John P. Medbury (died 29 June 1947) was a humorist who wrote for newspapers and film, and did narration for several films. His most notable newspaper contribution was a regular series for the New York Journal called Mutter and Muble. [1] A 1931 edition of the Motion Picture Herald referred to him as noted humorist of Hearst paper fame. [2] He wrote comedic content for the Reservist, a newspaper produced at the San Pedro Naval Reserve Training Camp. [3]
In 1936 Medbury focused on screen writing, for MGM and Columbia studios at various times. [1] He wrote for the Amos 'n' Andy show. [4] Medbury featured in several of Walter Futter's Travelaughs (Laughing with Medbury) films – short film travelogues where he provided comedic commentary: Laughing with Medbury in Abyssinia, Laughing with Medbury in Africa (1931), Laughing with Medbury in Borneo (1931), Laughing with Medbury in Death Valley (1931), Laughing with Medbury in Mandalay, Laughing with Medbury in Reno (1931), Laughing with Medbury in Turkey (1931), and Laughing with Medbury on Voo Doo Island. [5] [6] : 143 : 144
Medbury's first wife, actress Phyllis Eltis Medbury, died in 1936. [1] He died 29 June 1947 at the age of 54 in Laguna Beach, California, of a heart attack. [1] [7] [ failed verification ] He is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.
Amos 'n' Andy is an American radio sitcom about black characters, initially set in Chicago and later in the Harlem section of New York City. While the show had a brief life on 1950s television with black actors, the 1928 to 1960 radio show was created, written and voiced by two white actors, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, who played Amos Jones (Gosden) and Andrew Hogg Brown (Correll), as well as incidental characters. On television, 1951–1953, black actors took over the majority of the roles; white characters were infrequent.
A humorist is an intellectual who uses humor, or wit, in writing or public speaking, but is not an artist who seeks only to elicit laughs. Humorists are distinct from comedians, who are show business entertainers whose business is to make an audience laugh. It is possible to play both roles in the course of a career. A raconteur is one who tells anecdotes in a skillful and amusing way.
Dennis O'Keefe was an American actor and screenwriter.
Jessie Royce Landis was an American actress. Her name is also seen as Jesse Royce-Landis. She remains perhaps best-known for her mother roles in the Hitchcock films To Catch a Thief (1955) and North by Northwest (1959).
Penny Singleton was an American actress and labor leader. During her 60-year career on stage, screen, radio and television, Singleton appeared as the comic-strip heroine Blondie Bumstead in a series of 28 motion pictures from 1938 until 1950 and the popular Blondie radio program from 1939 until 1950. Singleton also provided the voice of Jane Jetson in the animated series The Jetsons from 1962 to 1963.
Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor. From his beginnings at The Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him respect and success during his life, from his peers at the Algonquin Round Table in New York City to contemporaries in the burgeoning film industry.
Beatrice Benaderet was an American actress and comedienne. Born in New York City and raised in San Francisco, she began performing in Bay Area theatre and radio before embarking on a Hollywood career that spanned over three decades. Benaderet first specialized in voice-over work in the golden age of radio, appearing on numerous programs while working with comedians of the era such as Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, and Lucille Ball. Her expertise in dialect and characterization led to her becoming Warner Bros.' leading voice of female characters in their animated cartoons of the early 1940s through the mid-1950s.
The Van Beuren Corporation was a New York City-based animation studio that produced theatrical cartoons as well as live-action short-subjects from the 1920s to 1936.
Stuart Erwin was an American actor of stage, film, and television.
Spencer Williams was an American actor and filmmaker. He portrayed Andy on TV's The Amos 'n' Andy Show and directed films including the 1941 race film The Blood of Jesus. Williams was a pioneering African-American film producer and director.
Leon Errol was an Australian-American comedian and actor in the United States, popular in the first half of the 20th century for his appearances in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in films.
Hugh Herbert was an American motion picture comedian. He began his career in vaudeville and wrote more than 150 plays and sketches.
John Daly "Jackie" Kelk was an American stage, radio, film, and television actor and stand-up comedian. He is best known for portraying the role of Homer Brown on the radio series The Aldrich Family and as the original voice of Jimmy Olsen on The Adventures of Superman.
Irene Fenwick was an American stage and silent film actress. She was married to Lionel Barrymore from 1923 until her death in 1936. Fenwick has several surviving feature films from her productions for the Kleine-Edison Feature Film Service, which also has numerous surviving shorts in the Library of Congress.
Syd Saylor was an American comedic actor and movie cowboy sidekick who appeared in 395 films and television series between 1926 and 1962.
Gordon Wong Wellesley was an Australian-born screenwriter and writer of Chinese descent. Born in Sydney in 1894 He wrote over thirty screenplays in the United States and Britain, often collaborating with the director Carol Reed. He began his career in Hollywood in the early 1930s and worked in Britain beginning about 1935. He was married to the scriptwriter Katherine Strueby. He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story at the 1942 Oscars for Night Train to Munich, which was based on his novel, Report on a Fugitive.
Vitaphone Varieties is a series title used for all of Warner Bros.', earliest short film "talkies" of the 1920s, initially made using the Vitaphone sound on disc process before a switch to the sound-on-film format early in the 1930s. These were the first major film studio-backed sound films, initially showcased with the 1926 synchronized scored features Don Juan and The Better 'Ole. Although independent producers like Lee de Forest's Phonofilm were successfully making sound film shorts as early as 1922, they were very limited in their distribution and their audio was generally not as loud and clear in theaters as Vitaphone's. The success of the early Vitaphone shorts, initially filmed only in New York, helped launch the sound revolution in Hollywood.
Johnny Fletcher is a fictional character created by Frank Gruber. Fletcher is a con-man and reluctant amateur detective. The character was the protagonist of several mystery novels published between 1940 and 1964. Additionally, he was featured in a feature film adaptation scripted by Gruber, and a short lived radio series.
George William Broderick O'Farrell was an American film and stage actor who appeared in both silent and sound films. He began his career at age 14, appearing onstage with the Baker Stock Company in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. He subsequently appeared in several locally-produced films, such as The Golden Trail (1920), before pursuing a film career in Los Angeles. He appeared in numerous silent films throughout the 1920s, and later had minor roles in several Laurel and Hardy films, including Beau Hunks (1931).
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