Edgar Kennedy
Acting
Born 1890-04-25
Died 1948-11-09
Monterey, California, USA
335 credits
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edgar Livingston Kennedy (April 26, 1890 – November 9, 1948) was an American comedic film character actor, known as "Slow Burn". A slow burn is an exasperated facial expression, performed very deliberately; Kennedy embellished this by rubbing his hand over his bald head and across his face, in an attempt to hold his temper. Kennedy is best known for a small role as a lemonade vendor in the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup, as well as the many Hal Roach films he appeared in.
Kennedy became so identified with frustration that practically every studio hired him to play hotheads. He often played dumb cops, detectives, and even a prison warden; sometimes he was a grouchy moving man, truck driver, or blue-collar workman. His character usually lost his temper at least once. In Diplomaniacs, Kennedy presides over an international tribunal, where Wheeler & Woolsey want to do something about world peace. "Well, ya can't do anything about it here", yells Kennedy, "this is a peace conference!" Kennedy, established as the poster boy for frustration, even starred in an instructional film titled The Other Fellow, in which loudmouthed roadhog Edgar always vents his anger on other drivers (each one played by Kennedy as well), little realizing that, to them, he is "the other fellow."
Perhaps his most unusual roles were as a puppeteer in the detective mystery The Falcon Strikes Back and as a philosophical bartender inspired to create exotic cocktails in Harold Lloyd's last film, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947). He also played comical detectives opposite two titans of acting: John Barrymore in Twentieth Century (1934) and Rex Harrison in Unfaithfully Yours (1948); in the latter, he tells conductor Harrison that "Nobody handles Handel like you handle Handel."
Kennedy died of throat cancer at the Motion Picture Hospital, San Fernando Valley on 9 November 1948. His body was interred at the Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, Los Angeles County, California.
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Filmography
— top 60 of 335
Duck Soup
It's a Wonderful World
A Star Is Born
In Old California
Perfect Day
Bacon Grabbers
Anchors Aweigh
Caught in a Cabaret
San Francisco
Air Raid Wardens
Peeping Pete
Westward Passage
Two Tars
Limousine Love
Unfaithfully Yours
Professional Sweetheart
Tramp Trouble
Thieves
Radio Rampage
Heaven Only Knows
Angora Love
It Happened Tomorrow
Tillie's Punctured Romance
Chasing Husbands
Ladies Last
Diplomaniacs
King for a Night
What Fur
Something for Nothing
Dummy Ache
The Black Doll
Clock Wise
Bob Hope's World of Comedy
My Dream Is Yours
Twentieth Century
The Guide
When's Your Birthday?
Robin Hood of El Dorado
Wedding Bills
Motor Maniacs
Edgar Hamlet
King Kelly of the U.S.A.
Skirts
Hitler's Madman
The Finishing Touch
Crazy House
Super-Sleuth
An Incompetent Hero
Captain Tugboat Annie
A Thief Catcher
The Golden Age of Comedy
The Sin of Harold Diddlebock
Double Wedding
Twenty Minutes of Love
Gangs Of The City
The Return of Jimmy Valentine
Hillbilly Blitzkrieg
The Rounders
When Comedy Was King
The Knockout
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