“In photoplay ... the majority of the scenes must each have its own comedy action while the narrative is advanced, and it is here that the average writer of comedy falls short.  If a scene is not naturally funny, put some humor into it.  Do not force the comedy action, but invent something that is germane to the plot and natural to the situation.  If you can do this you can write comedy, but until you can get a laugh in every scene you are not writing comedy, no matter how funny the central idea may be.  As a rule the central idea furnishes the comedy for only one scene; not for the entire play.  In comedy you must play faster, work harder, and strive constantly for the natural, unforced laughs.  And remember that the editors go to vaudeville shows, the same as you do.  They know the old sketches and the whiskered jokes.  If they wanted them they would write them themselves.”

The success of a comedy composition lies fundamentally in the novelty of its plot, or in some new and interesting phase of an old situation; it prospers in proportion to its interest-holding qualities, its natural logic, its probability, and the constant humor of the individual scenes and situations.  There is a wide difference between comedy and comic pictures, and the difference lies chiefly in that comedy depends largely for its humor on the cleverness displayed in the construction of the plot, whereas the comic picture is usually merely a series of funny situations arising from one basic situation, but having little or no plot.  In the “comic,” the scenes are loosely connected, while the humor of the picture depends upon the uproarious fun in each scene.  These comic pictures, usually of the slap-stick variety, would naturally be classed as farces; but even in photoplay it is possible to produce a better and more natural brand of farce than that which depends for its humor upon the silly antics of different characters in a series of loosely connected scenes, which have no logical or consistent plot.

There is steady demand for the unusual and genuinely humorous light comedy—­by which is meant the kind of photo-comedies that approximate the legitimate plays usually employed as vehicles by Mr. John Drew and Mr. Cyril Maude.  They may treat of society, of business life, or of life in the home, but on account of the light, airy, and subtly humorous way in which the situations are developed they take far higher artistic rank than may be accorded to farce.  There is also a good demand for comedy-dramas in which there is a strict regard for dramatic values in handling the different scenes, and in following out the plot, which has its serious elements, but in which the comedy-element remains comedy from first to last.

The domestic comedies produced by Metro, featuring Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew, of which we have already spoken, are so well known, and these artists are so universally popular, that a word or two from Mr. Drew on the subject of screen comedy should be interesting and instructive: