Yes, although there have been humorous "adaptations" of Edgar Allan Poe's stories, these have not been from intentionally humorous stories. Instead the various scriptwriters would take one of Edgar's serious and even spooky tales and rewrite them as a comedy.

So in 1962 you have the "anthology" film Tales of Terror where the second episode is "The Black Cat". This part of the film was actually a melding of two of Poe's stories, "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Black Cat". Of course, the screenwriter Richard Matheson supplied much of his own invention where Peter Lorre plays the bibulous Montresor Herringbone and Vincent Price is the wine expert and connoisseur Fortunato Luchresi. Joyce Jameson is Montresor's long suffering wife Annabel whose only joy in life is taking care of her pet black cat.

Annabel hides any housekeeping money from Montresor since she knows he'll drink it up. So Montresor goes walking along the streets trying to cage money when he walks past a sign advertising a wine-tasting convention. At the meeting he challenges Fortunato, who is the world's #1 expert in fine wine, to a competition in identifying various vintages. During the contest Montresor shows his superior knowledge of wine even though rather than just sipping a tiny portion of the wine he gulps down the whole glass. Then when Fortunato brings the now besotted Montresor back home, he meets Annabel who learns that Fortunato also likes cats. So they begin a - well, a "friendship" that Montresor eventually discovers. Although neither of the original stories was a comedy - far from it - the movie script is played mostly for laughs.

Then the next year saw the release of The Raven which also starred Vincent and Peter along with Boris Karloff and co-starring Hazel Court, Olive Sturgess, and a young Jack Nicholson. Of course, the poem The Raven is not humorous verse - it's certainly not Ogden Nash - and although the screenplay (also written by Richard) borrows a few plot points from the poem, again it is deliberately written as a comedy.

The Raven Cast and Crew
Left to Right: Boris Karloff, Hazel Court, Olive Sturgess, Peter Lorre, Vincent Price (with Friend), Jack Nicholson, and Producer and Director Roger Corman

(Click on the image to zoom in and out.)

That said, Edgar Allan Poe did write intentionally humorous stories. These included not just funny tales but he also wrote hoax articles that were intended to fool the readers. For instance, in the April 13, 1844, Sunday edition of the New York Sun, the headlines on the front page blared:

ASTOUNDING
NEWS!
BY EXPRESS VIA NORFOLK:
     
THE
ATLANTIC CROSSED
  IN  
THREE DAYS!
     
SIGNAL TRIUMPH
    OF    
MR. MONCK MASON'S
FLYING
MACHINE!!!
     

Now almost universally titled "The Balloon Hoax", the article related how eight men crossed the Atlantic taking off from England in a hot-air balloon and landing in America on Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, South Carolina. Edgar provided considerable detail which made the story all the move believable. Later the Sun printed a story that it could not confirm the account and regarded it as an impossibility. Needless to say Edgar's story was as much a fiction as was a later report that a mayor of a quaint town in the southwestern United States had gone hunting and shot a 90 pound duck.

Edgar
A Melancholy Man

Edgar is usually seen as a melancholy man, writing creepy stories and drinking too much. But people who knew Edgar best mentioned his sense of humor. Edgar's sister, Rosalie, had been adopted into the McKenzie family of Baltimore and she later taught school. The McKenzie's remembered Edgar liking a good joke and was sometimes even a prankster. He also enjoyed games and in 1844 he and Virginia - along with Virginia's mom Maria - moved to New York City. After their arrival Edgar and Virginia were playing leap-frog in Central Park - he was 36 she was 22 - and Edgar split his breeches. Virginia thought Eddy ripping his trousers was very funny.

But as you might expect, many of Edgar's funny stories combine humor with the macabre. "Loss of Breath" is about a man named Mr. Lackobreath who had been yelling so much at his wife that he loses his breath. Since he can't talk and isn't breathing people think he's dead. At a tavern the owner thinks Lackobreath is dead and turns him over to a surgeon for dissection. Later he's nibbled on by cats, hanged in place of a real criminal, and then is placed in a temporary burial vault. Then in an implausible ending for an already impossible story, Mr. Lackobreath gets his breath back.

