1939 was the great year for movies...unless you like comedy

It's been said a lot: 1939 was Hollywood's best year, or simply the best year for movies, period.

But not if you like comedy.

Just look at a typical list of great 1939 films:

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Babes In Arms
Beau Geste
Dark Victory
Destry Rides Again
Drums Along the Mohawk
Gone With the Wind
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Gunga Din
Hunchback Of Notre Dame
Intermezzo
The Little Princess
Love Affair
Midnight
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Ninotchka
Of Mice and Men
Only Angels Have Wings
The Roaring Twenties
Stagecoach
Stanley and Livingstone
The Wizard of Oz
The Women
Wuthering Heights
Young Mr. Lincoln

See many comedies in there? Okay, Destry, Ninotchka, and The Women have been called comedies, but the first is primarily a western, and will never be confused with say, Blazing Saddles, and The Women is more of an acerbic drama with lots of good one-liners. Only Ninotchka is truly a comedy, though a romantic comedy.

So what happened to the real comedies in 1939?

The Marx Brothers began a three picture stint at MGM that allowed the studio to finally prove that could f-up the Marx Brothers' reputations. The best thing you can say about At the Circus is that it has Groucho singing "Lydia the Tattooed Lady." The second best thing you could say is that it's better than the two films that followed it.

Laurel and Hardy walked away from Hal Roach of a contract dispute and found themselves utterly alone in the world. They made The Flying Deuces, a good movie but not up to their best standards. Still, as with the Marxes, it was better than most anything that would follow it, including a couple of more pictures with Hal Roach.

W.C. Fields somehow resisted the decline his fellow comedians suffered, and was yet to make what some regard as his best film, the Bank Dick. In 1939, he made You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, which is funny but a bit awkward because it's also supposed to be a vehicle for Charlie McCarthy.

Age and censorship had been sending Mae West's fortunes in a slow spiral for years, and she produced no film in 1939. She'd bounce back next year in her collaboration with Fields, My Little Chickadee.

The Hal Roach Our Gang (AKA Little Rascals) series closed up shop and moved to MGM, where comedy goes to die.

The Three Stooges soldiered along, continuing to produce great two-reelers before tightening budgets and Curly's health problems took their toll. Their eight shorts for this year include Oily to Bed and Oily to Rise, which is hilarious, if not quite the equal of 1938's Violent is the Word for Curly or 1940's A-Plumbing We Will Go.