Robert Benchleys income source is mostly from being a successful Actor. [40] Sherwood, Parker, and Benchley became close, often having long lunches at the Algonquin Hotel. He also made a name for himself in Hollywood, when his short film How to Sleep was a popular success and won Best Short Subject at the 1935 Academy Awards, and his many memorable appearances in films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent and a dramatic turn in Nice Girl?. Brother of Lt. Edmund Benchley. PLEASE NOTE that the "Benchley home" on Nantucket pictured at the link above is not one Robert ever knew: it was purchased by Nathaniel in 1954 (and sold by Peter in 1999, or so); the only piece of property Robert ever owned on Nantucket is the plot at the Prospect Hill cemetery traits: fidelity, perseverance and to turn around three times before There are probably more famous Benchleys. ultimately used: "This is all above my head.". Paramount did not renew his contract in 1943, and Benchley signed back with MGM with an exclusive contract. [54], This was followed in 1936 by How to be a Detective. We were with a living Benchley, Rob (the third) and his lovely wife Carol, and we didnt talk about literature or the family tree much at all. ISBN 080570048X). In his mid-50s Benchley suffered from cirrhosis of the liver and high blood pressure, and died from complications of both. The table gained prominence due to the media attention the members drew as well as their collective contributions to their respective areas. Given that Benchley had two children at the time of his resignation, Parker referred to it as "the greatest act of friendship I'd ever seen. [73], Topical, current-event style pieces written for Vanity Fair during the war did not lose their levity, either. "), and his common man observations often veered into angry rants, such as his piece "The Average Voter," where the namesake of the piece "[F]orgets what the paper saidso votes straight Republicrat ticket. "[31], Benchley was forced to take a publicity position with the Liberty Loan program, and he continued to freelance until Collier's contacted him with an associate editor position. This character was apparent in Benchley's Ivy Oration during his Harvard graduation ceremonies,[66] and would appear throughout his career, such as during "The Treasurer's Report" in the 1920s[67] and his work in feature films in the 1930s. From Toronto Leacock closely followed the increasing body of Benchley's published humor and wit, and opened correspondence between them. Paramount did not renew his contract in 1943, and Benchley signed back with MGM with an exclusive contract. (There is no evidence to support speculation that Lillian had an inappropriate relationship with Robert.) Did Benchley, for example, really set sail for Europe ''with a suitcase filled entirely with assorted New York metropolitan area telephone directories''? Benchley.". This experience was not as positive, and most of Benchley's contributions were excised and the final product, Funny Face, did not have Benchley's name attached. al. I remember a garage loft just across the street where the Benchley did his writing. Benchley was later known for writing elaborately misleading and fictional autobiographical statements about himself (at one point asserting that he wrote A Tale of Two Cities before being buried at Westminster Abbey). . [77] The longer, plot-driven shorts, such as Lesson Number One, Furnace Trouble, and Stewed, Fried and Boiled, likewise show a Benchley character overmatched by seemingly mundane tasks. I met an older fellow on the ferry going back to the mainland who is another real islander, and asked him if he knew the Benchleys. [34] Benchley's work was typically published twice a month. Bv, attended Fryeburg torey Chapel, Mount Auburn William P. Jackson, Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States. They became engaged during his senior year at Harvard University, and they married in June 1914. [73] Even the more stereotypical characters held these qualities, such as the incapable sportscaster Benchley played in The Sport Parade. WebTop 3 Results for Robert C Benchley. In 1931, he was persuaded to do voice work for RKO Radio Pictures for a film that would eventually be titled Sky Devils, and he acted in his first feature film, The Sport Parade (1932) with Joel McCrea. While he lived, Benchley was close to omnipresent -- in print, on film and on radio. Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. URL accessed May 19, 2007. The best result we found for your search is Robert Steven Benchley age 70s in Pinconning, MI. WebWas a teetotaler until age 31, after which he became a serious alcoholic. While he completed his year's work, his condition continued to deteriorate, and he died in a New York hospital on November 21, 1945. (the name being a pun of the European revue La Chauve-Souris), "An Anonymous Entertainment by the Vicious Circle of the Hotel Algonquin." He worked constantly while claiming he was intensely lazy. [40] The column, titled "Books and Other Things," ran for one year and roved beyond literature to mundane topics such as Bricklaying in Modern Practice. with Deanna Durbin, noteworthy for a rare dramatic performance by Benchley. On graduating from Harvard, where he had earned a reputation as an extraordinary after-dinner speaker, Benchley held a variety of jobs in publishing, business and social service. This worried Sherwood, as he felt it could jeopardize his forthcoming raise. "[37], Following word of Benchley's resignation, freelance offers began piling up. In 1941 Benchley received two more feature-length roles: Walt Disney's The Reluctant Dragon, in which Benchley tours the various departments of the Disney studio, and Nice Girl? I hadnt really had any idea about the Benchley family tree. (According to legend, he submitted a magazine piece titled "I Like to Loaf" two weeks after deadline. Rob is a real icon on the island.. [66], In 1960, Benchley was posthumously inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star at 1724 Vine Street.