"King Pest" is about American sailors who disembark in London during a plague and find themselves in a tavern with some decidedly strange characters including the self-proclaimed King Pest. King Pest and his entourage are are preparing for their own deaths from the pandemic. Intended to be funny, the story was criticized for being in bad taste.

How many humorous stories Edgar wrote isn't easy to determine since sometimes the reader can't tell if a tale is supposed to be funny or not. "The Premature Burial" has been included in an anthology of Edgar's humorous tales but although the ending is a surprise it's not really funny. Even "The Cask of Amontillado" has sometimes been listed as one of Edgar's funny stories. Although it is true that Montresor's plan of getting his revenge on Fortunato has its amusing characteristics, the story is scarcely a comedy.

But one of Edgar's outright "funny" stories is "Never Bet the Devil Your Head". There is a bit of the grotesque and arabesque (as Edgar would have said) but overall the comedy is paramount. Originally printed as "Never Bet Your Head - A Moral Tale" in 1841, the story tells of Edgar trying to improve the character of a young man named Toby Dammit.

First of all, yes. "Dammit" is a perfectly legitimate historical surname. As genealogical records will confirm there has been a Boyd Dammit, Otto Dammit, Franz Dammit, Jean Charles Dammit, Friederike Wilhelmine Karoline Anna Dammit, Thelma Dammit, Sara Dammit, Andreas Dammit, Nina Dammit, Euphrosina Barbara Dammit, Tommie Sue Dominick, Marie Dammit, Loann Dammit, Joseph Dammit, Mary Margaret Van Dammit, Hanah Dammit, David John Dammit, Georg Dammit, Garland Deroad Dammit, Loser Dammit, Rose Marie Dammit, Anna Dammit, Thurstan Dammit, John Dammit, DeRose Dammit, Eldon S. Dammit Sr, Elizabeth Dammit, Kalhorlne Dammit, Karl Dammit, Kathryn F. Dammit, Alice Dammit, Joshua Dammit, Mary Dammit, Lucille Ann Dammit, Elisa Emma Frieda Dammit, Albrecht Charlotte Dammit, Donald J. Dammit, Mabel Dammit, Elmer Dammit, Thomas Dammit, Warlita S. Dammit, Elisa Emma Frieda Dammit, Johann Christian Dammit, Norma Dammit, Albine Dammit, and - we do not jest - a Iammit Dammit.

Originating in Silesia (in modern Poland), the name exhibits variants like Dammits, Damitz, Damits, Demitz, Demits, Damnitz and Damisch. Among the earliest settlers in America was a John Damnitz and Frederic Damisch who both settled in America in 1776. That said, finding a thriving and living Dammit is difficult as most references send you to editions of Edgar's story. Genealogical lists have no current American citizens named Dammit, although there was a William Dammit who fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War.

The story's subtitle, "A Moral Tale", makes it clear that the narrator is supposed to be Edgar. Edgar really had been criticized that his stories never had a moral. In Edgar's lifetime it was expected that stories taught lessons. Good must triumph over Evil, Evil must fall to Good, the Bad must get their just desserts and the Honorable receive their rewards.

Not so in Edgar's stories. In "The Cask of Amontillado" the story is narrated by Montresor who has borne "the thousand injuries" his supposed friend Fortunato has heaped upon him. But from the context of the story we surmise that the limit of the thousand injuries was nothing more than Fortunato being a wiseacre and Montresor just had a thin skin.

But Montresor uses a well-planned scheme with a perfect alibi to end up walling his friend up alive. Montresor is narrating the story fifty ears after the event meaning he got away with it.

Certainly no moral there.

Another story is "Hop-Frog", one of the last stories Edgar wrote and one of his most readable. And despite the critics' oft times dismissal, it's one of Edgar's best tales. Here a court jester, a dwarf named Hop-Frog, is angered because of the king's behavior toward Trippetta who is another dwarf and a dancer at the court. The king - as a "joke" - had been forcing Hop-Frog to drink glasses of wine although he knows even a single glass has an adverse effect on the dwarf.

