comedy acts, which included clowns, midgets, animals, and an audacious mock newsreel making fun of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
. Stylistically, the show consistently broke the fourth wall
Fourth wall
The fourth wall is the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a traditional three-walled box set in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play...
utilizing shills, plants, and zany audience-participation gags. It also made heavy use of prop comedy
Prop comedy
Prop comedy is a comedy genre that makes use of humorous objects, or conventional objects used in humorous ways. The stage and film term "prop", an abbreviation of "property", refers to any object handled by an actor in the course of a performance. Although some form of prop comedy has likely...
including rubber snakes and breakaway pants.
Olsen and Johnson's shows were so popular that the team franchised them, with road companies headlining similar vaudeville acts and comedians. (The road company of Hellzapoppin starred Jay C. Flippen
Jay C. Flippen
Jay C. Flippen is an American character actor who often played police officers or weary criminals in many films of the 1940s/'50s....
and Happy Felton in the Olsen and Johnson roles.)
Later Broadway productions
In 1943 Olsen and Johnson returned to Broadway with a new revue, Sons O' Fun, which offered the same frenzied assortment of old gags and new songs. After this show had run its course, Olsen and Johnson mounted yet another variation on Hellzapoppin, this one titled Laffing Room Only (1944). Their final Broadway show was the 1950 production Pardon Our French, introducing their "discovery." French singer Denise DarcelDenise Darcel
Denise Darcel is a retired French actress who made a few films in Hollywood.Born as Denise Billecard in Paris, she was college educated. According to one of her friends who she met in Paris during WWII, she was a passenger in an L-5 Stinson light observation aircraft on VJ Day to see the...
. Unlike the previous Olsen and Johnson hits, Pardon Our French ran only three months, and closed on January 6, 1951.
Television
In 1949 NBCNBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
Television hired Olsen and Johnson to star in an ambitious variety show, Fireball Fun for All. It was hard to adapt Olsen and Johnson's unpredictable, prop-laden humor to a rigid time slot. Surviving kinescopes of the expensive, short-lived show demonstrate just how hard everyone tried to recapture the old, large-scale Hellzapoppin magic under the limitations of live television. At least the series reflected on the stars' achievement: they had now performed in every form of popular entertainment. The team tried TV again, appearing semi-regularly on NBC's All-Star Revue .Their last regular TV series was ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
's 1957 children's series, Popsicle Five Star Comedy. Seen Saturday evenings, the short-lived series also featured ventriloquists Paul Winchell
Paul Winchell
Paul Winchell was an American ventriloquist, voice actor and comedian, whose career flourished in the 1950s and 1960s...
and Senor Wences
Señor Wences
Wenceslao Moreno , better known as Señor Wences, was a Spanish ventriloquist. His popularity grew with his frequent appearances on CBS-TV's Ed Sullivan Show in the 1950s and 1960s.-Early life:...
, and cartoonist-storyteller Bob Bean
Robert Bean (artist)
Robert Bean is an artist, writer and teacher living in Halifax, Nova Scotia.Born and raised in Saskatchewan, he moved to Nova Scotia in 1976 to pursue a career in contemporary art and education. He obtained a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1978, and an MA in Cultural Studies...
. (All-Star Revue is listed in "The Complete Encyclopedia of Television Programs: 1946 to 1979" by Vincent Terrance, published by
Arlington House; Popsicle Five Star Comedy is referenced in "Children's Television: The First 35 Years: Live, Taped and Filmed Shows" by George Woolery, published by Scarecrow Press.)
Olsen and Johnson continued to preside over rowdy revues into the 1950s, mostly in Las Vegas
Las Vegas Strip
The Las Vegas Strip is an approximately stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard in Clark County, Nevada; adjacent to, but outside the city limits of Las Vegas proper. The Strip lies within the unincorporated townships of Paradise and Winchester...
. In the late 1950s illness forced Johnson to retire from the hectic show-business lifestyle, while Olsen continued to work as a solo performer. When Milton Berle
Milton Berle
Milton Berlinger , better known as Milton Berle, was an American comedian and actor. As the manic host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater , in 1948 he was the first major star of U.S. television and as such became known as Uncle Miltie and Mr...
was hosting NBC's Jackpot Bowling, Ole Olsen was on hand to play straight to Berle's antics. This was really a surprise for Olsen, as his live comic routine was interrupted by Ralph Edwards
Ralph Edwards
Ralph Livingstone Edwards was an American radio and television host and television producer.-Early career:Born in Merino, Colorado , Edwards worked for KROW-AM in Oakland, California while he was still in high school...
and a This Is Your Life
This Is Your Life
This Is Your Life is an American television documentary series broadcast on NBC, originally hosted by its producer, Ralph Edwards from 1952 to 1961. In the show, the host surprises a guest, and proceeds to take them through their life in front of an audience including friends and family.Edwards...
tribute. The flabbergasted Olsen greeted family and friends, with frequent breaks for time-honored O & J sight gags. The final guest was Chic Johnson, who ran on-camera in his familiar stage costume and joyfully reunited with his old friend and partner.
