Robert Benchley, Tungee's Gold and the Slave Ship MFC

This Week
Benchley, Hollywood and New York
King Kumi Talks to the Children
Writers Notebook: Ernst Lubitsch

New York to Hollywood and back.
Robert Benchley was one of the Round Table regulars that worked in Hollywood even before sound became a part of the motion picture industry. His heart was always with the New York theater even as he traveled to and from the West Coast.
Unlike many of his Round Table pals Benchley's humor was not satirical or cutting. It was in fact subtle and self deprecating. Benchley's humor matured during his time at Harvard and his work with the Lampoon Society. During that time his style formed and matured into a genteel kind of humor.
His earliest work in Hollywood was writing screenplays for Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount. He also wrote dialogue cards for silent films. The first in that arena was for Raymond Griffin’s film 'You'd Be Surprised.'
Robert Benchley's first short film was 'The Treasurer's Report' released in 1928 and was both a critical and financial success. He participated in two other talking films that year 'The Sex Life of a Polyp' and another starring, but not written by him 'The Spellbinder' all made in the Fox Movie Tone sound on film system.
What set Benchley apart from most actors was the fact that he was a natural performer and had such a laid back kind of delivery that the audience hung on his every word.
Hollywood could see a good thing and signed him to produce more films before he took the train back to New York. Benchley's travels between east and west were a classic example of the times and for him it gave him a number of days to relax and get away from the business of writing. The fact is that was when he actually got some of his best writing done.
It was during the early years of the depression that Benchley got his real introduction to the motion picture industry. When he arrived in town he would almost immediately get calls from studios and while he was more interested in writing than acting his talent for both was sought after. He did film work at Universal Pictures, RKO and MGM.
One of his more important roles as an actor was a salesman in the RKO film Rafter Romance with Ginger Rogers. That gave him a showcase and attracted other offers. MGM offered him a lot of money to do a series of short films. Benchley accepted the offer, since he almost never turned down a job.
During that same period William Randolph Hearst signed him to do a syndicate column, which worked out fine for Benchley because he could film the shorts in New York and write his column at the same time.
Before heading back to New York he did an acting role at MGM on a film called 'Dancing Lady' starring Joan Crawford and Clark Gable and featuring Fred Astaire, Nelson Eddy and the Three Stooges. Benchley was also featured in a film called China Sea that starred Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery and Rosalind Russel.
Back in New York Harold Ross signed Benchley on as theater reviewer for the New Yorker. The Robert Benchley generation of readers loved his decade of New Yorker theater reviews. As an actor and writer, he adored the drama. One of Benchley’s great strengths as a comic humorist were his unexpected one liner twists. Here are a couple of good review illustrations. 'As far as this week’s drama page is concerned, you are over into the advertising right now. There need be nothing to detain you here, unless you like the monotonous hissing of plays on the pan—and not very much of that. For Spring, the Great Reaper, is here, and the pall of vernal death is slowly settling down on Broadway.'
This one takes a different turn, after viewing a great acting performance in Marc Connelly’s The Green Pastures, Benchley opines, 'If the Lord is really anything like Mr. Harrison, maybe I have been wrong all these years.'
During the mid 20's Benchley's pal Dorothy Parker was between marriages and her choice of male companions was just awful. Mark Connelly once said, 'Dotty was always falling in love with some bum. He was always handsome and had the romantic responsibility of an alley cat.'
Dorothy had terrible bouts with depression and a number of times she wound up in the hospital with razor cuts to her wrists. Early one morning after one of those scenes her pal Robert Benchley eased along side her bed, leaned over and said, 'Dotty, you've got to be more careful, or one of these days you're really going to hurt yourself.'

Tungee's Gold: The Legend of Ebo Landing
Excerpt: On Board the Slave Ship MFC
The MFC had plowed into the lower Caribbean and was within forty-eight hours of their destination. The bell struck midnight. King Kumi and his inner circle were all sitting near the forecastle. Kumi looked up at the stars and sucked in a deep breath of the cool night air and sat in silent meditation. He was well aware that as a political and religious leader, he had to walk a fine line between his people's old traditions and the ways taught by the missionaries.
Kulando came awake from a nap and began to wipe the sleep from his eyes. He sat across from Kumi, between Sasika and Isbele. The boy stretched and yawned. "I have just returned from a long journey."
"Where have you been, my son?" Kumi asked.
"I know not where, but I do know it was with the gone befores. The spirits of my ancestors."
"Your mind is receptive and much of what we have told you may be firing your imagination," Ekoi said as a wry grin played across his face. "Perhaps they are expanding your dream world."
"I heard them talk. I saw them take the evil mask and exchange it for the good."
Isbele gripped the boy's hand.
Kumi sighed. "You have been somewhere and that somewhere is your own private place, a part of the world that you will share with no one. You may tell of it, but you will not truly share it with anyone."
Kulando was no longer a child. His face bathed in the moonlight had grown far beyond his age. Maturity and wisdom had knocked and the messenger had opened the door and welcomed them in.
Kumi prayed. "May my Lord be tolerant and forgiving in a way that will allow some contact with our spirit world. May we ask our gone befores to mark the path? God, please allow the spirits of our ancestors to guide me and my people across the river."
Siepe cautioned. "Let us all remember this. We are Christians and I have no wish to disavow my Ebo heritage, but please be aware that when our Lord saved us, we turned away from many of our past beliefs. Are you, Kumi, asking us to go back to those ways just before the end?"
"No, my dear. My thinking is this, we should ask God to allow our gone befores spirits to shed some light on the most important act of our lives. It is God's help that we are all seeking." Kumi then looked toward the sky and chanted. "Vultures are the birds of death, scavengers who hover over the dying ready to claim their corpses silently, patiently waiting for the end. Those scavengers have made a pact with death and death has made war on my house. Queen Sarai and our firstborn have died at the hands of that war, where greed in the form of money hungry men of the trade plundered and pillaged mankind. They take one man's freedom, jail his spirit, extracting a profit for one on the back of another.''
Ekoi put his hand on Kumi's and quietly said. "Amen."
Kumi looked into all their faces and said, "My children, I am not asking you to follow me like sheep, just for mine and Sarai's sake, but follow if you must for those of future generations. We must tell the world that no one has the right to sell his fellow man the way he would bargain away a sparrow."

Writers Notebook:
Here's a bit about Ernst Lubitsch. Garson Kanin in a conversation with Billy Wilder told about the way George S. Kaufman, Carol Reed and other writers would begin work on a story with lots of enthusiasm. And that lasted for a while, but later on they’d begin to find fault, then pick it apart and eventually abandon the project. “Not me,” said Billy. “I always come back to it – so I can tear it down and abandon it again.”
“You know who did not work like that?”
“Who?”
“Our hero, Ernst Lubitsch. He always concentrated on the affirmative aspects – and kept looking for what was good and sort of ignoring the bad, sweeping it under the carpet – and finally he’d built so much strength that the weaknesses didn’t seem to matter.”
“We can’t all be Lubitsch,” Billy said.
“We can try.”

Tom's Books and Blogs
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels Tungee's Gold, The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
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