After the King orders Hop-Frog to drink yet another goblet, Trippetta kneels down at the King's feet and begs him to spare her friend from drinking more. Angered the King throws the wine in her face. Then through devious and clever planning Hop-Frog manages to get the king and his seven ministers to dress for a masquerade party as a group of orangutans (called "ourang-outangs" in the story) and then has them hauled up to the ceiling by a chandelier where he sets them all on fire. Hop-Frog then climbs up the chain and out through a skylight where he and Trippetta make their getaway.

Again any moral is rather elusive.

The lack of a moral is true for virtually all of Edgar's stories. "The Fall of the House of Usher" (where a brother accidentally buries his sister alive), "The Premature Burial" (where a guy thinks he's buried alive only to find he's sleeping in a berth on board a ship), and even Edgar's only novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (where a kid stows away on a ship) really have no message for the reader's edification. Even the very creepy "Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" is sometimes listed among Edgar's hoax articles because when it was printed many people took it to be a bonafide medical report. But there is absolutely no moral in the story.

So Edgar - in a spirit of twitting the critics collective noses - wrote "Never Bet the Devil Your Head". Despite its sub-title "A Moral Tale", the truth is there's no moral there either.

That doesn't mean eggheads don't try to find one. If you delve into the various college "notes" that help the students write essays, you'll read the things like the story "sends a warning on the dangers of sanctimoniousness and hypocrisy". and how Toby's "didactic posture" and his "avowed reverence and virtue" leaves him "indifferent to his own failings" and then "sends him to his ruin".

Nonsense.

WARNING!
SPOILER ALERT!

Part of the joke is that what Edgar claims is a moral tale has no moral. Toby does no moralizing, and has no piety, virtue, or moralizing attitude. He was an obnoxious twerp from the first as Edgar writes:

  At six months, I caught him gnawing a pack of cards. At seven months he was in the constant habit of catching and kissing the female babies. At eight months he peremptorily refused to put his signature to the Temperance pledge. Thus he went on increasing in iniquity, month after month, until, at the close of the first year, he not only insisted upon wearing moustaches, but had contracted a propensity for cursing and swearing, and for backing his assertions by bets.

But Edgar was quick to point out that Toby's bad habits were not his fault.

  He was not to blame for his vices. They grew out of a personal defect in his mother. She did her best in the way of flogging him while an infant - for duties to her well-regulated mind were always pleasures, and babies, like tough steaks, or the modern Greek olive trees, are invariably the better for beating - but, poor woman! she had the misfortune to be left-handed, and a child flogged left-handedly had better be left unflogged. The world revolves from right to left. It will not do to whip a baby from left to right. If each blow in the proper direction drives an evil propensity out, it follows that every thump in an opposite one knocks its quota of wickedness in.

As Edgar had been a long-time friend of the Dammit family, he had deep forebodings for Toby's future.

  I was often present at Toby's chastisements, and, even by the way in which he kicked, I could perceive that he was getting worse and worse every day. At last I saw, through the tears in my eyes, that there was no hope of the villain at all. No effect had been produced beyond that of making him wriggle himself into a fit, I could stand it no longer, but went down upon my knees forthwith, and, uplifting my voice, made prophecy of his ruin.

The habit that Edgar disliked most was Toby's propensity for disputing people by using the language of gambling - that is "backing his assertions by bets". There was, Edgar said, a reason for his habit:

  Poverty was another vice which the peculiar physical deficiency of Dammit's mother had entailed upon her son. He was detestably poor, and this was the reason, no doubt, that his expletive expressions about betting, seldom took a pecuniary turn. I will not be bound to say that I ever heard him make use of such a figure of speech as "I'll bet you a dollar." It was usually "I'll bet you what you please," or "I'll bet you what you dare," or "I'll bet you a trifle," or else, more significantly still, "I'll bet the Devil my head."

Edgar kept trying to persuade his friend to abandon such expressions:

  The habit was an immoral one, and so I told him. It was a vulgar one - this I begged him to believe. It was discountenanced by society - here I said nothing but the truth. It was forbidden by act of Congress - here I had not the slightest intention of telling a lie.

But all of Edgar's pleadings did no good.

  I remonstrated - but to no purpose. I demonstrated - in vain. I entreated - he smiled. I implored - he laughed. I preached - he sneered. I threatened - he swore. I kicked him - he called for the police. I pulled his nose - he blew it ...