[67]. Benchley re-entered Hollywood at the height of the Great Depression and the large-scale introduction of the talkie films he had begun working with years before. We have Mr. Altman, a magazine journalist, builds on the work of his predecessors, filling in some gaps, providing us with some new information. WebAlthough by his own account Benchley was not quite a writer and not quite an actor, he managed to become one of the best-known humorists and comedians of his time. "[29] While his public profile rose, Benchley continued with freelance work, which included his first paid piece for Vanity Fair in 1914, titled "Hints on Writing a Book,"[30][31] a parody of the non-fiction pieces then popular. Why and how Benchley and his literary companions succumbed to alcohol during the one decade in American history in which it was outlawed is a question of enormous importance, but one still not satisfactorily answered here or elsewhere. ISBN 0151975213). His star is located at 1724 Vine Street. A short that Benchley completed for MGM, A Night at the Movies, was Benchley's greatest success since How to Sleep, and won him a contract for more short films that would be produced in New York. A second son, Robert Benchley, Jr., was born in 1919. "[25] Things did not improve for Benchley and Obiter Dicta, and a failed practical joke at a company banquet further strained the relationship between Benchley and his superiors. His shortcoming was the submission of a "scholarly paper" which Benchley eventually rectified by a treatise on the U.S. Canadian Fisheries Dispute, written from the point of view of a cod. Benchley began at Vanity Fair with fellow Harvard Lampoon and Hasty Pudding Theatricals alumnus Robert Emmet Sherwood and future friend and collaborator Dorothy Parker, who had taken over theatre criticism from P. G. Wodehouse years earlier. When his older brother, Edmund, was killed in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, Edmund's fiancee, Lillian Duryea, the daughter of a wealthy starch-manufacturing family in Nyack, N.Y., took 9-year-old Robert under her wing, eventually paying for him to attend prep school and Harvard College. He worked constantly while claiming he was intensely lazy. [8] Additionally, because the news about Edmund had arrived during a July 4th celebration, Robert for the rest of his life associated fireworks with Edmund's death. In 1933, Benchley returned to Hollywood, completing the short films Your Technocracy and Mine for Universal Pictures, How to Break 90 at Croquet for RKO, and the lavish feature-length production China Seas for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, and Rosalind Russell; Benchley's character was a slurring drunk throughout the movie. He was elected to the Lampoon's board of directors in his third year. [20], Along with his duties at the Lampoon, Benchley acted in a number of theatrical productions, including Hasty Pudding productions of The Crystal Gazer and Below Zero. [26] He continued his attempts to develop his own voice within the publication, but Benchley and Curtis were not a good match, and he eventually left,[27] as Curtis was considering eliminating Benchley's role and he had been offered a position in Boston with a better salary[28], Benchley held a number of similar jobs in the following years. Benchley and Parker soon held down one corner of the Algonquin Round Table, that collection of wits whose quips are still repeated. (New York City: Harcourt Brace, 1977. Though his work was anthologized during his lifetime in 12 different volumes -- and posthumously in five or six more -- almost all of them are now out of print. Eventually, he began lobbying gently for Benchley to compile his columns into book form, and, in 1921, was delighted when the result of his nagging - Of All Things - was published. WebRobert Benchley met Gertrude Darling in high school in Worcester. The uncanny feature of our talent in this field is that, once the scene is through and they begin talking of something new on the stage, a sixth sense in us operates to send the blood pounding through our temples and we awake with a start, rosy-cheeked and refreshed.''