I write from West Hollywood, California, where we just gave out the 2012 Robert Benchley Awards for Humor Writing. During our festivities, which featured Arte Johnson from TV's Laugh-In presiding at the award ceremony, we announced the publication of a book of humorous short essays, titled Love Conquers All and consisting of 63 classic Robert C. Benchley essays of 90 years ago, plus the winning entries from our annual humor-writing competitions.
We believe there is a want for witty clean comedy. The Robert Benchley Society is filling that want by turning back to humor written in, or in the style of, the 1920s. The funny thing is, just how contemporary, how of today, that humor is. Benchley is contemporary when he writes about the man who gets intimidated by the clerk at the department store, mirrors that seem to take perverse delight in making one's reflection look bad, and the, um, joys of reading the Sunday "funnies" aloud to the kiddies. Contemporary, yes, because the themes are universal, but so unlike many of today's comics in presentation.
The difference is that today humor has edge: it is "transgressive." While formerly it was thought that art might sometimes outrage conventional sensibilities, now, anything that outrages is "art." Offensiveness being more common than true artistic talent, this new definition has the advantage of greatly increasing the supply of "artists." Judging from some recent comedic offerings, one might conclude that the sole criterion to be a "comedian" is to have a reasonably functional body with its full complement of fluids, excretions, and naughty bits. It also helps to use the words that you can't − or at least used not be able to − say on television.
As Arte said in his remarks to us after dinner, "We've had the escalation of the scatological conversation, smut that gets tossed in for comedy -- that's not funny, it's not funny." Contrast that with Benchley, who wrote two essays entirely about bathrooms without even once using "bathroom humor."
The Robert Benchley Society hopes you enjoy reading this collection of short essays. Copies will go on sale shortly and the profits will be used to give out free copies to libraries, schools, hospitals, and to our men and women serving abroad in our military. If this book leads to more people reading and writing laugh-out-loud, sophisticated humor, then the Society, now at our tenth anniversary, will have justified its existence.
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| The monument was dear to Benchley. |
"Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind torwards some resolution which it never finds."This occurrence also is without attribution to Benchley.
Mr. French won last year's competition as well, when humorist Mark Russell chose his essay The Old Man and the Leaf Blower."As a youngster I used to look forward to seeing the Benchley shorts. Somehow I always felt he looked like an avocado with clothing. Watching him act was a great joy and your essay forces him to do just that. I could just picture him demonstrating all of the dance styles, badly."
"You have found a subject that would be right down 'the Benchley Alley.' Taking the common and giving it an aura of importance was one of the great keys of Benchley humor. 'How to Yawn' as a subject matter with possible demonstrations would be well worth watching in the Benchley mode."
"Benchley would definitely attempt a Scotch accent and would fail dismally, but it would certainly be worth hearing. He certainly would try to make all of these brands exciting for the tasting if not for the hearing. Hopefully, he would wear the proper tartan for each and possibly model each for the camera."This was Mr. Levy's second time in the top four. In 2008 his essay How to Watch a Sad Movie and Retain Your Manliness was ranked third by humorist Bob Newhart.
"The serious side of everyday life was something that Benchley understood, and what could be more serious than fly swatting? Your essay gives meaning to what is a technical side of insect removal. It certainly would be a Benchley subject, along with nose blowing."
Television comedian Arte Johnson has confirmed his attendance at this year's Annual Gathering, which bears the theme: "Very Interesting...But Stupid!" The Society last met in Los Angeles in 2006, when our first place winner was W. Bruce Cameron. Details of this, the Ninth Annual Gathering, are in the works, but already we have identified several fun, and out of the ordinary, events for our attendees. Watch for details!“Born on the Isle of Wight, September 15,1807, shipped as cabin boy on the Florence J. Marble in 1815, wrote Tale of Two Cities in 1820, married Princess Anastasie of Portugal in 1831 (children: Prince Rupprecht and several little girls) and was buried in Westminster Abbey in 1871.” ~ Mr. Robert Benchley, an autobiographical sketch in his famous “dementia praecox” style."As we reflected on the above biography at the RBS 2011 Annual Gathering and Humor Awards Dinner," said Society director Rose Valenta, "the dementia praecox process was greatly enhanced by several martini toasts that kicked-off this fantastic Eighth Annual Gathering."
