Animezid: classic comedy films from 1932 to 1962, from Way Out West, Room Service and Topper to Harvey, The Man in the White Suit, Genevieve, Desk Set and The Absent-Minded Professor, and where to watch them

How Animezid looks

Animezid borrows its look from the Arabic animation and cartoon site whose name it carries, a design built on a pale grey-green background, bright white boxes and touches of red. A light header stays fixed at the top of the page, with the red Z logo and its small yellow star on the left, a wide search field in the middle and two bold buttons, a green My List button and a blue Help button, on the right. A soft shadow separates the header from the page below.

Beside the content, a side menu lists the main sections in a tidy white column, with the current page marked by a red line, and below it the shelves appear as small outlined buttons. The original site reads from right to left, so its menu sits on the right; Animezid keeps it there, even though the guide itself is written in English.

The home page opens with a bold heading and three featured covers, one large and two small, each showing a backdrop, a title and a rating. Then come the white boxes, each with a light grey header bar, a title and a red More link. Inside, tall posters line up in rows, and each one carries two touches from the original design: a diagonal ribbon across the top corner, coloured blue for the oldest classics, green for the highest-rated films and yellow for the rest, and a bright yellow star in the opposite corner with the audience rating printed inside it. The title and year sit neatly beneath each poster, and the footer is a simple white box with rounded blue link buttons.

Finding your way around

The search field in the header is the quickest route to any film. Type a few letters of a title or a star, such as Laurel, Grant, Harvey, Ealing or Hepburn, and matching films appear as you type. The All films link in the side menu opens every comedy on one page, the most popular first, and the A to Z list arranges the whole catalogue alphabetically.

The shelves group the films by theme and by decade, each opening as a grid of posters with a short introduction. The Most watched box on the home page is a good place to start for a crowd pleaser, and the Top rated shelf gathers the films that audiences have loved most.

My List keeps track of the films you want to watch. Press the save button on any film page and the comedy is added to My List, which lives in this browser and opens instantly. You can export the list to a small file and import it on another device, so an evening planned on a phone is ready on the family television. The guides linked from the footer and the bottom of this page gather the best films for each theme.

The 1930s: clowns, ghosts and the birth of screwball

The oldest film on Animezid is Movie Crazy from 1932, often called Harold Lloyd's finest sound comedy, in which a small-town hopeful bluffs his way into Hollywood. Lloyd returns in The Milky Way as a timid milkman who accidentally knocks out a boxing champion. W.C. Fields brings his weary grumble to It's a Gift, with its famous attempt to sleep on a noisy porch, and Man on the Flying Trapeze, and Paramount's Alice in Wonderland gathered an astonishing cast under heavy costumes, with Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle, Gary Cooper as the White Knight and W.C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty.

The decade also invented the screwball comedy, with its fast talk, eccentric heiresses and romantic chaos. Hands Across the Table pairs Carole Lombard as a manicurist with Fred MacMurray as a penniless playboy, Easy Living, written by Preston Sturges, begins when a sable coat falls from a penthouse onto Jean Arthur's head, and Libeled Lady brings together Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy in a whirlwind of newspaper schemes and a hilarious fishing lesson. William Powell and Myrna Loy return in Double Wedding, and Ginger Rogers and James Stewart are newlyweds hiding their marriage in Vivacious Lady.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced their way through The Gay Divorcee, whose song The Continental won the first Academy Award for Best Original Song, and Shall We Dance, in which they sing Let's Call the Whole Thing Off on roller skates. Laurel and Hardy made one of their best features, Way Out West, and the Marx Brothers moved their madness into a hotel suite in Room Service, with a young Lucille Ball.

The fantasy comedies of the thirties remain charming. Topper sends Cary Grant and Constance Bennett back as playful ghosts to liven up a stuffy banker, The Ghost Goes West ships a Scottish castle, ghost and all, to Florida, and The Man Who Could Work Miracles, from H.G. Wells, gives a timid shop assistant the power to do anything he wishes. A Midsummer Night's Dream brings Shakespeare's forest to life with a young Mickey Rooney as Puck and James Cagney as Bottom.

Child stars and family stories found an eager audience too. Shirley Temple won the world's heart in Little Miss Marker and Captain January, and A Family Affair introduced the Hardy family, whose son Andy, played by Mickey Rooney, went on to Love Finds Andy Hardy, with Judy Garland, and Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever. From Britain came Will Hay's beloved Oh, Mr. Porter!, set at a sleepy railway station, along with Boys Will Be Boys and Ask a Policeman, and Jessie Matthews starred in First a Girl.

