Looking over gags in cold print often fails to amuse. How loved would the Marx Brothers be if their classic routines had only appeared in print and not on film? As Tommy Handley said in ITMA, this was written with a hairpin on the back of a piece of fried bread; commenting on the merits of ITMA generations later was not dreamed about.
Handley was one of Britain's best-loved Variety comedians, and helped create WW2 morale boosting ITMA, on BBC radio 1939-1949 - most of the cast are present and most of their catch phrases are reproduced here. It was probably the War that led to so many of these phrases becoming part of the national consciousness, providing a crazy sub-language with which ordinary people could communicate in dire times. Although this also happened in Britain in the 50's with the Goon Show - and their film attempts were on the poor side too. ITMA and THEGS were manic radio shows creating ridiculous mental pictures for the listeners, giving the characters substance in pictures did not help. When he died suddenly in '49 it was a Death of John Lennon type cataclysm for my grandmother! Millions of people (including the Windsors at Buckingham Palace) had listened to the radio show, and thousands were at his funeral.
As a film ITMA stands up pretty well overall, fast and furious gags and routines abound, but then it gets bogged down with songs and partial adherence to a script: the usual problem for comedy of this kind. Even "Hellzapoppin" was hamstrung in this manner; ITMA is also hamstrung by contriving to get every single catchphrase in before the end. None of which I'm going to quote for the a/m reason!
However, you certainly will have to appreciate pre-Rock & Roll British humour to enjoy this to the same extent as I do.
