Ed Wynn
| Ed Wynn | |
|---|---|
Wynn in the film Stage Door Canteen (1943)
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| Born |
Isaiah Edwin Leopold November 9, 1886 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | June 19, 1966 (aged 79) Beverly Hills, California, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Complications of throat cancer |
| Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park Glendale, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actor, comedian |
| Years active | 1903–1966 |
| Spouse(s) |
Hilda Keenan (m. 1914; div. 1937) Frieda Mierse (m. 1937; div. 1939) Dorothy Elizabeth Nesbitt (m. 1946; div. 1955) |
| Children | Keenan Wynn |
Ed Wynn (born Isaiah Edwin Leopold on November 9, 1886 – June 19, 1966) was an American actor and comedian noted for his Perfect Fool comedy character, his pioneering radio show of the 1930s, and his later career as a dramatic actor.
Ed Wynn was an American comedian who was born Isaiah Edwin Leopold in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, who manufactured and sold women's hats, was born in Bohemia. His mother, of Romanian and Turkish ancestry, came from Istanbul. Wynn attended Central High School in Philadelphia until age 15. He ran away from home in his teens, worked as a hat salesman and as a utility boy, and eventually adapted his middle name "Edwin" into his new stage name, "Ed Wynn", to save his family the embarrassment of having a lowly comedian as a relative.
Wynn began his career in vaudeville in 1903 and was a star of the Ziegfeld Follies starting in 1914. During The Follies of 1915, W. C. Fields allegedly caught Wynn mugging for the audience under the table during his "Pool Room" routine and knocked him unconscious with his cue. Wynn wrote, directed, and produced many Broadway shows in the subsequent decades, and was known for his silly costumes and props as well as for the giggly, wavering voice he developed for the 1921 musical review, The Perfect Fool.
Although many gag writers later provided material for Wynn's performances in radio, television and movies, he was proud to boast that he had written every line he ever spoke during his early career as a stage performer.
In the early 1930s Wynn hosted the popular radio show The Fire Chief, heard in North America on Tuesday nights, sponsored by Texaco gasoline. Like many former vaudeville performers who turned to radio in the same decade, the stage-trained Wynn insisted on playing for a live studio audience, doing each program as an actual stage show, using visual bits to augment his written material, and in his case, wearing a colorful costume with a red fireman's helmet. He usually bounced his gags off announcer/straight man Graham McNamee; Wynn's customary opening, "Tonight, Graham, the show's gonna be different," became one of the most familiar tag-lines of its time; a sample joke: "Graham, my uncle just bought a new second-handed car... he calls it Baby! I don't know, it won't go anyplace without a rattle!"
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