"I had a thoroughly enjoyable time at this event and loved reading the Benchleyesque offerings for the 2012 humor writing competition. I am champing at the bit to attend the next Annual Gathering, October 12th through 14th, in Los Angeles."
Since they are serving beer, they should consider Ballantine Ale and the Black Velvet cocktail (made with stout). Both have a strong Benchley connection -- see www.robertbenchley.org/rbs/cocktails.htm for drink suggestions for a Robert Benchley party. --dtThe delta chapter of the RBS, with the name "The Lost Locomotive" was founded September 6, 2005, by Bill Hyder. The name is the title of a Benchley essay that appears in My Ten Years in a Quandary (page 1) and Inside Benchley (page 49).
"I pointed out celebrities in the manner of a barker on a Chinatown bus. Young Bill seemed especially interested in the seamy lineaments of a fellow Harvard man named Robert Benchley... Seated beside him was a little and extraordinarily pretty woman with dark hair, a gentle, apologetic smile, and great reproachful eyes. 'And that, I suppose,' said the lad from Emporia, 'would be Mrs. Benchley.' 'So I have always understood,' I replied crossly, 'but it is Mrs. Parker.'"Woollcott, today largely forgotten, was one of the most celebrated drama critics and journalists of the 1920s through 1940s. He was the inspiration for the character of Sheridan Whiteside in "The Man Who Came to Dinner" and possibly for Waldo Lydecker in "Laura." The Algonquin Round Table originated as a celebrity roast for Woollcott and he as regular at that luncheons. He is also the namesake of the Alexander Cocktail (roughly equal parts gin, white crème de cocoa, and light cream), of which Benchley wrote:
"Professor Klaus Hansen, of Norway, has announced that he recently drank a 98 per cent solution of 'heavy water' (H O) without experiencing any ill effects. That's what he thinks. That's what the man said who first drank an Alexander cocktail."But to go back to the beginning.
"He tried one sip, then put the glass down and looked around the room, ‘This place ought to be closed by law,’ he said and everybody fell off their chairs with laughter."He went on to have rather too many drinks over the next 20 some years. And he did deliver, but not write, the line:
–Robert Benchley, a Biography by Nathaniel Benchley (page 163)
"Why don’t you slip out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?"which is followed in the movie, The Major and the Minor, by the line--
"I’d offer you a whiskey sour, but that would mean thinking up a new joke."Although he seldom wrote about New England, he frequently peppered his essays with New England place-names… Ah, New England, or as Benchley put it:
"New England, that 'vacation-land of America,' where the business slogan is 'The customer is always in the way.'"Of his childhood in Massachusetts he wrote:
—"Abandon Ship"
"When I was a child I was of an affectionate disposition, but not enough to get arrested."For those who find in the comedian some desperate longing for escape from personal pain through humor, you will find much to work with in one incident from his youth. Robert's older brother, Edmund Benchley, died in 1898 in the Spanish-American War when Robert was but nine years of age. Upon learning of Edmund's death, his mother cried out, "Why couldn't it have been Robert?" To this day, Edmund is better memorialized in Worcester than is Robert.
—"A Brief Study of Dendrophilism"
"Another time, he and a friend were walking on Beacon Hill, and when they reached Louisburg Square, with its neat facing rows of eighteenth-century brick houses and its atmosphere of Old World elegance, Robert had an idea. 'Come on,' he said, 'Let's get the davenport.' Picking a house at random, they went up the front steps and tapped on the silver knocker. A maid answered the door, and Robert said, 'We've come for the davenport.' The maid paused a second, then said, 'Which one?' and Robert, who by this time could see into the hall, replied, 'That one.' The maid let them in, and they picked up the davenport, carried it out and across the square, and brought it to the door of another house. Robert rang the bell, and when the maid answered he said, 'We've brought the davenport. Where should we put it?' The maid looked around in bewilderment, then said, 'There, I guess,' pointing into the sitting room. They deposited it where she said, and left. The matter wasn't straightened out for several months, when the owner of the davenport went to the other house for tea and recognized her property. The explanation that 'two men just left it here' was accepted graciously, albeit a little coldly."And that is the origin of the name of the Boston "We've Come for the Davenport" chapter of the Robert Benchley Society.