The 1940s: Sturges, ghosts and family life

The forties shelf holds 55 films and opens with Preston Sturges at his peak. Christmas in July follows a clerk who believes he has won a coffee slogan contest, Sullivan's Travels sends a successful film director out on the road disguised as a hobo to learn about hardship, only to discover the value of laughter, and The Sin of Harold Diddlebock brings Harold Lloyd back for a wild day that ends with a lion on a skyscraper ledge.

The decade's comedy teams were busy. The Marx Brothers raced a train across the desert in Go West, Laurel and Hardy took to the sea in Saps at Sea and to university in A Chump at Oxford, and Abbott and Costello made Ride 'Em Cowboy, Hit the Ice, Here Come the Co-Eds and Mexican Hayride. W.C. Fields wrote and starred in The Bank Dick, playing the unforgettable Egbert Sousé.

Fantasy remained popular. I Married a Witch stars Veronica Lake as a mischievous witch released from a tree after three centuries, It Happened Tomorrow gives a reporter tomorrow's newspaper, Once Upon a Time makes Cary Grant the manager of a dancing caterpillar, and The Canterville Ghost pairs Charles Laughton's cowardly ghost with the brave young Margaret O'Brien. The Luck of the Irish gives Tyrone Power a leprechaun for a conscience, and Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid and the British Miranda fish mermaids from the sea.

Family comedies flourished after the war. Life with Father stars William Powell as a stern but loving father in 1880s New York, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House sends Cary Grant and Myrna Loy into the countryside to build a home that refuses to be finished, Sitting Pretty introduces Clifton Webb as the unflappable babysitter Mr. Belvedere, and The Farmer's Daughter earned Loretta Young an Academy Award as a Swedish-American farm girl who becomes a congresswoman.

The 1950s: Harvey, Ealing and Technicolor wit

The fifties are the largest decade on Animezid, with 78 films, and they include some of the most beloved comedies ever made. Harvey stars James Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd, a kindly man whose best friend is a six-foot rabbit only he can see, and Josephine Hull won an Academy Award as his flustered sister. Father's Little Dividend continues the story of Spencer Tracy's anxious father of the bride, and Belles on Their Toes follows the large Gilbreth family after the events of Cheaper by the Dozen.

Ealing Studios in London produced a string of gentle, clever comedies. The Man in the White Suit stars Alec Guinness as an idealistic chemist whose indestructible fabric terrifies both factory owners and workers, The Titfield Thunderbolt, Ealing's first colour comedy, follows villagers who run their own railway branch line, The 'Maggie' sends a battered Clyde puffer boat on a cheeky voyage around the Hebrides, and The Magnet follows a Liverpool schoolboy whose small fib turns him into a local hero. A Run for Your Money takes two Welsh miners to London for the day.

Other British favourites include Genevieve, a race between two vintage cars on the road home from the London to Brighton rally, Doctor in the House, the first of the Doctor films, with Dirk Bogarde and James Robertson Justice as the thunderous surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt, The Happiest Days of Your Life, in which a boys' school and a girls' school are accidentally billeted together, and Laughter in Paradise, in which a practical joker's will sets his heirs some very awkward tasks.

Hollywood offered sparkle and colour. Monkey Business gives Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers a youth formula with unexpected results, Pat and Mike pairs Katharine Hepburn's champion athlete with Spencer Tracy's sports promoter, The Long, Long Trailer sends Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz on a disastrous honeymoon road trip, It Should Happen to You makes Judy Holliday famous for being famous, and Desk Set pits a television network's research department against a giant computer. The Band Wagon gave the world the song That's Entertainment!, and Bell, Book and Candle stars Kim Novak as a modern witch in Greenwich Village with a Siamese cat named Pyewacket.

Martin and Lewis made some of their most popular films in this decade, from That's My Boy and 3 Ring Circus to Artists and Models and Hollywood or Bust, their final film together, and Abbott and Costello went to Mars and met the Keystone Kops. Alec Guinness wrote and starred in The Horse's Mouth, The Matchmaker provided the story that later became Hello, Dolly!, and Gidget launched a wave of beach comedies.

