The British edition of the book carried a Leacock introduction, and Benchley, for his part in a tribute to Leacock later said he read everything Leacock ever wrote. Robert's older brother, Edmund, was rushed to the Spanish-American War days after graduation from West Point (1898), and was a casualty almost immediately. I should be far away in Footscray, a city of Bourke County, Victoria, Australia, pop. "), 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. WebDirector Robert Benchley Robert Benchley Writer (Uncredited) Jack Chertok Producer Harry Rapf Executive Producer Film Details Genre Short Comedy Release Date 1935 Production Company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. Distribution Company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. Technical Specs Duration 10m [3] Benchley's grandfather Henry Wetherby Benchley, a member of the Massachusetts Senate and Lieutenant Governor in the mid-1850s, went to Houston, Texas and became an activist for the Underground Railroad for which he was arrested and jailed. 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. [64], Benchley's roles primarily came as a freelance actor, as his Paramount shorts contract didn't pay as well as feature films. Mrs. Benchley apologized profoundly and tried hard to atone for the remark. They were among the founders of the famed Algonquin Round Table in 1919. The format of Vanity Fair fit Benchley's style very well, allowing his columns to have a humorous tone, often as straight parodies. 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 While he completed his years work, his condition continued to deteriorate, and Benchley died in a New York hospital on November 21, 1945. Benchley is best remembered for his contributions to The New Yorker, where his essays, whether topical or absurdist, influenced many modern humorists. 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. While Benchley's books and Paramount contract were giving him financial security, he was still unhappy with the turn his career had taken. Jaws author Peter Benchley. Every boy should have a dog, for a dog teaches a boy three valuable "[43]) He was offered $200 per basic subject article for The Home Sector,[44] and a weekly freelance salary from New York World to write a book review column three times per week for the same salary he received at Vanity Fair. When the editorial managers went on a European trip, the three took advantage of the situation, writing articles mocking the local theatre establishment and offering parodic commentary on a variety of topics, such as the effect of Canadian hockey on United States fashion. Then he invited my dad to bring my mom to the island for a visit. While he completed his year's work, his condition continued to deteriorate, and Benchley died in a New York hospital on November 21, 1945. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Born in Newton, Massachusetts to a literary family, he was the son of Gertrude Darling and Robert Robert Charles Benchley (September 15, 1889 November 21, 1945) was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor. Father of Nathaniel Benchley and Robert Benchley, Jr. [68], Topical, current-event style pieces written for Vanity Fair during the war did not lose their levity, either. (Landing the position [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. Select this result to view Robert Steven Benchley's phone number, address, and more. People say the darnedest things on that boat, Rob responded, when I told him in an e-mail about the comment. [63], 1939 was a bad year for Benchley's career. Lillian Duryea, the bereaved, wealthy yeast heiress and fiancee of Edmund, undertook the funding of Robert's education; she made him a loan which, after he began to make money, she later called due. Few could be arguably as skilled. Please enable JavaScript in your browser's settings to use this part of Geni. URLs accessed June 6, 2007. 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. Benchley initially wrote the column under the pseudonym Guy Fawkes (the lead conspirator in the English Gunpowder Plot), and the column was very well received. [10] Their first child, Nathaniel Benchley, was born a year later. [30], At the Tribune, Benchley, along with new editor Ernest Gruening, was in charge of a twelve-page pictorial supplement titled the Tribune Graphic. Benchley enrolled at Harvard University in 1908, again with Duryea's financial help. There are probably more famous Benchleys. [32], Benchley started at the Tribune as a reporter. He was a close friend of actor Humphrey Bogart and wrote his biography in 1975. WebRobert Benchley and Dorothy Parker were close friends and shared an office. 1. WebWas a teetotaler until age 31, after which he became a serious alcoholic. The work on The Sport Parade caused Benchley to miss the fall theatre openings, which embarrassed him (even if the relative success of The Sport Parade was often credited to Benchley's role), but the lure of filmmaking did not disappear, since RKO offered him a writing and acting contract for the following year for more money than he was making writing for The New Yorker.[56]. 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. URL accessed May 19, 2007. Amid accusations that both were pro-German (the United States was fighting Germany at the time), Benchley tendered his resignation in a terse letter, citing the lack of "rational proof that Dr. Gruening was guilty ofcharges made against him" and management's attempts to "smirch the character and the newspaper career of the first man in three years who has been able to make the Tribune look like a newspaper. WebSo, how much is Robert Benchley worth at the age of 56 years old? From his beginnings at the Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him respect and success during his life, from New York City and his peers at the Algonquin Round Table to contemporaries in the burgeoning film industry. 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. Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle is a 1994 American film that depicts the Round Table from the perspective of Dorothy Parker. 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?. Benchley kept these achievements in mind as he began to contemplate a career for himself after college. "), 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. While the session did not yield significant results, Benchley did get writing credit for producing the title cards on the Raymond Griffith silent film You'd Be Surprised, and was invited to do some titling for two other films. Amazon.com: Robert Benchley and the Knights of the Algonquin product listing. Of All Things (1921)Love Conquers All (1922)From Bed to Worse (1934)My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)Inside Benchley (1941)Benchley Beside Himself (1943), Do you know something we don't? 2. The situation at Vanity Fair deteriorated on the managerial team's return. [9], Robert Benchley met Gertrude Darling in high school in Worcester. Where was I? ISBN 0393038335). [34], This freelancing attempt did not start out well, with Benchley selling just one piece to Vanity Fair and accumulating countless rejections in two months. Eventually, he began lobbying gently for Robert Benchley to compile his columns into book form, and in 1922 was delighted with the result of his nagging. 