It would seem that physical comedians, like athletes and dancers, must eventually pay a price for using their bodies as instruments. Chevy Chase checked into Betty Ford, in 1986, to deal with an addiction to analgesics. Buster Keaton broke a vertebra in his neck while filming a stunt for his silent masterpiece “Sherlock Jr.” Jerry Lewis blamed a spine-chipping tumble onstage for decades of debilitating agony. Over the course of more than a century of filmed gags, the worst results of corporeal damage upon professional funnymen have been well documented. One of the secrets of slapstick, for instance, is that a pratfall is rarely painless: its effects on the body are merely delayed by the adrenal excitement of live performance. Self-punishment has always been at the heart of physical comedy.
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