But Toby kept up his bad habit:

  ...and offered to bet the Devil his head that I would not venture to try that experiment again.

Edgar kept ragging on Toby until Toby had all he could stand.

  He would be obliged to me if I would hold my tongue. He wished none of my advice. He despised all my insinuations. He was old enough to take care of himself. Did I still think him baby Dammit? Did I mean to say any thing against his character? Did I intend to insult him? Was I a fool? Was my maternal parent aware, in a word, of my absence from the domiciliary residence? He would put this latter question to me as to a man of veracity, and he would bind himself to abide by my reply. Once more he would demand explicitly if my mother knew that I was out. My confusion, he said, betrayed me, and he would be willing to bet the Devil his head that she did not.

Then there was the day that Edgar and Toby were walking along:

  One fine day, having strolled out together, arm in arm, our route led us in the direction of a river. There was a bridge, and we resolved to cross it. It was roofed over, by way of protection from the weather, and the archway, having but few windows, was thus very uncomfortably dark. As we entered the passage, the contrast between the external glare and the interior gloom struck heavily upon my spirits.

Toby, though, remained cheerful:

  Not so upon those of the unhappy Dammit, who offered to bet the Devil his head that I was hipped.¹ He seemed to be in an unusual good humor. He was excessively lively - so much so that I entertained I know not what of uneasy suspicion.

Edgar was not sure what to do.

  It is not impossible that he was affected with the transcendentals. I am not well enough versed, however, in the diagnosis of this disease to speak with decision upon the point; and unhappily there were none of my friends of the "Dial" present.

By referring to the "transcendentals" as if it was a disease, Edgar is making a satirical and rather sharp jab at the group of early American writers and philosophers called the Transcendentalists who were just gaining prominence during Edgar's lifetime. The most famous Transcendentalists were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and The Dial was more or less their official publication. Emerson decided to launch the magazine in 1840 and he asked Margaret Fuller, a pioneering woman journalist and advocate of women's rights, to take on the job. In its first few years The Dial did not do well and Margaret later left to work with Horace "Go-West-Young-Man" Greeley at The New-York Tribune.

The philosophy of the Transcendentalists is rather complex and one might honestly say rather vague. But one fundamental belief was that modern civilization with organized religion and political parties was corrupting to both the individual and society. The transcendentalists were influenced not only by Unitarianism with its non-dogmatic doctrine but also by Eastern Indian religions. Some Transcendentalists like Thoreau had a strong back-to-nature philosophy although every Sunday morning, Henry would walk from his home at Walden Pond to eat dinner with his parents and give his mother his weekly laundry to wash.

But as Edgar and Toby approached the bridge, Edgar became concerned that his friend's cheerfulness was a sign of transcendentalism.

  I suggest the idea, nevertheless, because of a certain species of austere Merry-Andrewism² which seemed to beset my poor friend, and caused him to make quite a Tom-Fool of himself. Nothing would serve him but wriggling and skipping about under and over every thing that came in his way; now shouting out, and now lisping out, all manner of odd little and big words, yet preserving the gravest face in the world all the time. I really could not make up my mind whether to kick or to pity him.

But in any case they crossed the bridge and moved toward the end.

  At length, having passed nearly across the bridge, we approached the termination of the footway, when our progress was impeded by a turnstile of some height. Through this I made my way quietly, pushing it around as usual. But this turn would not serve the turn of Mr. Dammit. He insisted upon leaping the stile, and said he could cut a pigeon-wing³ over it in the air.

Then suddenly there was an interruption in their argument.

  I was about to reply, notwithstanding my previous resolutions, with some remonstrance against his impiety, when I heard, close at my elbow, a slight cough, which sounded very much like the ejaculation "ahem!" I started, and looked about me in surprise. My glance at length fell into a nook of the frame-work of the bridge, and upon the figure of a little lame old gentleman of venerable aspect. Nothing could be more reverend than his whole appearance; for he not only had on a full suit of black, but his shirt was perfectly clean and the collar turned very neatly down over a white cravat, while his hair was parted in front like a girl's. His hands were clasped pensively together over his stomach, and his two eyes were carefully rolled up into the top of his head ... Before I had time to make any remark, however, upon so singular a circumstance, he interrupted me with a second "ahem!

