Tue, 17 Sep 2019
Today it occurred to me that in the many comedy duos that feature a “straight man” and a “comedian”, the straight man is invariably named first. The central example, of course, is Abbott and Costello. But we also have:
- Laurel and Hardy
- Burns and Allen
- Rowan and Martin
- Martin and Lewis
- Bert and Ernie
and this even extends to entirely fictitious pairs such as Jeeves and Wooster, Harold and Kumar, or Sam and Max, Freelance Police. Also, if you are a mathematician, Smothers and Smothers. This is why people hate mathematicians.
I did Google search for "Kermit and Fozzie" (hits outnumber "Fozzie and Kermit" by around three-to-one) and "Kermit and Miss Piggy" (hits outnumber "Miss Piggy and Kermit", although only by about 60%.)
Wikipedia says this is no accident!
In vaudeville, effective straight men were much less common than comedians. The straight man's name usually appeared first and he usually received 60% of the take.
But my co-worker Jeff Culverhouse found a counterexample: Silent Bob is certainly the straight man of Jay and Silent Bob.
Wikipedia also has a list of American Comedy Duos. Not all of them follow the straight man / comedian pattern, and I don't recognize many of those that do. More research is needed.
Addenda
I wanted to find a gender-neutral term for "straight man", but failed.
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I thought of another counterexample: Wallace and Gromit.
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Google search hits for “Tom and Dick Smothers” outnumber those for “Dick and Tom Smothers” to more than 7 to 1. (20600 to 2670.) Dick was the straight man.
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Michel Dingler points out that R2-D2 and C-3PO are another counterexample:
Popular consensus in my Mastodon timeline seems to agree.
I haven't seen it, but I suppose that in the action comedy series B.J. and the Bear, B.J. (played by Greg Evigan) is the straight man to the Bear (played by some monkey).
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