Last week, November 21st was the 62nd anniversary of the death of the wonderful humorist Robert Benchley.  The kind-faced writer, who also had quite an impressive career in Hollywood, may be most identified as a member of the Algonquin Round Table, the group of Roaring Twenties-era New York-based wits who congregated at the NYC hotel on a regular basis to trade barbs with each other.  Benchley was probably the nicest of the bunch, and he became a movie favorite often playing the kind of everyman character that his benign Massachusetts countenance perfectly reflected.

Born in 1889 in Worcester, Mass. , Benchley was a Harvard-educated stand-out who started his comic writing career at the famed Harvard Lampoon publication, and also would hit the boards himself as a member of the Hasty Pudding theatrical society.  Even as a young man his droll demeanor was a favorite with his friends and fellow students, and though he clearly had the gift of creativity, his first job out of college was in civil service, which he quickly left for literary freelancing and eventually a job at the New York Tribune newspaper.  There he learned that ferreting out facts for stories wasn’t his strong point, and he was moved into criticism, a switch that helped him get into theater reviewing at the prestigious Vanity Fair magazine.

It was at Vanity Fair that Benchley first met and worked with fellow wit and writer Dorothy Parker, starting a friendship that would last many years and fairly define the ideal platonic relationship. (Benchley had married high school sweetheart Gertrude in 1914.)  Both had wicked senses of humor and delighted in parody and gentle insubordination, much to the consternation of their VF bosses.  When Dorothy finally got the axe (due to complaints from play producers who'd received bad reviews from her), Benchley also quit in solidarity with her, a move which Parker called “the greatest act of friendship I’d ever seen.”

Leaving Vanity Fair certainly didn’t hurt his career, which prospered on freelance writing assignments and eventually a long stint at Life magazine and at The New Yorker.  The acting bug also bit him again, as he participated in a Round Table production doing his original piece “The Treasurer’s Report,” playing an awkward speaker asked to sum up an organization’s financial state.  His droll and delightful delivery earned him kudos and resulted in the act being picked up by Irving Berlin for his Music Box Review show on Broadway, where Benchley performed the "Report" every night to tumultuous acclaim.

Though he continually avowed that he was primarily a writer and not an actor, he was pressed into filming some of his material, and eventually was signed to do a series of short subjects.  He juggled these acting assignments with his work at The New Yorker, but soon Hollywood sent offers his way which were simply too lucrative for him to resist, and he followed many of his Algonquin cohorts out into the California sunshine and, in his mind, creative sellout.  He mixed appearances in feature films like China Seas, Dancing Lady and Broadway Melody of 1938 with his own series of “How To” short subjects, including the Academy Award-winning short “How to Sleep” from 1934.  Though some of the shorts were more successful and basically funnier than others, Benchley was steadily employed both as a performer and a writer for them (sometimes uncredited, though) as well as working on other screenplay/acting assignments like Foreign Correspondent and The Reluctant Dragon.  He was also a frequent guest performer on top radio shows of the day. 

As the 1940s began, Benchley’s career matured into a series of well-received character roles in films like You’ll Never Get Rich, Take a Letter, Darling, The Major and the Minor, I Married a Witch, Flesh and Fantasy, and several others.  One of his most charming and unusual appearances is in the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby comedy Road to Utopia from 1945, where he pops up from time to time to comment on the action and explain the absurd and hilarious goings-on.  Benchley had also been regularly issuing books of humor, some of them reprints of his columns and others new collections of his always-popular essays.

In addition to his career-spanning humorous talents, Benchley was also known as a tireless crusader for justice, a political animal who frequently wrote and commented on some of the controversial issues of the day (and today, too) such as racism and government witch-hunting.  Personally, Benchley was a fascinating individual.  A teetotaler a great deal of his life, he finally succumbed and had his first drink at the age of thirty-one, and with a hard-drinking crowd like the Round Table folks it was easy to make up for lost time.  He became rather a heavy drinker over time, sometimes berating himself while in his cups for not following his literary muse and going Hollywood, but mostly he was delightful, drunk or sober.  Though happily married and ever-respectful to his wife Gertrude, who basically lived in Massachusetts while Benchley was either in NYC or out West, Benchley had a couple of showgirl girlfriends over the years, affairs he conducted with complete discretion and his characteristic kindness.

It was his drinking which evidently led to health problems in 1945.  Benchley had been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, a condition he kept secret from everyone, but which was beginning to manifest in frequent nosebleeds and internal bleeding.  His health was failing, but massive vitamin injections and Benzedrine–administered to enable him to fulfill his work obligations–plus his continued drinking took a toll on his physical and mental well-being.  Friends who had never seen him less than kind and polite, ever, saw an uncharacteristic moody side, a side-effect of his deteriorating wellness.  Finally, in November, Benchley was plagued by a series of serious nosebleeds on many days, and the frequency and severity got him admitted to a hospital, where doctors temporarily stopped the bleeding but feared the worst.  As Benchley’s wife Gertrude stood vigil by his bed, dozens of his friends lined up at the hospital to volunteer as blood donors for their failing friend. 

Despite all best efforts, Robert Benchley suffered a severe cerebral hemorrhage and slipped away on November 21, 1945.  His friends and family remembered him fondly; John Hay Whitney, philanthropist and U.S. Ambassador, called him “the dearest man I have ever known”; writer Donald Ogden Stewart said “He was humor, with its instinctive humanity, toleration, wisdom, non-competitiveness….” 

Anyone who has ever read Robert Benchley or seen him in one of his short subjects or movie roles will understand exactly what they are saying.  Such a kind face, such a delightful man, such a brilliant creative force.  Sweet Old Bob, indeed.