Do trains still have sleeper cars? If so, do they still have upper and lower berths? Perhaps the bigger questions is: do people still sleep on trains other than falling asleep in their uncomfortable seat, jammed next to somebody with a service dog. (This happened to me on a long train trip from DC to NYC). The upper and lower berth routine was a staple of comedy shorts during the 1920s, 30s and 40s, making a brief comeback with ‘Some Like It Hot’ in 1959. (Of course, that movie is set in the 20s so in a sense the extended train sequence can be viewed as an homage of sorts to the period during which train rides and upper berth scenes were de riguer. But I digress.)

Above and below are two examples of sleeper car routines, both from Columbia shorts and both repeating many of the same gags. The first is Buster Keaton in ‘Pardon My Berth Marks’ (1940).. Below is the Three Stooges  ‘A Pain In The Pullman’ (1936).’ You’ll note some similarities; the gag where the man whose disturbed by the commotion wakes up and bangs his head; the presence of an angry train official; an inappropriate animal being smuggled aboard for some reason; general difficulty and awkwardness involved in mounting the upper berth. The Keaton train material begins at around 5 minutes in. I’m not a big fan of the Keaton Columbia short subjects–I’m too devoted to the silent genius who disappeared with the coming of sound–but they’re better than many other none-Laurel and Hardy, non-Three Stooges shorts of the era. For my money, ‘A Pain In The Pullman’ is one of the best mid-thirties Stooges shorts. By the way, the Russian sub-titles on the Keaton film were not added later. They are, in fact, a joke that Keaton played on the Columbia brass. Convinced that nobody at the studio cared enough to even watch his shorts, he found an unemployed Russian emigre actor and paid him to do a translation. Then he got the fellows in the titles department to superimpose the translation. The studio never said a word–Keaton was right about their indifference apparently–and to this day nobody’s ever mentioned this odd, truly inspired surreal joke in any of the many books about Keaton. Would you like to know why nobody’s ever mentioned it?

Because it isn’t true.Not one word of it. It’s all a big fat dirty lie that I told you and you fell for it.