1960 to 1962: Flubber, Jerry Lewis and safari

The last stretch of the catalogue holds 23 films from the final years of the studio era. The Absent-Minded Professor gave Fred MacMurray the role of Professor Ned Brainard, whose bouncing invention Flubber lets a basketball team leap over its rivals and sends a Model T flying through the night sky. Moon Pilot, also from Disney, sends a reluctant astronaut toward the moon with a mysterious visitor at his side.

Jerry Lewis began directing his own films with The Bellboy, an almost wordless comedy set in a Miami Beach hotel, followed by The Ladies Man, with its enormous cut-away dollhouse set, and The Errand Boy, set in a Hollywood studio. He also played a childlike alien in Visit to a Small Planet.

John Wayne enjoyed two big outdoor comedies, North to Alaska, a rowdy gold rush tale, and Hatari!, Howard Hawks's safari adventure in which a team of animal catchers adopt three baby elephants to the tune of Henry Mancini's Baby Elephant Walk. 40 Pounds of Trouble became the first feature film shot at Disneyland, and British comedy closed the era with School for Scoundrels, in which Alastair Sim teaches the art of one-upmanship, The Rebel, starring Tony Hancock as an office clerk turned artist, and The Fast Lady, about a driving lesson in a vintage Bentley.

The great comedy teams

The comedy team was one of the glories of classic cinema, and 30 films on Animezid celebrate the great double acts and trios. Laurel and Hardy, the gentle, clumsy friends whose friendship survived every disaster, appear in Way Out West, with its famous soft-shoe dance, Saps at Sea, A Chump at Oxford and The Dancing Masters.

The Marx Brothers bring their glorious anarchy to Room Service and Go West, with Groucho's wisecracks, Chico's piano and Harpo's silent mischief. Abbott and Costello, the fast-talking straight man and his tubby, bewildered partner, appear in Ride 'Em Cowboy, Hit the Ice, Here Come the Co-Eds, Little Giant, Mexican Hayride, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars and Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops.

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the crooner and the clown, made sixteen films together, and five of them are here. The Three Stooges appear in two colourful features from the sixties, The Three Stooges Meet Hercules and The Three Stooges in Orbit, and the Bowery Boys go ghost-hunting in Spook Chasers. The Comedy teams guide picks the highlights.

Screwball romances

Screwball comedy, with its rapid-fire dialogue, eccentric families and romances that begin with a quarrel, was one of Hollywood's great inventions, and 37 films on Animezid carry the tradition. The thirties classics include Easy Living, Libeled Lady, Hands Across the Table, Double Wedding, Vivacious Lady and Bachelor Mother, in which a department store clerk is mistaken for the mother of a foundling baby she finds on a doorstep.

The forties brought I Love You Again, with William Powell as a con man who wakes from amnesia to find himself a respectable husband, Tom, Dick and Harry, in which Ginger Rogers dreams of life with each of three suitors, and Every Girl Should Be Married, in which Betsy Drake sets her cap at a reluctant Cary Grant. The Model and the Marriage Broker and The Mating Season show Thelma Ritter at her funniest, and Three Guys Named Mike follows an air stewardess with three admirers who share a first name.

Later screwball favourites include Designing Woman, with Gregory Peck as a sportswriter married to Lauren Bacall's fashion designer, Houseboat, with Cary Grant, Sophia Loren and three mischievous children, It Happened to Jane, in which Doris Day takes on a railway company over a shipment of lobsters, and Tammy and the Bachelor, with Debbie Reynolds as a cheerful girl from the river country. The Screwball romances guide has a short tour.

British comedies

Thirty-nine films on Animezid come from Britain, and they have a flavour all their own: understated, eccentric and often affectionate towards the institutions they mock. Ealing Studios made the most famous of them, including The Man in the White Suit, The Titfield Thunderbolt, The 'Maggie', The Magnet and A Run for Your Money.

The Doctor films, beginning with Doctor in the House and continuing through Doctor at Sea, Doctor at Large and Doctor in Love, follow young medics through hospitals, ships and country practices. Alastair Sim, with his lugubrious face and impeccable timing, appears in The Happiest Days of Your Life, Laughter in Paradise, Innocents in Paris and School for Scoundrels, and Ian Carmichael and Terry-Thomas spar in Lucky Jim and School for Scoundrels.

The clowns of British comedy are well represented: Will Hay in Oh, Mr. Porter!, Boys Will Be Boys and Ask a Policeman, Norman Wisdom in Man of the Moment, Tony Hancock in The Rebel, and Peter Sellers in The Battle of the Sexes and The Millionairess. Literary adaptations include The Pickwick Papers, The Card, The Admirable Crichton and The Horse's Mouth. The British comedies guide picks the highlights.