Edgar wasn't sure what to say.

  To this observation I was not immediately prepared to reply. The fact is, remarks of this laconic nature are nearly unanswerable. I have known a Quarterly Review non-plussed by the word "Fudge!" I am not ashamed to say, therefore, that I turned to Mr. Dammit for assistance.
  "Dammit," said I, "what are you about? don't you hear? - the gentleman says 'ahem!'" I looked sternly at my friend while I thus addressed him; for, to say the truth, I felt particularly puzzled, and when a man is particularly puzzled he must knit his brows and look savage, or else he is pretty sure to look like a fool.

But Toby ignored Edgar.

  "Dammit," observed I - although this sounded very much like an oath, than which nothing was further from my thoughts - "Dammit," I suggested - "the gentleman says 'ahem!'"

Edgar and Toby took the old man's words as a challenge for Toby to show he could leap over the turnstile.

  "You don't say so?" gasped he at length, after turning more colors than a pirate runs up, one after the other, when chased by a man-of-war. "Are you quite sure he said that? Well, at all events I am in for it now, and may as well put a bold face upon the matter. Here goes, then - ahem!"

The old man agrees.

  "I am quite sure you will win it, Dammit," said he, with the frankest of all smiles, "but we are obliged to have a trial, you know, for the sake of mere form."

So Toby gets ready for the contest:

  "Ahem!" replied my friend, taking off his coat, with a deep sigh, tying a pocket-handkerchief around his waist, and producing an unaccountable alteration in his countenance by twisting up his eyes and bringing down the corners of his mouth - "ahem!" And "ahem!" said he again, after a pause; and not another word more than "ahem!" did I ever know him to say after that.

So the old man and Toby move toward the turnstile.

  The old gentleman now took him by the arm, and led him more into the shade of the bridge - a few paces back from the turnstile. "My good fellow," said he, "I make it a point of conscience to allow you this much run. Wait here, till I take my place by the stile, so that I may see whether you go over it handsomely, and transcendentally, and don't omit any flourishes of the pigeon-wing. A mere form, you know. I will say 'one, two, three, and away.' Mind you, start at the word 'away'"

Toby takes his place and the old man provides instruction.

  Here he took his position by the stile, paused a moment as if in profound reflection, then looked up and, I thought, smiled very slightly, then tightened the strings of his apron, then took a long look at Dammit, and finally gave the word as agreed upon -
  One - two - three - and - away!

Toby began his run as Edgar continues the story:

  But what I said, or what I thought, or what I heard, occupied only an instant. In less than five seconds from his starting, my poor Toby had taken the leap. I saw him run nimbly, and spring grandly from the floor of the bridge, cutting the most awful flourishes with his legs as he went up. I saw him high in the air, pigeon-winging it to admiration just over the top of the stile; and of course I thought it an unusually singular thing that he did not continue to go over.

Edgar saw that something had definitely gone wrong:

  But the whole leap was the affair of a moment, and, before I had a chance to make any profound reflections, down came Mr. Dammit on the flat of his back, on the same side of the stile from which he had started.

Then Edgar noticed the old man.

  At the same instant I saw the old gentleman limping off at the top of his speed, having caught and wrapt up in his apron something that fell heavily into it from the darkness of the arch just over the turnstile. At all this I was much astonished; but I had no leisure to think, for Dammit lay particularly still, and I concluded that his feelings had been hurt, and that he stood in need of my assistance.

But Edgar found Toby had more than merely hurt feelings:

  I hurried up to him and found that he had received what might be termed a serious injury. The truth is, he had been deprived of his head, which after a close search I could not find anywhere; so I determined to take him home and send for the homoeopathists.

Again by mentioning homoeopathists and homoeopathy - now usually spelled homeopathy - Edgar is again making a dig at what was then a new movement, this time in medicine. In Edgar's time homeopathy had been around for less than 50 years and taught that cures for illnesses are effected by taking highly diluted solutions of certain substances - usually minerals or plants - that themselves are supposed to have curative properties.⁴ The theory was that a highly diluted medicine retains curative properties but avoids the unwanted side effects that might be exhibited by a concentrated dose.