. While on that first visit dad scouted around, found a dilapidated duplex not far from the ocean at Surfside and tracked down the local realtor. The Lampoon position opened a number of other doors for Benchley, and he was quickly nominated to the Signet Society meeting club as well as becoming the only undergraduate member of the Boston Papyrus Club at the time. Owing to an academic failure in his senior year due to an illness,[22] Benchley would not receive his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard until the completion of his credits in 1913. Literary 'Sconset, the Benchleys, and John Steinbeck, Robert C. Benchley Biography, Photos and Works, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Benchley&oldid=1148971771, Male actors from Worcester, Massachusetts, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 9 April 2023, at 10:45. the son of writer and humorist Robert Benchley and the father of al. He sold it to my Aunt Helen for the price that he had paid. other disruptions, Benchley made his mark as a theater critic and as He took a position with Curtis shortly after he received his diploma. [46] Unfortunately for Benchley, however, his writing a syndicated column for David Lawrence drew the ire of his World bosses, and "Books and Other Things" was dropped. According to Mr. Altman, when the urn that was supposed to contain his ashes was Robert Charles Benchley (Worcester, Massachusetts, 15 de setembre del 1889 - Nova York, 21 de novembre del 1945) fou un actor, crtic teatral i humorista estatunidenc.. Es gradu a la Universitat Harvard i rpidament pass a formar part del personal laboral de la publicaci "Life" el 1920.Fou membre de l'"Algonquin Round "[36], Benchley was forced to take a publicity position with the Liberty Loan program, and he continued to freelance until Collier's contacted him with an associate editor position. The only group not pleased was the Mellon Institute, who did not approve of the studio mocking their study. [32] Benchley accepted, and began work there in 1919.[33]. An often overlooked influence upon Benchley's early professional career was the admiration and friendship of the Canadian economist, academic, and humorist Dr. Stephen Leacock. [8] References [ edit] The Benchley family was attending a public Fourth of July picnic when a bicycle messenger brought the notification telegram. [12] He joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity in his freshman year, and continued to partake in the camaraderie that he had enjoyed at Phillips Exeter while still doing well in school. Benchley participated in two more films that year: a second talking film he wrote, The Sex Life of the Polyp, and a third starring but not written by him, The Spellbinder, all made in the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system and released by Fox Films. He was elected to the Lampoon's board of directors in his third year. [27], Benchley started at the Tribune as a reporter. By 1944 he was taking thankless roles in the studio's least distinguished films, like the rustic musical National Barn Dance. That's what makes it so tough for us outsiders: we have to fight home TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. Of course, he said. The revue was applauded by both spectators and fellow actors, with Benchley's performance in particular receiving the biggest laughs. Proposed the following epitaph for his tombstone although it was not He was invited to be theatre critic for The New Yorker in 1929, leaving Life, and contributions from Woollcott and Parker became regular features in the magazine. [43] He continued meeting with his friends at the Algonquin, and the group became popularly known as the Algonquin Round Table. [47], Benchley continued to freelance, submitting humor columns to a variety of publications, including Life (where fellow humorist James Thurber stated that Benchley's columns were the only reason the magazine was read). [35], At the Tribune, Benchley, along with new editor Ernest Gruening, was in charge of a twelve-page pictorial supplement titled the Tribune Graphic. Owing to an academic failure in his senior year due to an illness,[17] Benchley would not receive his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard until the completion of his credits in 1913. [29], This freelancing attempt did not start out well, with Benchley selling just one piece to Vanity Fair and accumulating countless rejections in two months. Benchley's humor was molded during his time at Harvard. The filming went by quickly, and though he was convinced he was not good, The Treasurer's Report was a financial and critical success upon its release in 1928. Every boy should have a dog, for a dog teaches a boy three valuable Nantucket Lighthouses; Museums; Festivals; Biking; Boating, Fishing & Water Sports; Arts; Family & Kid Fun; Theatre, Film, Music, Lectures; Tours; Wellness & Published by Wings (January 30, 1996) ISBN 978-0517411391. (New York City, McGraw-Hill, 1955). They had a marvelous friendship. Nathaniel Benchley died in 1981 in Boston, Massachusetts and was interred in the family plot at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Nantucket. Which was plenty to go on, when I got home. In 1917, the Tribune shut down the magazine, and Benchley was out of work again. [58], 1939 was a bad year for Benchley's career. His family opted for a private funeral service, and his body was cremated and interred in a family plot on the island of Nantucket.[61]. 1. Benchley is best remembered for his contributions to The New Yorker, where his essays, whether topical or absurdist, influenced many modern humorists. 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