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. 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). Rob Benchley was raised in Connecticut and, as a boy, maybe he was one of the entitled ones. He fit the profile. May 2003. All rights reserved. [11] Nathaniel also became a writer, and he published a biography of his father in 1955. Much of his time in the films was spent spoofing himself,[71] whether it was the affected nervousness of the treasurer in The Treasurer's Report or the discomfort in explaining The Sex Life of the Polyp to a women's club. And that was the point of the trip, which made it a happy one in every way that it could be. Benchley 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. Also hosted at the American Century Theater. His family opted for a private funeral service, and his body was cremated and interred in a family plot on the island of Nantucket.Altman, 352362. [27], Benchley started at the Tribune as a reporter. "; accounts conflict as to whether Robert (who was nine at the time) heard this. Time Magazine, January 8, 2006. (from Wikipedia). Babette Rosmond, Robert Benchley: His Life and Good Times. [44] In April 1920, Benchley landed a position with Life writing theatre reviews, which he would continue doing regularly through 1929, eventually taking complete control of the drama section. Initially consisting of Benchley, Dorothy Parker, and Alexander Woollcott during their time at Vanity Fair, the group eventually expanded to over a dozen regular members of the New York media and entertainment, such as playwrights George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly and journalist/critic Heywood Broun, who gained prominence due to his positions during the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. 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. [80], Benchley produced over 600 essays,[81] which were initially compiled in twelve volumes, during his writing career. Rob Benchley met his wife Carol at a Fourth of July party thrown in a Codfish Park house that has since washed out to sea. The Algonquin Round Table was a group of New York City writers and actors who met regularly between 1919 and 1929 at the Algonquin Hotel. Very little is known about his childhood as he never related anything but humorous tales about it rather than realities. [16] Benchley kept these achievements in mind as he began to contemplate a career for himself after college. . [45] The column, titled "Books and Other Things," ran for one year and roved beyond literature to mundane topics such as Bricklaying in Modern Practice. When a job as a press agent for Broadway producer William A. Brady was offered, Benchley took the position against the advice of many of his peers. The two were given a good deal of freedom, but Benchley's coverage of the war and focus on African-American regiments as well as provocative pictorials about lynching in the southern United States earned him and Gruening scrutiny from management. Benchley also 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? A lot of cousins, the present day Rob said, laconically. Proposed the following epitaph for his tombstone although it was not On April 22, 1945, he guest starred on the Blue Network's (soon to be ABC) top-rated radio series The Andrews Sisters Show, sponsored by Nash motor cars & Kelvinator home appliances. Benchley died of complications from cirrhosis of the liver in 1945 at the age of 56. [42] His reviews were known for their flair, and he often used them as a soapbox for issues of concern to him, whether petty (people who cough during plays) or more important (such as racial intolerance). [55] The early success of How to Sleep prompted MGM to rush two more short films featuring Benchley, How to Train a Dog, a spoof of dog-training techniques, and How to Behave, which lampooned etiquette norms. My partner, Nancy, and I didnt visit there this past weekend, in our time on Nantucket. He admitted to occasional borrowing of a Benchley topic for his own reflection and writings. Benchley was born and raised in Worcester, Mass. [82] He also appeared in a number of films, including 48 short treatments that he mostly wrote or co-wrote and numerous feature films. [23] In September, he was hired by Curtis as a full-time staff member, preparing copy for its new house publication, Obiter Dicta. third class in Bulgaria. It is more because they are real islanders, deeply involved in the local community and passionate about the preservation of the natural beauty that surrounds them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Benchley. briefly as managing editor of the magazine Vanity Fair, where his It was not well received, and was removed from the schedule. In his mid-50s Benchley suffered from cirrhosis of the liver and high blood pressure, and died from complications of both. Edmund's death had a considerable effect upon Robert's life. "[83] Outsider filmmaker Sidney N. Laverents lists Benchley as an influence as well,[84] and James Thurber used Benchley as a reference point, citing Benchley's penchant for presenting "the commonplace as remarkable" in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. He is from USA. Dolores Gregory, "'Benchley': Seeing a Famous Forebear Whole." Born: 15-Sep-1889 Birthplace: Worcester, MA Died: 21-Nov-1945 Location of death: New York City Cause of death: competition. He later worked for Newsweek magazine as an assistant drama editor. He is mentioned, with Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott, in lists of Algonquin Round Table members; and, with S. J. Perelman and James Thurber, as a New Yorker humorist. He was not afraid to poke fun at the establishment (one piece he wrote was titled "Have You a Little German Agent in Your Home? He was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor who is best remembered for his contributions to The New Yorker, where his essays, whether topical or absurdist, influenced many modern humorists. [8] References [ edit] A reprise of "The Treasurer's Report" was often requested for future events, and Irving Berlin (who had been musical director for No Sirree!) 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. Part of it was boutiques. 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