Laughter's Gentle Soul: The Life of Robert Benchley [Hardcover]

Billy Altman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1997

Benchley was a best-selling author of a dozen hilarious books chronicling the comic futility of the human condition, and one of the most influential humorists not only of his own generation but of successive ones as well. A sharp-witted theater critic whose reviews graced the pages of Life and The New Yorker for nearly two decades, he was a much sought after radio personality. Besides appearing in character roles in scores of feature films, he starred in his own series of nearly fifty, often side-splittingly funny, comedy shorts. And he was the life of a thousand parties from Park Avenue to Sunset Boulevard. Small wonder, then, that more than a half-century after his death, Benchley continues to occupy a very special place in the legend and lore of twentieth-century American life. In this sympathetic and engrossing biography, Billy Altman explores the man behind the mirth. He recounts Benchley's journey from straitlaced New England schoolboy to mischievous international boulevardier, and from the glittering lights of Broadway, as well as the dim ones in the rollicking speakeasies of New York during Prohibition, to the infamous Garden of Allah apartments and the glamorously decadent Hollywood of the 1930s and 1940s. Spiced with illuminating glimpses of such notable literary figures as Parker, Sherwood, Ross, Marc Connelly, Donald Ogden Stewart, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Thurber, as well as motion-picture celebrities including Jean Harlow, Fred Astaire, Shirley Temple, Charles Butterworth, Sheilah Graham, and Alfred Hitchcock, Laughter's Gentle Soul is a vivid portrait of an extraordinary period in America's cultural history - and of one extraordinarily talented and complex man whohelped to make much of it happen.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

While he lived, Robert Benchley was a household name--writer, actor, critic, and wit, Benchley was lionized in the pages of the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and the New York Tribune and appeared in countless Hollywood films, some of which he wrote himself. Fifty years after his death, Benchley has become something of a footnote to the likes of Dorothy Parker, Alexander Wollcott, and other luminaries of the Algonquin Hotel Round Table. Most of Benchley's books are out of print, as are the two previous biographies about him. Thus, Billy Altman's Laughter's Gentle Soul comes at a good time to reawaken interest in this forgotten funnyman.

Altman's biography chronicles Benchley's life from his birth in Worcester, Massachusetts, his schooling at Harvard, and early writing career in New York through the heady days of Hollywood and the Algonquin Hotel to his untimely death from cirrhosis in 1945. The stories are all here: Benchley's practical jokes, his legendary drinking, his strict separation of suburban family life and urban adultery. What is not in Laughter's Gentle Soul is any critical analysis of the stories, the writing, or the reasons for Benchley's self-destruction. Why, for example, was Benchley so admired by fellow humorists? Why did he not drink until the age of 31 and then apparently fall immediately into incurable alcoholism? Fans of Robert Benchley won't find anything in Laughter's Gentle Soul that they haven't read before; for those who are unfamiliar with the man, however, Altman's book provides a good first introduction.

From Library Journal

With his work for Tribune Magazine, Vanity Fair, Life, and, eventually, the fledgling New Yorker, where he was the theater critic for nearly two decades, Benchley (1889-1945) saw his brand of humor?featuring the everyday man confused by life's endless tangents?begin to succeed. Along the way, he developed friendships with Dorothy Parker, Robert Sherwood, Alexander Woollcott, Marc Connelly, and George S. Kaufman?who with Benchley all became members of the Round Table (the Vicious Table, according to some) at the Algonquin Hotel. Hollywood beckoned, but there the drinking, which led to his death, and the womanizing that had begun in New York's prohibition speakeasies began to get out of hand. Journalist Altman has written an entertaining and valuable study which poignantly shows that despite Benchley's failings as an absent father and husband, his humor remained gently deprecating; this alone makes the biography worth reading. Highly recommended.?Robert Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., Ind.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 382 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; 1st edition (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393038335
• ISBN-13: 978-0393038330
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,183,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I Think This Is More a Biography, Than a Critical Analysis, January 9, 2003

By 

Ted Strong "tedstrong.com" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Laughter's Gentle Soul: The Life of Robert Benchley (Hardcover)

I just ran a search on Robert Benchley at Amazon and when this book came up I was surprised to see that it only got two and a half stars (based on 5 votes). I read this book when it first came out a few years ago. I remember thinking it was interesting and well-written. It seems like some of the negative reviews given to the book here, came from the reviewers being disappointed that this is a biography of the man, and not a critical breakdown/dissection of his work and writings.

And this book <i>is</i> primarily a biography, so, knowing that going in, I think you will not be disappointed.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sweet and fluffy, which is not nescessarily a bad thing, December 21, 2001

By 

jenbird "book and classic movie fiend" (Havertown, PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Laughter's Gentle Soul: The Life of Robert Benchley (Hardcover)

After reading Marion Meade's "Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?", I bought this book to learn more about Robert Benchley, which I did.

Meade, who spared little if anything when writing about Parker (which made for an excellent read) pulled no punches with Benchley, either. Described in detail are his good and bad (i.e., womanizing) qualities.

Altman definitely takes a gentler view of Benchley, which from what I've read here and elsewhere, is what the world in general seemed to do; Benchley's messy personal life never seemed to detract from his image, with the public as well as with friends, of a genial, kind, sweet and funny family man.

Other reviewers have criticized Altman for not going more into depth about what kind of person Benchley was and what made him that way, but in this age of trashy, spare-no-detail celebrity biographies, I didn't think that was always a negative attribute.

All in all, I enjoyed this book, in large part for the good quantity of Benchley's work featured therein. You may not get all the dirty details, but in the case of Robert Benchley, I didn't really want them.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Robert Benchley, September 20, 2006

By 

Thomas Degan "Tom Degan" (Goshen, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Laughter's Gentle Soul: The Life of Robert Benchley (Hardcover)

I could not have come up with a better title for this book if I had tried. There's just something about Benchley - be it the writer or the man - that , to me, has always been irresistable. He is the personification of American wit! The short films he produced for Paramount and MGM between 1928 and 1945 are treasures in the history of American Humor. All of them should be released on DVD. As of this writing, only a handful of Paramounts are now commercially available.

Altman's fine biography is a sympathetic look at the man and what shaped him into being who he was. Particularly of interest is the death of his older brother in the Spanish American War in 1899 and the effect it had on Benchley as a child.

This book could have been better, no question about it. But until a better one comes along (don't hold your breath), it is as fine a reference as any ever written. Sixty-one years after his death, no one has replaced him. He was a real S.O.B. Sweet Old Bob! God rest his merry soul.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
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