These Showbiz Greats Were Born on February 26

On February 26, just before the Ides of March, turns out to be the natal anniversary of a bevy of showbiz greats! We'll kick this off with the one, the only Betty Hutton, actress, comedienne and vocalist.



Betty Hutton, star of stage, movies (The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek, Annie Get Your Gun) and television, was born on February 26, 2021.










Then there's Jackie Gleason, born on this day in 1916.









We love this historic clip of The Great One in 1950 with another comedy great, Bert Wheeler. Apologies for the very subpar video quality, but that's all this blogger has seen of this meeting of two wonderful comics from different generations.



Have we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog watched all 39 filmed episodes of The Honeymooners and all the versions from the live shows Jackie starred on multiple times? Yes.



It is fascinating to see the earliest incarnations of The Honeymooners, from Gleason's days on Cavalcade Of Stars. This one features Pert Kelton as Alice.



Favorite Gleason performance of all-time? With Paul Newman as a Minnesota Fats-style poet laureate of pool in Robert Rossen's The Hustler.




And then there's, speaking of comic geniuses, the blazing comic genius of Tex Avery, the King of Cartoons, born on February 26, 1908.

Tex is the guy who is most responsible for transforming Warner Bros. animation's "scwewy wabbit," Bugs Bunny from geek to sleek.

Fortunately for us seeking laughs in this difficult time, there are TWO Blu-rays of Avery's incomparable MGM cartoons (and, surprise, a third on the way).

Tex Avery directed theatrical cartoons for two decades, and even his very last theatricals produced by Walter Lantz on a lower budget than the MGMs remain razor-sharp masterpieces of comedy timing. Nobody nails visual humor "theme and variations" in an animated cartoon, with the goal of eliciting belly laughs, quite like Tex Avery.




Ace character actor and co-star of The Odd Couple TV series Tony Randall was born on February 26, 1920.



Here's one of Tony's many appearances on Late Night With David Letterman.



Tony appeared in so many movies and TV shows it is difficult to know where to start.



It has been literally decades since I last saw The 7 Faces Of Dr. Lao, which I originally viewed on the big screen at the matinee during its theatrical release back in 1964. Whether it is okay by 2022 standards, I don't know - would have to watch the film again - but do see it as a fitting companion piece to Buster Keaton's The Playhouse and Lupino Lane's Only Me; in all three cases, countless parts are played by the same actor. Funny, as The Medusa, Tony oddly resembles 1980's pop star Boy George.



Our favorite Tony Randall flick, hands-down, is Frank Tashlin's satiric gem Will Success Spoil Rick Hunter?





Most amazing is Tony's masterful appearance, with Jayne Mansfield also playing a non-prototypical role, on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, which reflects Tony Randall's versatility as an actor. Watch this all the way through!

Another character actor born on February 26 whose lengthy career in show business included appearances in numerous movies, before national fame in roles on series television was William Frawley.





Vaudevillian Bill Frawley was the guy who played the curmudgeonly curmudgeon to end all curmudgeonly curmudgeons, Fred Mertz, in I Love Lucy, as well as Bub O'Casey on My Three Sons.



For more info, check out character actor, cartoon voice artist and comedy film historian Eddie Deezen's terrific article on William Frawley, as well as Archive Of American Television interviews.





Last but not least, we will mention albeit not necessarily go to town on the extraordinary life and career of British stage, screen and radio actress Madeleine Carroll, star of The 39 Steps, Secret Agent, The Prisoner Of Zenda and My Favorite Blonde (among many films), born on February 26, 1906.



The life story of Madeleine Carroll is quite an epic one, and covered in detail by John Pascoe's book Madeleine Carroll: Actress and Humanitarian, from The 39 Steps to the Red Cross. She was a movie star for a few years and a humanitarian exemplifying compassionate public service for a few decades. No doubt at least two or three avid film buffs among the dozens writing classic movie blogs have indeed gone to town on the numerous onscreen and offscreen heroics of Madeleine Carroll.

The End Of February Is A Comedy Geek Birthday Bonanza

Well, it's time for the weekend blog post and Your Correspondent is looking underneath tables, beds and car seats - and possibly where former NBA player Lamar Odom disappeared to - trying to find where the #*%!&^ that writing mojo went to. That said, today's topic du jour is the fact that a slew of artists, actors, comics and musical comedy performers - every one responsible for TONS of laughs - were born in the last few days of February.



First and foremost, there was Tex Avery, a.k.a. The King Of Cartoons, born February 26, 1908 in Taylor, Texas.



Among other things, Tex Avery was. . .

• Rescuer of various members of the Warner Bros. cartoon staff during a ski trip mishap
• Blind in one eye, due to a prank gone terribly wrong at the Walter Lantz studio.
• A descendant of Judge Roy Bean
• The guy who brought the animated cartoon business out of post-Production Code of 1934 (and Disney envy) doldrums by joining the Warner Brothers cartoon studio in 1935 and subsequently creating Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny.

The "Termite Terrace" boys in the summer of 1935: (from left) Virgil Ross, Sid Sutherland, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and Bob Clampett

Tex moved on to the MGM cartoon studio in 1942 and created more indelible characters there: Droopy, The Wolf and Red Hot Riding Hood (as well as the somewhat less indelible but weirdly funny anti-character Screwy Squirrel).







In the field of live-action comedy, only Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel, Charley Chase, Frank Tashlin and Ernie Kovacs could go toe-to-toe with Tex Avery. His timing, visual gags and concepts are still original and unequalled.






