Edgar Kennedy
Birthday: 1890-04-26 | Place of Birth: Monterey, California, USAFrom 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.
Known For
Acting
Role
as edited from 'A Pair of Tights' (archive footage)
as Uncle Charlie
as Sweeney
as Jake the Bartender
as Bosun Higgins
as Insp. Mulrooney
as Nepomuk - the Hermit
as Police Chief Murphy
as Smiley Dugan
as Sgt. Ed Cooper
as Biff
as Cornelius Cornpone
as Sheriff Gregory
as Lieutenant Miller
as Sheriff Renick
as Police Lt. Garrison
as Pop Randall
as Spike
as Bicarbonate
as Donovan
as Rudolf Hochstetter
as Sheriff
as Sheriff Judd
as Counterman
as Mahoney
as Onderdonk
as Sweeney
as Willy 'Persimmon' Bates
as Oscar McGonigle
as Sgt. Buck Martin