Ghosts, witches and wonders

Classic comedy loved a touch of the supernatural, and 34 films on the fantasy shelf bring ghosts, witches, angels, mermaids and visitors from space into ordinary lives. The ghosts are among the most charming: Cary Grant and Constance Bennett in Topper, Robert Donat's Scottish spirit in The Ghost Goes West and Charles Laughton's nervous phantom in The Canterville Ghost.

Witches cast their spells in I Married a Witch and Bell, Book and Candle, a leprechaun advises Tyrone Power in The Luck of the Irish, and an ordinary man can suddenly do anything in The Man Who Could Work Miracles. Mermaids surface in Miranda, its sequel Mad About Men and Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, a genie appears in A Thousand and One Nights, and Once Upon a Time gives Cary Grant a dancing caterpillar.

Science fiction adds its own fun: Visit to a Small Planet, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, The Invisible Boy, with Robby the Robot, Moon Pilot and The Three Stooges in Orbit all send comedy into space, while The Absent-Minded Professor and It Happens Every Spring find wonders in the laboratory. The Ghosts and fantasy guide suggests where to start.

Family comedies

The family shelf is the second largest on Animezid, with 72 films about parents, children, grandparents and the homes they share. Life with Father, Father's Little Dividend, Belles on Their Toes and Sitting Pretty are warm portraits of family life, and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, George Washington Slept Here and The Long, Long Trailer follow couples whose dream homes turn into comic nightmares.

Shirley Temple stars in Little Miss Marker, Captain January and The Blue Bird, and the Hardy family appears in A Family Affair, Love Finds Andy Hardy and Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever. Rock-a-Bye Baby leaves Jerry Lewis in charge of triplets, Bundle of Joy gives Debbie Reynolds an unexpected baby to care for, and 40 Pounds of Trouble sends Tony Curtis and a little girl on a day out at Disneyland.

Older viewers will enjoy As Young as You Feel, in which a retired printer outwits his company, and The Late George Apley, a gentle satire of Boston society, while State Fair follows an Iowa farming family to the biggest fair of the year. The Family comedies guide picks a few favourites.

Western spoofs and outdoor adventures

The western was Hollywood's favourite genre, so it was a natural target for comedy, and 14 films on Animezid ride into the frontier for laughs. Way Out West sends Laurel and Hardy to deliver a gold mine deed and stop to sing The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Go West ends with the Marx Brothers dismantling a moving train to feed its engine, and Ruggles of Red Gap follows an English butler, won in a poker game, to a rough-and-ready western town, where Charles Laughton's recitation of the Gettysburg Address silences a saloon.

Alias Jesse James makes Bob Hope an insurance salesman sent to protect a famous outlaw's life policy, Along Came Jones stars Gary Cooper as an easy-going cowboy mistaken for a gunman, and A Lady Takes a Chance sends Jean Arthur on a bus tour of the West, where she meets John Wayne's rodeo rider. The Cowboy and the Lady pairs Gary Cooper with Merle Oberon, Ride 'Em Cowboy takes Abbott and Costello to a dude ranch, and Many Rivers to Cross follows a Kentucky frontiersman pursued by a determined bride.

Two later films take the outdoor comedy to grand scale: North to Alaska, a brawling gold rush romp with John Wayne, and Hatari!, with its baby elephants and the chase across the African plains. The Western spoofs guide has a short tour.

Musical comedies

Fifty-four films on Animezid combine comedy with song and dance. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers lead the way in The Gay Divorcee, Shall We Dance and The Barkleys of Broadway, their final film together and their only one in colour. Astaire also partners Paulette Goddard in Second Chorus, Rita Hayworth in a Buenos Aires romance, Bing Crosby in Blue Skies, with its show-stopping Puttin' On the Ritz, and Cyd Charisse in The Band Wagon and Silk Stockings.

Danny Kaye stars in The Inspector General, based on Gogol's comedy, and Ethel Merman sings Irving Berlin in Call Me Madam, with Donald O'Connor. Judy Holliday's answering service operator falls for a playwright in Bells Are Ringing, Esther Williams swims and sings in Neptune's Daughter and Dangerous When Wet, where she shares a dream swim with Tom and Jerry, and State Fair features Rodgers and Hammerstein's first film score.

