Robert Benchley
Robert Charles Benchley (
September 15,
1889 â€"
November 21,
1945) was an
American humorist,
newspaper columnist,
film actor, and drama literary editor.
Born in
Worcester, Massachusetts, Benchley's essays were published 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.
Benchley's humor was based on everyday life, news oddities, and absurd, almost
surreal essays such as his "Uncle Edith" series. At
Harvard, he was a leading contributor to the
Harvard Lampoon. With
Dorothy Parker and
Robert E. Sherwood, his colleagues at
Vanity Fair magazine, Benchley formed the
Algonquin Round Table. He was an early and regular contributor to the
New Yorker Magazine,
Life magazine and a humor columnist for the
Hearst Corporation Newspapers. His style influenced other humorists such as
S. J. Perelman and
James Thurber. Benchley is cited as an inspiration by humorists like
Bob Newhart,
Erma Bombeck,
Woody Allen and
Shelly Berman and 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.
In
1928, Benchley starred in
The Treasurer's Report, a short comedy film that was 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 a series of more than three dozen comedic instructional short films whose titles frequently began with "How to…". Each featured Benchley as a lecturer or as his family man
alter ego, Joe Doakes.
How to Sleep (
1935) 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 appears in
Alfred Hitchcock's
Foreign Correspondent (1940), in
Rene Clair's
I Married a Witch (1942) and with
Fred Astaire in
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 loose tour of the then-new
Walt Disney Studios facility in
Burbank, California.
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.
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.
*
The Robert Benchley Society*
The Algonquin Round Table*
Nat Benchley*
Robert Benchley: A Profile in Humor*
Robert Benchley Society Award for Humor*
Robert Benchley at Find A Grave *
Robert Benchley, An Annotated Bibliography - by Gordon E. Ernst*
Free ebook of Robert Benchley at
Project Gutenberg