"It began with little articles to line up on top of a bookcase, miniature geese, little men with baskets, shells with eggs in them and broken stags. I also was not averse to hanging oddments on the walls. My friends entered into the spirit of this admirably. Every one had fun but the lady who dusted.Noel Coward, a Round Table semi-regular, at least when he was in New York, upon visiting Benchley at the Royalton said:
"Then people began looking around town for heavier gifts. It got to be a game. Trucks began arriving with old busts of Sir Walter Scott, four-foot statues of men whose shirtfronts lit up when attached to an electric connection, stuffed owls and fox terriers that had lain too long at the taxidermist's. This phase ended with the gift of a small two-headed calf in a moderate state of preservation.
From then on the slogan became: 'Send it to Benchley!' Wrecking concerns were pressed into service, and chipped cornices from the old Post Office, detached flights of stairs, hitching posts and railings began pouring in. Every day was like Christmas in Pompeii. The overflow went into the bedroom and I started sleeping under an old spinet, covered over with a set of bead-curtains which had been brought to me from a bordello in Marseille."
"I must say, it looks lived in."Benchley’s other literary friends included--
"Here, for example, is Robert C. Benchley, perhaps the most finished master of the technique of literary fun in America. Benchley's work is pure humor, one might almost say sheer nonsense. There is no moral teaching, no reflection of life, no tears. What Benchley pursues is the higher art of nonsense and he has shown in it a quite exceptional power for tricks of word and phrase."Speaking of Leacock, English legal scholar (and humor author) Sir Carleton Kemp Allen (1887-1966) wrote in his "Oh, Mr. Leacock!" (1925):
--Greatest Pages of American Humor (1936).
"There are certain things which are too sacred to every Englishman to be lightly joked about; among them I would name Shakespeare, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the pious peace, the beatific beauty, of a Christmas afternoon...These things go deep into our inner natures; but I am sorry to say none of them is sacred to Mr. Benchley. He is pleased to be satirical about them."James Thurber confessed that the professional humor writer is plagued by:
"the suspicion that a piece he has been working on for two days was done much better and probably more quickly by Robert Benchley in 1924."Wolcott Gibbs, editor, humorist, parodist, drama critic, and short story writer for the New Yorker, wrote:
–My Life and Hard Times (1933).
"When you were with him, in the wonderful junk shop he operated at the Royalton in '21', or in less fashionable saloons which had the simple merit of staying open all night, you had a very warm and encouraging feeling that you were a funnier man than you'd previously suspected, the things you said sounded quite a lot better than they really were and, such was the miracle of his sympathy and courteous hope, they often actually were pretty good. He wanted his guests to feel that they were succeeding socially and he did his best to make it easy for them. The truth, of course, was that Benchley himself maneuvered there conversations, tactfully providing most of the openings for wit, but the effect was that people were mysteriously improved in his company, surprisingly at home on a level of easy charm of which nobody would have dreamed they were capable. This willingness to play straight man to amateur but hopeful comedians is rather rare in the world he inhabited, where it is not customary to give very much away, but he did it instinctively."Other friends and admirers included S. J. Perelman and H. Allen Smith, among others.
--excerpt from "Robert Benchley: In Memoriam" published in More in Sorrow, 1958; originally published in the New York Times.
Woody AllenThe Robert Benchley Society keeps alive the Benchley tradition of warm, genial, witty humor through an annual writing competition. Past judges have included Dave Barry, Bob Newhart, and Mark Russell. This year's judge is Arte Johnson, well-known to many as "Wolfgang the German" and "Tyrone the Dirty Old Man" from Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Entries are due by April Fool's Day.
Dave Barry
Erma Bombeck
Bob Newhart
Jean Shepherd
