Robert Benchley

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Robert Benchley
Robert Benchley, American humorist
Born	September 15, 1889 Worcester, Massachusetts, USA
Died	November 21, 1945 New York, New York, USA

Robert Charles Benchley (September 15, 1889 – November 21, 1945) was an American humorist, newspaper columnist, film actor, and drama literary editor.

1 Early life and career
2 Humor style
3 Film work
4 Listen to Robert Benchley
5 External links

[edit] Early life and career

Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Benchley attended Harvard University. At Harvard, he was a leading contributor to the Harvard Lampoon.

He was an early and regular contributor to the The New Yorker, Life magazine, and was a humor columnist for the Hearst Newspapers. He also was briefly managing editor of Vanity Fair.

Benchley is best known for his humorous essays, which were published in magazines and reprinted in collections including Of All Things, Benchley Beside Himself, Inside Benchley, Benchley or Else, and Chips Off the Old Benchley. His books were illustrated by Gluyas Williams, whose spare, knowing line drawings added to Benchley's success.

With Dorothy Parker (his best friend), Robert E. Sherwood and other New York wits, Benchley formed the Algonquin Round Table.

[edit] Humor style

Benchley's humor was based on everyday life, news oddities, and absurd, almost surreal essays such as his "Uncle Edith" series. His style influenced other humorists such as S. J. Perelman and James Thurber. Benchley has been cited as an inspiration by humorists such as Fred Allen (on whose popular radio show he appeared a few times), Bob Newhart, Erma Bombeck, Woody Allen and Shelly Berman among others. The Robert Benchley Society gives an annual humor award in Benchley's honor. Judges of the event include Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Dave Barry -- who said Benchley influenced him more than anyone other than Barry's own mother -- and 2005 Benchley Society Award Winner Horace J. Digby.

[edit] Film work

Benchley's first film was The Treasurer's Report, released 12 March 1928, a short comedy film and possibly the first all-talkie film shown in theaters -- as opposed to The Jazz Singer (1927), which was primarily silent, and The Lights of New York (later in 1928), the first full-length talkie feature film. This led to Sex Life of the Polyp, released 25 July 1928, and a series of more than three dozen comedic instructional short films followed, the titles of which frequently began with How to . . .

The earliest films in the series were released by Fox Film Corporation in their new Fox Movietone sound system. Benchley's later films in the series were released by Universal Pictures, RKO, and finally MGM. Each film featured Benchley as a lecturer or as his family man alter ego, Joe Doakes. How to Sleep (1935), Benchley's first film at MGM, won an Academy Award in 1936.

At the same time, he found frequent work at several studios as a character actor in feature films, often playing a variation on the befuddled burgher of his shorts or else a dipsomaniacal sophisticate. He memorably portrays a man who remains reeling drunk throughout China Seas (a 1935 epic starring Clark Gable and Wallace Beery), appears in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940), in Rene Clair's I Married a Witch (1942), and with Fred Astaire in You'll Never Get Rich (1941) and The Sky's the Limit (1943).

One of Benchley's specialties in film was the "embarrassing speech" -- nervous, stammering, clearing his throat, making no sense whatsoever. It's the nightmare of every friend of the groom or business analyst who must give a talk and finds his mind has gone completely blank... painfully funny to watch.

Benchley also appeared in the 1941 feature film The Reluctant Dragon, giving a tour of the then-new Walt Disney Studios facility in Burbank, California. He also had a role in the 1945 movie "The Stork Club" in which he played Tom P. Curtis, the lawyer of the character played in that film by Barry Fitzgerald.

Benchley was awarded a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood. He is the father of author Nathaniel Benchley, author of The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, and grandfather of Jaws writer Peter Benchley and actor/writer Nat Benchley.

On his passing in 1945, Robert Benchley was cremated and his ashes were interred in the family plot at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Nantucket, Massachusetts.