Re: Classic Comedians Thread - Laurel and Hardy, Marx Brothers, Jack Benny & others..
You know, the more clips I see of Billy Gilbert the more I realize how talented and how hilarious he was...and Stan discovered him (see Wikipedia text beow):
Gilbert was spotted by Stan Laurel who was in the audience of Gilbert's show Sensations of 1929. Laurel went back stage to meet Gilbert and was so impressed by him he introduced him to comedy producer Hal Roach. Gilbert was employed as a gag writer, actor and director, and at the age of 35 he appeared in his first film for the Fox Film Corporation in 1929.
Gilbert broke into comedy short subjects with the Vitaphone studio in 1930 (he appears without billing in the Joe Frisco comedy The Happy Hottentots, recently restored and released on DVD). Gilbert's burly frame and gruff voice made him a good comic villain, and within the year he was working for producer Hal Roach. He appeared in support of Roach's comedy stars Laurel and Hardy, Charley Chase, Thelma Todd, and Our Gang. One of his Laurel and Hardy appearances was the 1932 Academy Award-winning featurette The Music Box. Gilbert generally played blustery tough guys in the Roach comedies, but could play other comic characters, from fey couturiers to pompous radio announcers to roaring drunks. Gilbert's skill at dialects prompted Roach to give him his own series: big Billy Gilbert teamed with little Billy Bletcher as the Dutch-comic "Schmaltz Brothers.'" in offbeat musical shorts like Rhapsody in Brew. Gilbert also directed these.
Like many other Roach contractees, Gilbert found similar work at other studios. He appears in the early comedies of the Three Stooges at Columbia Pictures, as well as in RKO short subjects. These led to featured roles in full-length films, and from 1934 Billy Gilbert became one of the screen's most familiar faces.
One of his standard routines had Gilbert progressively getting excited or nervous about something, and his speech would break down into facial spasms, culminating in a big, loud sneeze. He used this bit so frequently that Walt Disney thought of him immediately when casting the voice of Sneezy in 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Gilbert and Disney would later work together again in Mickey and the Beanstalk, with Gilbert voicing Willie the Giant in a very similar way to Sneezy. Gilbert did the sneeze routine in a memorable cameo in the Paramount comedy Million Dollar Legs (1932) starring W.C. Fields, Jack Oakie, Susan Fleming, and Ben Turpin.
Happy New Year, Jim!
