<<< Those Marvellous Benchley Shorts (1983) >>>
| BFI Humourist, writer and sometime actor Robert Benchley graduated from Harvard in 1912, worked in advertising and personnel and then became associate editor of The New York Tribune Sunday magazine and then editor of the Tribune Graphic. After the First World War he was managing editor of Vanity Fair, followed by a spell as a columnist for the New York World and then from 1920 to 1929 he was the drama editor of Life magazine. Later he became the New Yorker's theatre critic. In the Twenties he was a member of the so-called 'Algonquin Round Table' - a group of writers and wits, including Alexander Woolcott, George S Kaufman, Heywood Broun and Dorothy Parker, who made their headquarters at New York's Algonquin Hotel. In 1922 the Round Table put on a one-night show called No Sirree! in which Benchley performed his satirical lecture The Treasurer's Report. Irving Berlin saw the show and hired Benchley to do the skit for $500 a week in his third Music Box Revue, setting the writer on his career as a performer. In 1927 Fox Films, out to demonstrate their new Movietone talking picture process, filmed Benchley reading The Treasurer's Report, after which the humourist was quoted as saying: "I guess that no-one ever got: so sick of a thing as I, and all my friends, have grown of this treasurer's report. I did it every night and two matinees a week in the third Music Box Revue. Following that, I did it for ten weeks in vaudeville around the country. I did it at banquets and teas, at friends' houses and in my own house, and finally went to Hollywood and made a talking movie of it. In fact, I have inflicted it upon the public in every conceivable way except over the radio and dropping it from airplanes". Despite what Benchley said, the short was so successful that Fox signed him up to make five more. The second, The Sex Life of the Polyp is an acknowledged classic, included in the Museum of Modern Art's collection whose expert Eileen Bower wrote: 'While filmed in an entirely static manner, Benchley's natural and intimate manner of speaking could have taught much to the actors from Hollywood and from the stage who had to learn the techniques of speaking before a microphone'. Benchley went on to make some 49 short films, for Fox, MGM and Paramount and How To Sleep (1935), directed by Nick Grinde, won an Academy Award. This compilation, Those Marvellous Benchley Shorts, is narrated by Robert Benchley's son Nathaniel and includes The Treasurer 's Report, which was directed by Thomas Chalmers, and How To Sleep, as well as The Sex Life Of The Polyp (1928), directed by Thomas Chalmers, and Crime Control (1941), The Trouble with Husbands (1940), Keeping In shape (1942), The Man's Angle (1942) (the sequel to The Trouble With Husbands, from the other viewpoint), Waiting For Baby (1941), The Witness (1942) and Nothing But Nerves (1942) all directed by Leslie Roush. The picture serves as a marvellous reminder of the talent of one of America's greatest and most original humourists. Quickie: Comedy compilation, produced by Raymond Rohauer and narrated by Nathaniel Benchley, starring humourist Robert Benchley in some of his funniest short films,, including his first, The Treasurer's Report (1927) and the Oscar-winning How To Sleep (1935). | |
| Broadcast | 2:40pm on Saturday, 23rd July 1983 |
| Strand | The Laughter Makers |
| Alternate Title | |
| Duration | Unknown |
| Genre | Unknown |
| IMDb ID | n/a - BFI |
| Director | |
| Writer | |
| Cast | Nathaniel Benchley |
| Language | English |
| Repeat | No |
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