Johnson died in 1962; Olsen less than a year later. The two partners had always been close, and fittingly enough, their final resting places (in Las Vegas) are adjacent.
Revivals
Olsen and Johnson's comedy style has often been imitated (most successfully by Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In) but never duplicated. Expo 67Expo 67
The 1967 International and Universal Exposition or Expo 67, as it was commonly known, was the general exhibition, Category One World's Fair held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, from April 27 to October 29, 1967. It is considered to be the most successful World's Fair of the 20th century, with the...
in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
featured a stage presentation of Hellzapoppin, featuring comics Soupy Sales
Soupy Sales
Soupy Sales was an American comedian, actor, radio-TV personality and host, and jazz aficionado. He was best known for his local and network children's television show, Lunch with Soupy Sales; a series of comedy sketches frequently ending with Sales receiving a pie in the face, which became his...
and Will B. Able; the show closed after only a few performances. A one-shot TV revival produced by ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
co-starred Jack Cassidy
Jack Cassidy
John Joseph Edward “Jack” Cassidy was an American actor of stage, film and screen.His frequent professional persona was that of an urbane, super-confident egotist with a dramatic flair, much in the manner of Broadway actor Frank Fay...
and Ronnie Schell
Ronnie Schell
Ronald Ralph "Ronnie" Schell is an American actor, stand-up comedian and cartoon voice actor . Early in his career he appeared as himself as a contestant on You Bet Your Life opposite Groucho Marx, demonstrating a comic barrage of jive talk.-Life and career:Schell was born in Richmond, California...
. Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis...
secured the stage rights and NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
planned to telecast his version of Hellzapoppin live, in 1980. The show closed prematurely, however, and never aired on television.
Films
- Oh Sailor Behave! (Warner Brothers, 1930) (68 minutes)
- Fifty Million FrenchmenFifty Million FrenchmenFifty Million Frenchmen is a musical comedy with a book by Herbert Fields and music and lyrics by Cole Porter. It opened on Broadway in 1929 and was adapted for a film two years later...
(Warner Brothers, 1931) (68 minutes) - Gold Dust GertieGold Dust GertieGold Dust Gertie is an All-Talking musical comedy released by Warner Brothers. It was originally completed as a full musical. Due to the backlash against musicals, however, all the songs were cut from the film in all release prints in the United States...
(Warner Brothers, 1931) (66 minutes) - Country Gentlemen (Republic, 1936) (66 minutes)
- Cinema Circus (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1936) (TechnicolorTechnicolorTechnicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
short subject, 20 minutes) - All Over Town (Republic, 1937) (58 minutes)
- Boy Friend (20th Century Fox, 1939 (70 minutes) (Ole Olsen appeared in uncredited role as a taxi driver)
- Hellzapoppin'Hellzapoppin'Hellzapoppin is a musical revue written by the comedy team of Olsen and Johnson, consisting of John "Ole" Olsen and Harold "Chic" Johnson, with music and lyrics by Sammy Fain and Charles Tobias...
(Universal, 1941) (84 minutes) (with Shemp Howard) - Crazy HouseCrazy HouseCrazy House is a 1943 comedy film starring Ole Olson and Chic Johnson as a pair of comedians who try to make a film with no budget, no story and no clue. Complications ensue when the final reel goes missing at the film's premiere. Cass Daley costars. Stooge Shemp Howard has a small role in the film...
(Universal, 1943) (80 minutes) (with Percy KilbridePercy KilbridePercy W. Kilbride was an American character actor. The son of Irish immigrants, he made a career of playing country hicks, most memorably as Pa Kettle in the Ma and Pa Kettle series of feature films.-Career:...
) (sequel to Hellzapoppin') - Ghost Catchers (Universal, 1944) (67 minutes) (with Gloria JeanGloria JeanGloria Jean is an American singer and actress who starred or co-starred in 26 feature films between 1939 and 1959. She also made radio, television, stage, and nightclub appearances.-Career:...
) - See My Lawyer (Universal, 1945) (67 minutes) (with Stanley ClementsStanley ClementsStanley Clements was an American actor and comedian.Stanley Clements was born Stanislaw Klimowicz in Long Island, New York. Young Stan realized that he wanted a show-business career while he was in grammar school, and when he graduated from college he toured in vaudeville for two years...
) - Johnny at the Fair (Sterling, 1947) (short subject, 12 minutes)
Book
- Maltin, Leonard. Movie Comedy Teams. New York: Signet, 1970, revised 1985. (Chapter about Olsen and Johnson)