The shelf also includes Deep in My Heart, a biography of the operetta composer Sigmund Romberg, I Dream Too Much, with the opera star Lily Pons, Something to Sing About, a rare musical role for James Cagney, I Love Melvin with Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds, and The Glass Slipper, a balletic Cinderella with Leslie Caron. The Musical comedies guide picks the highlights.

Office and campus comedies

The office and campus shelf, with 73 films, finds comedy in the places where people work and study. Department stores provide the setting for The Devil and Miss Jones, in which a millionaire goes undercover as a shoe clerk in his own store, and for Bachelor Mother. Newspapers drive the plots of Libeled Lady, Four's a Crowd and It Happened Tomorrow, and advertising and broadcasting are satirised in Christmas in July, Champagne for Caesar, The Jackpot and Callaway Went Thataway.

The boardroom gets its comeuppance in The Solid Gold Cadillac, in which Judy Holliday's small shareholder asks some very awkward questions, and in Desk Set, where Katharine Hepburn's research team proves more than a match for a room-sized computer. Hospitals are the setting of the Doctor films, and Hollywood itself is the workplace in Stand-In, Movie Crazy and The Errand Boy.

College campuses fill the rest of the shelf: Here Come the Co-Eds, That's My Boy, Tall Story, with a young Jane Fonda, Lucky Jim, Dreamboat, in which a college professor's past as a silent film star comes back to haunt him, and The Happiest Days of Your Life. Inventive scientists star in The Absent-Minded Professor, Monkey Business, The Man in the White Suit and It Happens Every Spring, in which a chemistry professor invents a substance that makes baseballs dodge the bat. The Office and campus guide has more.

Comedies for every age

Classic comedies offer something for every age, but a little planning helps. For the youngest viewers, slapstick works best: Way Out West, Saps at Sea, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, The Absent-Minded Professor, Moon Pilot and the two Three Stooges features are full of visual gags that explain themselves. Shirley Temple's films and The Blue Bird are also gentle choices.

From about eight upward, children usually enjoy Harvey, Topper, The Man in the White Suit, The Titfield Thunderbolt, Hatari! and the Jerry Lewis comedies. Teenagers and adults will appreciate the quick wit of the screwball comedies, the satire of Sullivan's Travels and Desk Set, and the sly understatement of the Ealing films.

These films reflect the times in which they were made, and some include jokes about marriage, money or manners that feel old-fashioned today; a short conversation afterwards is often a good way to put them in context. Every film page lists the genres and the running time, and the official services show age ratings and offer kids profiles.

Planning a comedy night

A classic comedy night is easy to plan around a star or a theme. For a Cary Grant evening, try Topper, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House and Houseboat. For a Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy double bill, pair Pat and Mike with Desk Set. For an Ealing weekend, choose The Man in the White Suit, The Titfield Thunderbolt and The 'Maggie' with a pot of tea.

For a comedy team marathon, start with Laurel and Hardy in Way Out West, follow with the Marx Brothers in Go West and finish with Abbott and Costello in Hit the Ice. For a spooky evening, line up The Ghost Goes West, The Canterville Ghost and Bell, Book and Candle. Families with younger children might enjoy a Disney double bill of The Absent-Minded Professor and Moon Pilot.

Some families like to give each film a score out of ten, or to collect the best lines in a notebook to quote at the breakfast table the next morning. Save your choices to My List, export the list to the family television, and let the laughter begin.

How Watch now works

Animezid is a guide, and every film page has a Watch now button that opens the film on JustWatch for the country you choose. JustWatch is a widely used service that lists where a film can be streamed with a subscription, rented, bought or watched free with advertising. The country menu covers fifteen countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and South Africa, and your choice is remembered in this browser.

Availability changes over time, so the JustWatch page always shows the current picture. Classic comedies often appear on services devoted to older films, on free services with advertising and in the catalogues of the studios that made them, and many are available to rent or buy in restored editions. Public libraries are another excellent source.

Every film in the catalogue was made in English, and the official services usually offer subtitles in many languages, including Arabic. The Languages and versions guide explains subtitles and restorations, and Where Animezid films stream describes the services behind the button.

The help pages

Fifteen short guides are linked from the footer and the bottom of the home page. How to watch with Animezid follows a film from the poster rows to its official service, Finding a film gives search tips, and My List explains how to save films and carry the list to another device.