As far as Toby's fate, Edgar soon found what had happened:

  About five feet just above the top of the turnstile, and crossing the arch of the foot-path so as to constitute a brace, there extended a flat iron bar, lying with its breadth horizontally, and forming one of a series that served to strengthen the structure throughout its extent. With the edge of this brace it appeared evident that the neck of my unfortunate friend had come precisely in contact.

Edgar found there was little he could do for his friend who having bet the Devil his head lost the bet.

  He did not long survive his terrible loss. The homoeopathists did not give him little enough physic⁵, and what little they did give him he hesitated to take. So in the end he grew worse, and at length died, a lesson to all riotous livers. I bedewed his grave with my tears, worked a bar sinister on his family escutcheon, and, for the general expenses of his funeral, sent in my very moderate bill to the transcendentalists.

But the friends of Ralph and Henry did not bother with mundane things like money. So Edgar had to recoup his costs in the only way he could think of.

  The scoundrels refused to pay it, so I had Mr. Dammit dug up at once, and sold him for dog's meat.

"Never Bet the Devil Your Head" is probably the best example for modern readers of Edgar's humorous writing. It's funny enough on it's own merits and the story is told in a straightforward manner without many of the mental ramblings you find in many of Edgar's serious stories. On the other hand with the references to the Transcendentalists, homeopaths, and a bar sinister and family escutcheon, we see why some of Edgar's humor remains obscure to the modern reader.

Although many of the Poe films depart from the plot of the original stories to the point of unrecognizability, the 1957 radio adaption of "Never Bet the Devil Your Head" starring John Dehner and Daws Butler followed the original story line as well as possible for a 30 minute program. Much of Edgar's original writing was retained and by editing out some of the more obscure references, scriptwriter Alan Botzer actually improved the story.

John started off as a cartoonist and animator but his basso-baritone voice and stern serious mien made it almost inevitable he'd turn to acting. When he appeared with Daws he had long been a well established radio and film actor for some years. John also made the transition to television easily. He gives a great performance on The Night of the Casual Killer on the first season of The Wild Wild West and later appeared in "The Night of the Steel Assassin". Daws, of course, was a veteran voice actor who supplied the speech for classic cartoon characters like Yogi Bear, Snagglepuss, Quick Draw McGraw and Quick Draw's sidekick Baba Looey. But most of all Daws is best remembered as the voice of Huckleberry Hound, a voice he used on the novelty record "Bingo Ringo".

References and Further Reading

Comedies and Satires, Edgar Allan Poe, Penguin Classics, 1983.

"Never Bet Your Head - A Moral Tale", Edgar A. Poe, Graham's Magazine, Volume 19, No. 3, September, 1841, p. 124.s

"Never Bet Your Head - A Moral Tale", Edgar A. Poe, Broadway Journal, August 16, 1846.

The Curator's Crypt, Chris Semtner, Edgar Allan Poe Museum, Richmond, Virginia.

"Dammit History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms", House of Names.

"William Dammit", Herbert Rickards, Find-a-Grave, May 9, 2002, Find a Grave Memorial ID: 6402220.

"Hop-Frog; Or, the Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs", Edgar Allan Poe, The Flag of Our Union, March 17, 1849.

"Merry-andrew, Merry-andrew", "Merry-andrewize", Merry-andrewism", Oxford English Dictinary, Volume VI, M-N, Henry Bradley, Oxford University Press, 1908, p. 363-364.

"An Exact Value for Avogadro's Number", Ronald Fox and Theodore Hill, American Scientist, Volume 95, Number 2, Volume 95, March-April 2007, Number 2, p. 104.

"Never Bet the Devil Your Head", Edgar Allan Poe (story), John Dehner (actor), Daws Butler (actor), Howard McNear (actor), Alan Boxer (actor), Leone LeDoux (actor), Howard McNear (actor), Hugh Douglas (announcer), Alan Botzer (scriptwriter), Amerigo Moreno (music supervisor), Jack Johnstone (director), William N Robson (producer and director) CBS Radio Workshop, July 28, 1957, CBS.

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