By Chris Hyde

November 13, 2002

Briefly after the introduction of sound to the movies, a style of romantic comedy rose to prominence in Hollywood under the sobriquet of screwball comedy. Characterized by snappy patter, outlandish plots and cornball romance, these movies grew popular with audiences and helped build careers for stars such as Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. They also provided work for an unsung bunch of character actors who are often overlooked for their contributions to this historic genre. Today we’ll take a brief look at some of these supporting greats and try and put a name to some of those familiar faces that color the background of the classic screen comedies of the 1930s and 1940s.

Walter Connolly: Screwball screenplays sometimes called for a long-suffering father or irascible newspaper editor, and often answering the call for these parts was Walter Connolly. This mustachioed, roly-poly actor specialized in roles that called for sputtering exasperation vented at wayward daughters or hotshot employees, his barely suppressed fury always boiling just under the surface of these behind-the-desk businessmen types. A very successful stage actor who resisted initial entreaties from filmmakers to perform onscreen (ignoring his two brief silent movie appearances during the Teens), once the actor chose to make movies, he would embark on a career that would see him perform in some 50 films. Chief among these are the comedies It Happened One Night, Libeled Lady, Twentieth Century and Nothing Sacred, though he did also play a detective or two, as well as tackling the title role in a musical composer biopic called The Great Victor Herbert.

Edward Everett Horton: This actor managed to keep up a career in show business for nearly his entire life, running the entertainment gamut from Broadway musicals early in the century through television work in the ‘60s. His tendency ran towards nervous, milquetoast types who tend to serve as sounding boards for more dashing leading characters. Horton turns up in an amazing number of comedies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, working with directors such as Ernst Lubitsch, Frank Capra and George Cukor, as well as solid appearances in three of the Astaire-Rogers musicals. Readers unfamiliar with the acting of Horton from these screwball-era outings may instead recognize the warbling tone of his voice; in later years, he was to provide voiceover work in cartoons as the narrator of the Fractured Fairytales portion of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle animated series.

Eric Blore: Another actor from this group who came from the stage, Blore did work in plays in England prior to making it to Hollywood during the ‘20s. His dry, insouciant English persona made him the perfect butler for comedic roles, and his style was to play these parts as if his character felt far superior to the rich whom he served. He also made the most of an association with the Astaire-Rogers films, showing up in five of the musical pairings that were made with these two stars. Another brilliant turn for Blore was as a shifty, card-playing sharpie in 1941’s The Lady Eve, and he also tried his hand at the detective B-movie game with a run of appearances as the valet Jamison in the Lone Wolf movies for Columbia.

Franklin Pangborn: Primarily known for his portrayals of annoyed, dandyish hotel clerks and butlers, Pangborn was actually a leading man in the silent era before settling into his Hollywood niche. His onscreen persona was aloof and fussy; a sneering look down the nose being the typical Pangborn pose. A favorite of comedic director Preston Sturges, this actor appears in six films made by this Hollywood great, including the brilliant Sullivan’s Travels and The Palm Beach Story.

Richard Haydn: This actor is more broadly known for the character type that his performances crystallized, rather than for his work in its own right. Many who have never seen a film with this actor might recognize the nerdy, nasally professorial tone of voice that came out of Haydn’s performances as Edwin Carp on stage, as they gained broader use with their repetition in plenty of cartoons still widely shown today. This character was brought to screen in great fashion when the actor played Professor Oddly in the screwball classic Ball of Fire. Haydn’s best-known acting job came in a more restrained role in the famous musical The Sound of Music. Even less well-known than this man’s acting work are the three films he made as a director; one is what appears to be an utterly neglected screwball gem, 1948’s Miss Tatlock’s Millions, a dark comedy with Monty Wooley and John Lund that unfortunately has as yet to surface for re-release on either video or DVD.

Sig Rumann: Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1885, this actor would grow up to parlay that early European heritage into a lengthy and successful film career. He came to New York during the ‘20s to act in the German dramas being performed there, and was eventually discovered by some local luminaries who helped foster his English-speaking opportunities. With the advent of sound, the Broadway actor fell in easily with the Hollywood set, and would eventually go on to multiple films in which he played the blustering continental count, doctor or high-culture vulture. It’s this latter routine that characterizes what is perhaps his best-known work, when he plays opera executive Herman Gottlieb in the Marx Brothers’ Night at the Opera. Also worth mentioning is that Rumann was a favorite of director Ernst Lubitsch; his job in the great Garbo film Ninotchka being of especially high quality.

Eugene Pallette: When one sees the hefty Pallette in his standard 1930s screen comedy role as an aggravated husband or befuddled father, it’s hard to imagine his early days of employment as a horseracing jockey. Almost as difficult to picture are the swashbuckling leading man parts that he undertook as a silent actor, such as his portrayal of Aramis in the 1921 version of The Three Musketeers, or his earlier parts in the groundbreaking D.W. Griffith films Intolerance and The Birth of a Nation. But somewhere between those heady days and the talkie era, Pallette transformed into a stout, short-legged character whose trademark gravel voice was often given to bewildered grumbling. Some of the highlights of the sound portion of his incredible 238 movie-long career include rich old man roles in My Man Godfrey and The Lady Eve, some workmanlike monk work in The Mask of Zorro, and a great job as Friar Tuck in the entertaining Errol Flynn vehicle The Adventures of Robin Hood.

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