There were the Ritz Brothers. Starred in a few movies. They were on a train. Their agent was with them. He fell asleep. So the zany Ritz Brothers gave him a "hot foot". That's where you stick a match in the sole of a person's shoe and light it so that it burns his foot. They thought it was funny back then, which is sort of ironic because antibiotics hadn't been discovered yet and a blister caused by a burn could become infected and cause death by blood poisoning.The Three Stooges got the idea for their eye gouging from an actual incident. They were performing somewhere. They were in a hotel. Larry went out. When he came back, Moe looked out the window and saw him on the sidewalk in front of the hotel and dropped a piece of pie on his head. Larry came up to the room and was so angry that he jabbed Moe in the eyes.
The Marx Brothers were left waiting for a long time in a studio head's office. So they took their clothes off and started cooking potatoes in the fireplace. I guess the idea was that they had been waiting so long that they had become feral. Which is sort of funny.
