[2] Anything done on the stage may be called a bit.  A minor character may have only a bit, and some one part of a scene that the star may have, may be a bit.  The word is used to describe a successful little scene that is complete in itself.

Because such acts did not depend on lines but on slap-stick humor, they became known as slap-stick acts.  And because these vaudeville two-acts—­as we have elected to call them—­were usually presented by two men and worked in One, in front of a drop that represented a street, they were called “sidewalk comedian slap-stick acts.”

Their material was a lot of jokes of the “Who was that lady I saw you with last night?”—­“She weren’t no lady, she was my wife,” kind.  Two performers would throw together an act made up of sure-fire comedy bits they had used in various shows, interpolate a few old “gags”—­and the vaudeville writer had very little opportunity.

But to-day—­as a study of “The Art of Flirtation” will show—­wit and structural skill in the material itself is of prime importance.  Therefore the writer is needed to supply vaudeville two-acts.  But even to-day business still plays a very large part in the success of the two-act.  It may even be considered fundamental to the two-act’s success.  Therefore, before we consider the structural elements that make for success in writing the two-act, we shall take up the matter of two-act business.

4.  The “Business” of the Two-Act

The fact that we all laugh—­in varying degrees—­at the antics of the circus clown, should be sufficient evidence of the permanence of certain forms of humor to admit of a belief in the basic truth that certain actions do in all times find a humorous response in all hearts.  Certain things are fundamentally funny, and have made our ancestors laugh, just as they make us laugh and will make our descendants laugh.

“There’s no joke like an old joke,” is sarcastically but nevertheless literally true.  There may even be more than a humorous coincidence—­perhaps an unconscious recognition of the sure-firedness of certain actions—­in the warnings received in childhood to “stop that funny business.”

5.  Weber and Fields on Sure-Fire Business

However this may be, wherever actors foregather and talk about bits of stage business that have won and always will win laughs for them, there are a score or more points on which they agree.  No matter how much they may quarrel about the effectiveness of laugh-bits with which one or another has won a personal success—­due, perhaps, to his own peculiar personality—­they unite in admitting the universal effectiveness of certain good old stand-bys.

Weber and Fields—­before they made so much money that they retired to indulge in the pleasant pastime of producing shows—­presented probably the most famous of all the sidewalk comedian slap-stick acts. [1] They elevated the slap-stick sidewalk conversation act into national popularity and certainly reduced the business of their performance to a science—­or raised it to an art.  In an article entitled “Adventures in Human Nature,” published in The Associated Sunday Mazagines for June 23, 1912, Joe Weber and Lew Fields have this to say about the stage business responsible, in large measure, for the success of their famous two-act: