Funny Ladies: 100 Years of Great Comediennes (ISBN 0810933373)

Amazon.com Review:
Funny Ladies is a terrific look at, you guessed it, funny women ranging from radio and silent film stars right up through Absolutely Fabulous and Janeane Garofalo. Each subject gets a brief bio and a discussion of her unique performance style and career highlights. (Be sure to keep a pad and pencil by your side to jot down titles for the inevitable rush to the video store.) Author Stephen M. Silverman is even-handed in his approach, including stand-up comics like Moms Mabley, comic actresses like Madeline Kahn, and actresses who weren't necessarily identified as comediennes but nevertheless turned in brilliant comic performances, like Myrna Loy. Though never a performer, Algonquin wit Dorothy Parker gets her much-deserved due as well. The book is richly punctuated with black-and-white photos, both of the dewily pretty and the appropriately loony varieties. The author explores contrasts--attractive women who play ugly, smart women who play dumb, and sophisticated ladies who enjoy tearing up the joint, but Silverman also has a clear appreciation for women who achieve a perfect realization of their own natural type. Mercifully, Funny Ladies never makes the mistake of psychoanalyzing its subjects, though a certain shared feistiness of spirit is definitely in evidence. Don't worry about this being a gender-centered book (its subjects certainly don't), just get it for anyone who has a good appreciation of crack timing and a well-lobbed pie. --Ali Davis

Not a bad book:
This was basically a paragraph or two of each of the actresses/comediennes the author considers to have been "funny ladies" since the beginning of film. Some of the choices are interesting (Barbara Stanwyck, for example) and there are also the more typical picks - Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, etc. It's a rather heavy book as well and oversized.

Fascinating glimpses of funny ladies thru the years:
What a delightful book! Each short bio contains background and a few anecdotes (often hilarious) about each woman, accompanied by at least one and often several photos. A few entries are simply sidebars, but each is a good intro into that person. I was particularly interested in the early comediennes, those whose work and lives aren't as familiar to today's audiences. Among these are Mabel Normand, Polly Moran, Minta Dufee, Mare Dressler, Bea Lillie, Margaret Dumont, Jean Arthur, and Gertrude Berg. The author does a good job of picking out highlights from each person's life and career. The writing style is breezy and subjective (Silverman lets his own opinion, usually favorable, show through and he's obviously a big fan of many of these women). I loved the book and ended up with a long list of films to rent just to see these women in action.