Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, sure. But the biggest risk- taker among silent movie comedians has to have been Harold Lloyd, whose performance in Safety Last had him pretending to be a postal worker, and ended with him hanging off a clock face on top of a tower. The whole film is a symphony of comic movement and timing.
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* Bulldog Drummond (1929):
An early sound movie, based on HC McNeile aka Sapper's bestselling book, adapted by Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Sidney Howard (who won the first posthumous Oscar, for the 1939 film Gone With the Wind), and starring Ronald Colman, this was the fourth instalment in a franchise of 24 films that stretched across 47 years.
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* Top Hat (1935):
The quintessential Fred Astaire film, with a paper-thin plot involving mistaken identity, this one had a great comic supporting cast, Art Deco as far as the eye could see, music by Irving Berlin, and Fred and Ginger Rogers. Trivia: The opening sequence of Top Hat is identical to the opening sequence of Bulldog Drummond.
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* Duck Soup (1933):
Pure Marxist mayhem, and the last film to feature the four Marx Brothers. The film works brilliantly as political satire and as a showcase of what they could do. It includes the famous mirror sequence (above). Directed by Leo McCarey; featuring the magnificent Margaret Dumont.
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* To Have and Have Not (1944):
The story goes that while director Howard Hawks was fishing with Ernest Hemingway, he said he could make a movie of the latter's "worst" book, To Have and Have Not. Hemingway agreed, and William Faulkner co-wrote the screenplay. Starring Humphrey Bogart, the movie introduced Lauren Bacall to the world - and to Bogart, sparking one of the greatest off-screen love affairs in Hollywood history.
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