Thinking of the gifted writers from the Algonquin Round Table, while also thinking of vintage animated cartoons, so Robert Benchley and Walt Disney share the spotlight today.
One of the very best among that band of scintillating and seething scribes who quaffed, socialized and collaborated at the midtown Manhattan Algonquin Hotel was the great humorist Robert Benchley.
Benchley, columnist, New Yorker/Vanity Fair essayist and prolific reviewer of 1920's Broadway shows, was born on this day, September 15, in 1889. The Harvard Lampoon writer had no intention of going into show business, but to some extent was drafted by friends and colleagues at university into performing as an actor and comedian, due to his specialty of hilariously spoofing dreadful after-dinner speakers. Benchley would contribute a distinctively witty presence to stage and screen until his untimely passing in 1945.
Robert Benchley was one of the comedy performers who exemplified the transition to talkies - and actually preceded the reigning silver screen comedy mega-stars Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd in doing so.
Here's his brilliant sendup of corporate-speak in the 1928 Fox film The Treasurer's Report, which was based on the monologue Benchley first performed at the April 30, 1922 Algonquin Round Table stage presentation No Sirree.
In The Sex Life Of The Polyp, another early talkie produced by Fox in 1928, he cheerfully skewers inept lecturers.
In a film that still rings true in 2024, Robert Benchley lambasts arrogant financiers and "prosperity gospel" hucksters as he evaluates how the heck we ended up with the Great Depression.
The rather unexpected success of the Fox Movietone short subjects led to an even more unexpected movie career.
This included starring in short comedies for MGM and Paramount, as well as periodic stints as a character actor in such films as Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent.
He is yet another of the 1000 reasons the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog loves the 1943 film The Sky's The Limit.
Now, as we are also - as always - thinking of vintage animated cartoons here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we note that not only did the Knight Of The Algonquin Round Table work with Walt Disney, Benchley played a role as himself in the entertaining 1941 Disney feature The Reluctant Dragon. As far as we know, he didn't know the other Uncle Walt, Mr. Walter Lantz. . . and that is too bad, as Lantz Studio director Shamus Culhane may well have jumped at the chance to collaborate with Robert Benchley.
In The Reluctant Dragon, Mr. Benchley tours the Disney Studio and learns how cartoons are made, so the 1941 film presents a most worthy addition to historian Charles Gardner's Cartoons About Cartoons articles from Cartoon Research's Animation Trails series.
It's tempting to wonder which was the more interesting first time meeting, Robert Benchley and Alfred Hitchcock or Benchley and Walt Disney!
Love the following paint-mixing segment (which, for some reason, reminds me of segments from Hugh Harman's 1936 MGM cartoon Bottles), although the YouTube poster's tampering with it via voice-over, frankly, leaves a lot to be desired.
That said, this sequence reminds us all these decades later, well into the 21st century, how outstanding the hard working Walt Disney Productions ink and paint staffers who meticulously painted countless cels were.
Not surprisingly, Benchley gets The Reluctant Dragon's closing laugh line, with an assist from Clarence "Ducky" Nash (note: don't know who plays the insufferable and verbally abusive wife).
For more, check out the Robert Benchley Society. Also recommend that readers get some Benchley books, especially Benchley At The Theatre, in the (not nearly as fun) 21st century way, purchasing them online - or by visiting your friends at the local public or university library, bearing an Algonquin Round Table book list. Way back in the halcyon 20th century days when sellers of used books and records were everywhere, especially college towns, this blogger and many other unrepentant bookworms sought out print copies of Benchley's excellent writings.
