One Minute Please

Humor & Entertainment

Benchley, Robert

Humor

Dobson Books

These "39 prodigal pieces" show Robert Benchley at the height of his whimsicality, damning with gentle urbanity all the things that peeve every one of us — but with a wit and mock anger none of the rest of us could have managed. The discomforts of travel on trains, large and heavy suitcases that must be carried by unwilling porters, standing in line at the post office (then to learn that your package is improperly tied), malicious fogs that blot out the race track at the last lap, the sand that gets kicked into one's face at the beach, vitamins and their puffery, and all the petty annoyances that we grumble about ourselves but laugh at when they befall others. The 39 prodigal pieces greatly enlarge the corpus of the best Benchley. Forty-four original illustrations, mostly by Peter Arno, are included.

Benchley Lost and Found (Dover Humor)

Dover Publications

Treasurer's Report and Other Aspects of Community Singing

Amereon Ltd

Benchley Beside Himself

Presents the author's humorous look at Christmas and winter in Vermont.

Good Old Fashioned Christmas

Ipswich Pr

Benchley at the Theatre: Dramatic Criticism, 1920-1940

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

The Treasurer's Report: And Other Aspects of Community Singing

Harper Brothers

Love Conquers All

Classics

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Robert Charles Benchley was born on September 15th, 1889 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Benchley wrote over 600 essays and is a humorist best known for his work for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. These essays, which ranged from topical to the absurdist, influenced many modern humorists. His humor was obvious from the time he attended Harvard University and was a writer for Harvard Lampoon. Benchley seemed to have an effortless way of creating humour and was equally famous for his work writing and appearing in short films, feature films and radio work. He was also a founder of the famous Algonquin Round Table at the New York hotel. This group, including Benchley, Dorothy Parker and George S Kaufman expanded to over a dozen regular members who met for lunch on an almost daily basis between 1919 and 1929. They dubbed themselves "The Vicious Circle". The group first gathered in the Algonquin's Pergola Room (later called the Oak Room) at a long rectangular table. As the gatherings increased in number, the Algonquin manager Frank Case moved them to the Rose Room and a round table. Daily association with each other, both at the luncheons and outside of them, inspired members of the Circle to collaborate creatively. The entire group worked together successfully only once, however, to create a revue called No Sirree! which helped launch a Hollywood career for Benchley. His legacy in Hollywood includes his short film How to Sleep which was a popular success and won Best Short Subject at the 1935 Academy Awards. He also acted with many memorable appearances in feature films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Nice Girl? (1941). In Hollywood he worked for many of the major studios and as an actor was often called upon to create humorous points where either a plot could be explained or something that required explaining could be used as a clotheshorse for jokes. In essence a screen image was established as a comic lecturer who tried but failed to clarify any given topic. Whilst Benchley was highly paid and sought after it seemed to leave him less and less time to write the things he cared about. Benchley's drinking, already a problem, had worsened over the years, until he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. (Ironically, when younger, he had been a devoted teetotaler.) Robert Charles Benchley died in a New York hospital on November 21st, 1945. His funeral was a private family affair, and his body was cremated and interred in a family plot on the island of Nantucket.

Robert Benchley - Love Conquers All: "Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?"

Literary

Horse's Mouth

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Books by Benchley, Robert