Hello, my name's Justin the Klu, and I'm here today with Will Sloan, and you're listening to

the Important Cinema Club. And today, we're talking about the King of Laughs, Norman Turog.

You know, when Justin first suggested the idea of doing Norman Turog on the podcast,

you know what I did? I laughed. Yeah, because

he's a king of laughs, right? But here's the thing. We both had a biography on our shelves,

collecting dust, called Elvis's favorite director, the amazing 52-year career of Norman Torg

by one Michael A. Hoy. Michael A. Hoy, being someone who worked in the late career with Norman,

as well as directing the classic, the Navy versus the Night Monsters. And I also laughed because

Norman Taurug, does Norman Taurug have any fans? Are there any TORUC heads out there?

I think that if anybody really knows him, it's an association with having directed a lot of the bad Elvis movies, and as well as the guy who directed a boatload of Lewis and Martin pictures.

But not the really great ones directed by the likes of Frank Paschlin.

So Norman Turek directed over 180 movies between 1920 and 1968.

It's safe to say that he's a journeyman.

A less generous person might call him a hack.

Would a hack be the youngest to ever win an Academy Award, Will?

Well, he was the youngest to win best director in 1931, the year of City Lights, M, and Frankenstein.

He won for a movie called Skippy that's been

mostly forgotten, but he was 32 years old, and until Damien Chazelle in 2017, he was the

youngest winner in the category. Damien Chiselle beat him by a couple of months. But besides this

trivia, I guess what interested me about Norman Toreg is the longevity of his career, as well as

the breadth, beginning in the silent era, directing all sorts of short comedies with all sorts of

mostly forgotten comedians now. In each decade, up to and including the 1960s, he works with

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