Movie comedians used to be stupid

There were the Ritz Brothers. Starred in a few movies. They were on a train. Their agent was with them. He fell asleep. So the zany Ritz Brothers gave him a "hot foot". That's where you stick a match in the sole of a person's shoe and light it so that it burns his foot. They thought it was funny back then, which is sort of ironic because antibiotics hadn't been discovered yet and a blister caused by a burn could become infected and cause death by blood poisoning.

The Three Stooges got the idea for their eye gouging from an actual incident. They were performing somewhere. They were in a hotel. Larry went out. When he came back, Moe looked out the window and saw him on the sidewalk in front of the hotel and dropped a piece of pie on his head. Larry came up to the room and was so angry that he jabbed Moe in the eyes.

The Marx Brothers were left waiting for a long time in a studio head's office. So they took their clothes off and started cooking potatoes in the fireplace. I guess the idea was that they had been waiting so long that they had become feral. Which is sort of funny.