Lionel Stander — Laugh Champ (1936) 🇺🇸
Lionel Stander is the new laugh-sensation of Hollywood. Just as surely as he has skyrocketed into one of the most dangerous scene and picture stealers ever glimpsed on the screen.
by Whitney Williams
Ever since the lads and lassies of the film colony caught his frantic and farcical stage director in “Hooray for Love” they’ve howled for more, and still more, of this comical young gent whose tousled hair and whose hoarse and guttural croak panics ‘em into a state of near-hysteria Were he twins, they couldn’t get enough of him… and when Hollywood goes that way about any new actor you can depend upon it there’s plenty of fire behind that smoke.
And there is — for Stander, big-boned and towering, who looks as though he sprang from a race of wild-eyed Communists and is just about as funny as they come, has created a new technique — if you can call it that — as well as brought to the screen a very different brand of humor. He’s decidedly tops in the eccentric comedian class… and boy, oh boy, is he eccentric.
Of course Hollywood, ere this, has known demented gentlemen who kept the village in stitches with their acting — but Stander, whose middle name — don’t laugh — is Jay, stands alone. Nobody in motion pictures today can hold a candle to him in the delineation of slightly mad and “screwy” characters… and when I say screwy I mean screwy.
By the time you read this, his priceless interpretation of the dumb fight trainer in “The Milky Way” no doubt will still be fresh in your mind. “Hooray for Love” proved pretty conclusively that a comedian of parts was with us, but The Milky Way leaves not even a particle of doubt that Lionel Stander deserves a niche all his own as one of the great fun-provoking personalities of the films.
Of Latvian-German descent, he turned actor because he could shoot a noble game of craps!
When he was nineteen, and out of a job, an actor-friend mentioned a show then in rehearsal that needed an extra who could manipulate a pair of dice convincingly.
“I thought I could handle that part all right and rushed over to the theatre,” Stander told me, in his heavy voice. “I got the job, and before the show opened I was playing six different roles. There was a bit of sickness in the cast and as players dropped out I simply stepped into their respective parts.”
From an old friend of Stander’s, I learned that he put on such an exhibition in trying out for the bone-rolling “super” that he sent the entire company into hysterics, including the stage director. Naturally, this individual snapped him up in short order, realizing that in his grasp lay a youth of enormous theatrical potentialities.
Born in New York City, in 1908, the future actor ran away from home at the age of fourteen. “My father wanted me to follow his profession, public accountancy, but I wasn’t exactly statistically-inclined,” Stander explained, as he chalked his cue. From the moment I had entered his home, he had insisted that we initiate his new pool table and we were now embarked upon a heavy game.
“I couldn’t see spending one-third of my life over sets of figures, so I packed and left. I became an office boy in a shade factory at the munificent salary of twelve dollars a week.
“I remained in this job for six months, longer than I’ve ever held any other job. Then I was fired… for losing $147,000 worth of negotiable bonds. I was held in the custody of my father until they were found on the street four days later, but my association with the firm had terminated… definitely.” A slow grin crept over his not-too-handsome features.
Back home again, for the next several years the lad pursued his education… of sorts… at such institutions as the New York City public schools, Dwight Preparatory School, Mt. Vernon High School, Bloomfield Military Academy, New York University, Duke University, and finally the University of North Carolina. School days, however, held little appeal for him, and many of the institutions found him a bit too exuberant, several suggesting that he pursue his studies elsewhere.
During these years, he left home intermittently for one job after another, often alternating between work and school. Of one thing only is he certain… he held none of these jobs more than a month.
“After I played those six parts in my first show,” he recounted, scoring sixty-seven points to my sixteen (page Willie Hoppe, the pool champion), “I decided that this was just about the nuts. I was tired of being just one of the army of the unemployed, and even though I might be out of work, as an actor, still I wouldn’t be classed as a bum. I would be ‘at liberty.’ Yeah, that’s what they call it when an actor’s not working… ‘at liberty.’ Besides, acting was more dignified, I thought.
Occasionally, when theatrical opportunities seemed scarce, Stander would turn to newspaper work.
Looking to radio, the thought occurred to him that he might make a fortune writing for this newer medium of entertainment. Thought being father to the deed… when he had completed his first script he tried to sell it to Fred Allen. Allen thought the script terrible, but Stander’s personality and voice so arresting that he put him on the air in his own act.
A scout for Radio Pictures saw him in the radio station one night and signed him for a part in a future production. Without considering the proposition very carefully, Stander signed on the dotted line.
Some little time later, he met Ben Hecht.
“Why, I remember you,” said Hecht, “when you were just a punk hanging around the Village joints.”
“And I remember you,” retorted Stander, “away back in the days before you sold out… in the days when you were able to write Eric Dorn.”
That crack won him the part of the haranguing Communist in the Hecht and MacArthur production of The Scoundrel, his first appearance on the screen in a feature picture. Previously he had played in seventeen short subjects, making his film debut with Jack Haley in “Salt Water Daffy.”
“I wasn’t anxious to do The Scoundrel and turned the part down seven distinct times,” he related. “I told Hecht I had a contract with a studio, anyway, and why should I go into his picture.
“I finally went through with it, though, and had the time of my life. I began to wonder where this racket had been all my life, and as soon as the picture was finished left New York for Hollywood.
“In New York, I had had six years of dramatic work on the stage, some of the roles bordering on the tragic Hollywood immediately cast me as a character comedian… and character comedian I have remained. It wasn’t until The Scoundrel reached Hollywood that producers came to the realization I could do anything else but comedy.
“But I like comedy. I don’t want to change, for comedians go on and on and always are popular. I want that popularity — whatever I may have — to remain a long time.
As perfect a dialectician as Hollywood ever has known — and as good an actor, too — Lionel Stander today reigns over an audience that daily is increasing with leaps and bounds. The Milky Way revealed him as one of the most hilarious figures on the screen. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, starring Gary Cooper, produces further proof of his amazing versatility and cleverness.
Lionel Stander is one of the “finds” of the season.
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A boob is always funny but a tough boob is funnier.
Lionel’s face is a gift, but his fortune is in his swell comedy sense.
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Practical jokes are popular in Hollywood, but the best recent one was the slice of ham shaped like a heart that Carole Lombard sent to George Raft.
Collection: Silverscreen Magazine, June 1936
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