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Robert Benchley.
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Benchley, Robert (1889-1945)
In his relatively short life Benchley managed to enjoy careers as a humorist, theater critic, newspaper columnist, screenwriter, radio performer and movie actor. His writi...
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Robert Benchley (1889-1945) was one of the most popular and influential humorists of 20th century America. He took his gentle, self-deprecating wit to celebrity in literature, the theater, and the mov...
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Robert Benchley combined in his life and work many of the traditional qualities of the American humorist. First, and most important, like Washington Irving and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benchley was a su...
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Mr. Benchley's collected burlesques are, of course, exceedingly funny: they are a little like Stephen Leacock, but more urbane than Leacock. Mr. Benchley, if he has not the force of Mr. Leacock...
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Critical Essay by Gerald Weales
He wasn't lazy. He liked to put things off as long as he could. He was a procrastinator. He got his copy done just in the nick of time for the New Yorker. They o...
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It is our duty to confess that Mr. Benchley is changing. No longer can the book seller honestly tell you that this is just good, clean, wholesome humor. It isn't so. His carefree spirit has bee...
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Mr. Robert Benchley tells of the trouble he had when, like Ward, he became worried about grammar and the sound of words. It all started when he tried to figure out the present tense of the verb of whi...
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The heavier critics have under-rated Benchley because of his "short flight," missing his distinguished contribution to the fine art of comic brevity. He would thank me not to call him an...
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It is impossible to say just when the bemused householder and white-collar man became really prominent in American humor, but by 1910 Stephen Leacock, Simeon Strunsky, and Clarence Day, Jr. were writi...
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Critical Essay by Norris W. Yates
There came a time early in the 1940s when Benchley, after years of resisting identification as an actor, had to concede that he no longer considered himself a writer....
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Critical Essay by Louis Hasley
There came a time early in the 1940s when Benchley, after years of resisting identification as an actor, had to concede that he no longer considered himself a writer. Na...
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Critical Essay by Walter Blair and Hamlin Hill
There came a time early in the 1940s when Benchley, after years of resisting identification as an actor, had to concede that he no longer considered hims...
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Critical Essay by Eric Solomon
He wasn't lazy. He liked to put things off as long as he could. He was a procrastinator. He got his copy done just in the nick of time for the New Yorker. They of...
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Benchley, Robert (1889-1945)
Robert Benchley
Robert (Charles) Benchley
Critical Essay by Edmund Wilson, Jr.