The theme guides open the shelves one by one: Comedy teams, Screwball romances, British comedies, Ghosts and fantasy, Family comedies, Western spoofs, Musical comedies, Office and campus and The 1930s, each with a few recommendations and a link to the full shelf.

The practical pages cover Languages and versions, Where Animezid films stream and The official Animezid site, which describes how the real address looks.

Stars worth following

Following a single star through the catalogue is one of the most enjoyable ways to explore. Cary Grant appears in more than half a dozen films, from the ghostly Topper and the fantasy Once Upon a Time to Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Every Girl Should Be Married, Monkey Business, Dream Wife and Houseboat, and his effortless timing is a lesson in screen comedy.

James Stewart brings his warmth to Vivacious Lady, Magic Town, The Jackpot, Harvey and Bell, Book and Candle, and Ginger Rogers, just as funny in her solo comedies as in her dance films, appears in Bachelor Mother, Tom, Dick and Harry, Monkey Business, Dreamboat and Forever Female. William Powell and Myrna Loy, the screen's favourite married couple, team up in Libeled Lady, Double Wedding and I Love You Again.

Judy Holliday, with her unforgettable voice and comic instinct, stars in It Should Happen to You, The Solid Gold Cadillac and Bells Are Ringing, and Alec Guinness shows his range in The Man in the White Suit, The Card and The Horse's Mouth. Fans of physical comedy will want to follow Harold Lloyd, W.C. Fields and Jerry Lewis through their films on the shelves.

Directors and writers

A handful of directors and writers shaped the classic comedy, and their names are worth knowing. Preston Sturges, who wrote Easy Living and wrote and directed Christmas in July, Sullivan's Travels and The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, filled his films with eccentric characters and dialogue that crackles. Howard Hawks brought his speed and wit to Monkey Business and Hatari!, and George Cukor directed the Hepburn and Tracy classic Pat and Mike.

Ernst Lubitsch, famous for his elegant touch, made Cluny Brown, and the French director René Clair brought a light, magical style to The Ghost Goes West, I Married a Witch and It Happened Tomorrow. Vincente Minnelli directed The Long, Long Trailer, The Band Wagon and Designing Woman, and Frank Tashlin, a former cartoon director, gave Artists and Models and Hollywood or Bust their bright, comic-strip energy.

In Britain, Charles Crichton and Alexander Mackendrick made the Ealing comedies on these shelves, Henry Cornelius directed Genevieve, and Ralph Thomas directed the Doctor films. Jerry Lewis became his own director with The Bellboy, and his inventive use of the camera influenced comedians for decades.

A short history of screen comedy

When sound arrived in the late twenties, the great silent clowns had to find their voices. Some, like Harold Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy, made the move gracefully, and the early thirties became a time of experimentation, with the Marx Brothers bringing their stage anarchy to the screen and W.C. Fields perfecting his grumbling persona.

The mid-thirties brought the screwball comedy, in which glamorous stars traded wisecracks at breathtaking speed, and the forties brought the sophisticated satire of Preston Sturges and the wartime boom in comedy teams. After the war, family comedies and fantasy films reflected a hunger for warmth and reassurance, while in Britain, Ealing Studios produced a run of gentle, subversive comedies that remain treasured today.

The fifties brought colour, widescreen and the rise of television, and comedy adapted with Technicolor romps, the anarchic films of Martin and Lewis and the sharp satire of films such as Desk Set and The Solid Gold Cadillac. By the early sixties, Disney's live-action comedies and Jerry Lewis's solo films pointed the way to a new era, and the Animezid catalogue ends there, at the close of the studio age.

Things to look for

Classic comedies reward careful watching. Notice the timing: many of the great comedians built their scenes like pieces of music, with a pause before the punchline or a slow burn as a disaster unfolds. Laurel and Hardy were masters of the slow build, letting a simple task such as carrying a piano or fixing a radio aerial grow into total chaos, and generations of later comedians learned a great deal from them.

Listen, too, for the dialogue. Screwball comedies were written to be spoken at astonishing speed, with actors talking over one another, and writers such as Preston Sturges filled even small parts with vivid, quotable lines. In the British comedies, the humour is often quieter, hidden in a raised eyebrow, a polite understatement or a stubborn refusal to admit that anything is wrong.

Finally, look at the physical comedy. Many of the stars performed their own falls and stunts, and the precision of a perfectly timed pratfall is as impressive as any dance number. Harold Lloyd, Lou Costello, Norman Wisdom and Jerry Lewis were all superb physical comedians, and watching how they use their bodies is a joy for viewers of every age.