Jim Backus



Celebrated, among other things, as the voice of Mr. Magoo, the irascible old coot created for UPA cartoons (some directed by the inimitable and quite brilliant John Hubley, many directed by ex-WB animator Pete Burness), Jim Backus.



Born on February 25, 1913, Jim Backus was a remarkable character actor who excelled on stage, screen, television, radio and recordings. He could play everything from the mealy-mouthed father of James Dean's character in Rebel Without A Cause to the garrulous Thurston Howell III in Gilligan's Island to Tyler Fitzgerald, a pilot so stone drunk as to make Foster Brooks, Jack Norton, Arthur Housman AND W.C. Fields swear off old-fashioneds FOREVER, in It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World.



The early Magoo cartoons in particular are a scream. The premise is not so much that the ever-cranky Quincy Magoo is nearsighted, but that he is so bullheaded that he refuses to see. Funny, that describes just about all of us fallible humans at least some of the time.



Once the Magoo character became less bilious and his rough edges got smoothed over, this cartoon buff did not find him nearly as funny, but the Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol TV special remains an all-time favorite bit of holiday entertainment.



Backus also recorded some very funny novelty records.






Tony Randall



Born on February 26, 1920, Tony Randall could handle everything from dramatic to light comedy roles beautifully. This blogger and many of his contemporaries first saw Tony in George Pal's fantasy classic The 7 Faces Of Dr. Lao, a film in which he excelled in multiple and diverse roles.



Investigating his career reveals that Tony frequently did amazing work in television - one episode of the The Alfred Hitchcock Hour cast him as a suave and charming adman who also happens to be a raging alcoholic on his way to becoming a psychopath - as well as in movies, especially the lead part in Frank Tashlin's satiric masterpiece Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?





As the kinder, gentler version of Felix Unger in TV's version of The Odd Couple, Tony could also be fall-down hilarious. Randall and Klugman repeatedly get big laughs just by the way they speak, move and delineate those characters.




Jackie Gleason



Last Friday was the 100th anniversary of Jackie Gleason's birth. Many of us grew up on Honeymooners reruns and the "from Miami Beach" 1960's Jackie Gleason Show featuring Frank Fontaine and The June Taylor Dancers. Among his signature characters: Ralph Kramden, Fenwick Babbitt, Charlie the Loudmouth, Rum Dum, Joe The Bartender and The Poor Soul, Jackie's homage to two comedy greats from silent movies, Lloyd Hamilton and Harry Langdon.



Have yet to cease marveling and laughing out loud at the comic chemistry between Gleason and Art Carney in The Honeymooners.



My personal favorite character by The Great One, hands down, is bon vivant Reggie Van Gleason III.




Betty Hutton



"A full-fledged actress with every talent the noun implies. She plays in musicals because the public, which can do practically nothing well, is willing to concede its entertainers only one talent." Preston Sturges



Born on February 26, 1921, Betty Hutton was a show-stopping musical performer and among a group of brassy comediennes - Martha Raye, Cass Daley, Mabel Todd, Joan Davis, Judy Canova - who hit showbiz like a tidal wave at the end of the 1930's. Here's Betty, already showing star power as a comic big band singer for the Vincent Lopez Orchestra in this 1939 Vitaphone Melody Master band short.



Betty and the rubber-faced (and rather Jim Carrey-like) Cass Daley both lended their shy, retiring, low-key and demure musical comedy personas to the 1942 film The Fleet's In.



Betty is best known for her successful star turn in the MGM version of Annie Get Your Gun, a vehicle originally slated for Judy Garland, who had to bow out of the project for health reasons. One conjectures Betty could have handled all kinds of character roles and dramatic parts quite well, but having excelled to such a degree in musical comedy, that was where she would be typecast.



In many of her films, Betty Hutton's skills as a physical comedienne combine with a rather remarkable ability to put over enjoyably zany songs that suit her megawatt personality to a T.



When Betty sang with great humor, as she does in this production number from The Perils Of Pauline, and tackled comedy roles with gusto, it's a good bet that Lucille Ball was watching and taking detailed notes!




William Demarest




One of Betty Hutton's key co-stars was the great character actor William Demarest, born on February 27, 1892.



One of the things that makes the Preston Sturges comedy The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek such a great film is what happens when Bill Demarest plays scenes with Betty and the ever-bemused Eddie Bracken.



Demarest's curmudgeonly yet versatile persona would make him an in-demand character actor for decades, well into the television age. Many of us born in the 1950's and early 1960's remember him as the pancake-making "Uncle Charley" in My Three Sons but later discovered his classic movie work (as we would also find Evil Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity and The Apartment).


William Frawley



And speaking of curmudgeons, here's the guy whose claim to fame was playing a fella who would make the early cranky Mr. Magoo look like a sweetheart, the inimitable Fred Mertz from I Love Lucy, William Frawley, born on February 26, 1887.



The veteran character actor who preceded Bill Demarest in My Three Sons after his stint on I Love Lucy, William Frawley had a lengthy and wide-ranging career in show business (he even appeared in some silent movies), very aptly described in the following excellent article by character actor, comedy historian, cartoon voice artist and writer Eddie Deezen.



Last but not least, there's the great Zero Mostel, the gifted, versatile character actor, comedian and star of stage and screen Zero Mostel who was born February 28, 1915.







To all of the above, for the fun, entertainment and joy you created, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog can't thank you enough.