A comedy classic surfaces in the heart of Barcelona
Do you know why Nancy Regan had a black baby?
No. I don't. And odds are pretty good I never will know.
The set up was all I could make out. I knew French, being Canadian, and figured hey, if you're familiar with one romantic language, you can get by in them all. But whatever the punch line to this joke was, way back in 1986, I could not figure out, no matter how many times I squinted through the Spanish sun at the words.
The jokes were printed on a placard outside a nightclub in the heart of Barcelona, advertising Spain's number one film and stage comedian, a little man with a large mustache who would not have been out of place back in the silent era. The jokes, judging by my limited Spanish, were topical and saucy - but if I couldn't make out the punch lines, I figured, I'd be better off finding my Hispanic laughs in another location.
I found it just a few blocks away, where a local cinema was playing a well-worn copy of a comedy I had seen many times: Golfus De Roma, better known as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. This'll work, I thought; my familiarity with the jokes is such that language is not an issue - besides, this film is so choc-a-block with mugs, sight gags, pratfalls and manic cutting (long before the advent of MTV) that there's much more to it than just the verbal - plus, there are those songs, those songs that I so fell in love upon first seeing this film, the ones that prompted me to wear down the grooves in the soundtrack album I rented over and over again from our local library. I've seen these dubbed pictures; they never mess with the songs. Too hard, I would imagine.
I settled in my seat, the overture began, and into frame appeared that lovable schizo Zero Mostel. Comedy Tonight he promised...in Spanish!
Oh no! Even the songs? ...oh well. Golfus De Roma in toto it would have to be.
Fortunately, I was right about the diverse content of this comedy, and walked away more than happy, humming the film's tunes and still-framing the prize expressions on that sizeable visage of Mostel's.
As I neared the hotel I was staying at, I spotted it again, that sign:
Do you know why Nancy Regan had a black baby?
No. I don't. And if I did, I'm sure that I wouldn't find it funny. The real humor, I now knew, the stuff that lasts, operates on a plane above such things as topicality and language.
And it isn't found in Spain either. It's in Rome.