Why classic comedy still works

The best classic comedies have outlived their era because they are built on situations everyone recognises: an awkward first date, a stubborn relative, a job interview that goes wrong, a home renovation that spirals out of control. The clothes and cars have changed, but the feelings behind the jokes are the same, and children and grandparents can laugh at them together.

These films also carry a generous spirit. The heroes of classic comedy are usually kind, ordinary people who muddle through with good humour, and even the villains are more foolish than frightening. That warmth makes the catalogue a reliable choice for an evening when the family simply wants to feel good.

Many modern comedies borrow from these films, from the bickering couples of romantic comedies to the slapstick of family films and the gentle eccentricity of British television. Watching the originals is a lovely way to discover where so many familiar jokes began, and to share a little film history with the next generation.

Spotlight on Preston Sturges

Of all the filmmakers on these shelves, Preston Sturges deserves a special mention. A playwright who became Hollywood's first star writer-director, he made a run of comedies in the early forties that are still studied and loved today. His films are crowded with eccentric minor characters, each given a line or two of unforgettable dialogue, and they move at a breathless pace from slapstick to satire to sudden tenderness.

Christmas in July is a short, sweet fable about a young man who believes, for one glorious day, that he has won a fortune. Sullivan's Travels is his masterpiece, a comedy about a Hollywood director who wants to make a serious film about suffering and learns that laughter may be the most precious gift he can give his audience. The Sin of Harold Diddlebock brought him together with the silent comedian Harold Lloyd, and Easy Living, which he wrote for director Mitchell Leisen, shows his gift for chaotic, joyful plotting. Watching these four films in a row is one of the great pleasures the catalogue offers.

Spotlight on Ealing

Ealing Studios, in a quiet corner of west London, produced a series of comedies after the war that became a byword for British wit. Their heroes are usually ordinary people standing up to big organisations: villagers saving their railway in The Titfield Thunderbolt, a lone inventor taking on the textile industry in The Man in the White Suit, and a crafty Scottish skipper outwitting a wealthy American in The 'Maggie'. The films are gentle on the surface but sharp underneath, and they celebrate stubbornness, community and a love of the eccentric. They are ideal for a quiet family evening, and many viewers find that one Ealing comedy quickly leads to another.

Comedy on location

Many classic comedies were made on studio sound stages, but some take viewers to memorable real places. Genevieve follows the London to Brighton veteran car run along the roads of southern England, The Titfield Thunderbolt was filmed on a real branch line in Somerset, and The 'Maggie' sails among the islands of the Scottish west coast. The Ghost Goes West moves between a Scottish castle and the sunshine of Florida.

In America, The Long, Long Trailer climbs the mountain roads of California and Colorado, Hatari! was filmed in Tanganyika with real animal catchers, and 40 Pounds of Trouble races around Disneyland. North to Alaska recreates the Nome gold rush, and Houseboat drifts along the rivers around Washington.

Remakes and series

Several films on Animezid belong to series or have well-known remakes. The Andy Hardy films began with A Family Affair, the Doctor films ran through four entries here, and Mad About Men is a sequel to Miranda. Father's Little Dividend follows on from Father of the Bride, and Belles on Their Toes continues the story of the Gilbreth family.

Some films inspired later versions: The Matchmaker became the musical Hello, Dolly!, First a Girl was remade as Victor/Victoria, Bundle of Joy is a musical remake of Bachelor Mother, and My Man Godfrey from 1957 remakes a famous thirties comedy. Comparing versions is a fascinating way to see how styles changed.

Comedies through the year

The catalogue has a comedy for every season. Winter brings The Man Who Came to Dinner, set at Christmas in a snowy Ohio town, and Christmas in July, which despite its title is a perfect winter treat. Spring suits It Happens Every Spring and the baseball season, and summer belongs to Gidget, Having Wonderful Time at a holiday camp in the Catskills and the beach scenes of Houseboat. Autumn is ideal for the campus comedies and for the ghosts of Topper and The Canterville Ghost.

Happy viewing

Classic comedy offers a special kind of happiness: the pleasure of watching great performers at the top of their craft, delivering lines and pratfalls that have delighted audiences for generations. Animezid gathers 198 of them in one place, with a page for each and a button that leads to the official services, so the next laugh is only a few clicks away. Choose a film, gather the family and enjoy the show. Welcome to Animezid.

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