Frank Fay

Frank Fay (born Francis Anthony Donner; November 17, 1891 – September 25, 1961) was an American vaudeville comedian, film actor, and stage actor. Considered an important pioneer in comedy, he has been referred to as "the first stand-up". For a time he was a well known and influential star, vaudeville's highest-paid headliner, earning $17,500 a week in the 1920s, but he later fell into obscurity, in part because of his abrasive personality and rightwing political views. He played the role of Elwood P. Dowd in the 1944 Broadway play Harvey by the American playwright Mary Coyle Chase. He is best known as the first husband of actress Barbara Stanwyck.

Frank Fay was notorious for his narcissism, bigotry, and alcoholism, and according to the American Vaudeville Museum, "even when sober, he was dismissive and unpleasant, and he was disliked by most of his contemporaries". while according to actor and comedian Milton Berle "Fay's friends could be counted on the missing arm of a one-armed man." Berle, who was Jewish, claimed to have once hit Fay in the face with a stage brace after Fay, on seeing the teenaged Berle watching his act from offstage, called out, "Get that little kike out of the wings." Comedy writer Milt Josefsberg recalled that "Fay referred to other comedians as 'Jew bastards. Jack Benny did not like Frank Fay personally or professionally: "When he appeared in vaudeville he rarely changed his act or polished it. He never bothered to remove jokes or lines that were dated. His attitude toward the audience was, 'You people are lucky enough to see the great Frank Fay no matter what I do.

Early life Fay was born in San Francisco, California, to Irish Catholic parents. He took the professional name of Frank Fay after concluding that his birth name was not suitable for the stage.

As a child, he appeared in Victor Herbert's operetta Babes in Toyland.

Vaudeville Fay enjoyed considerable success as a variety artist starting around 1918, telling jokes and stories in a carefully planned "off the cuff" manner that was very original for the time. He was one of the most analyzed comedians, with his timing and delivery praised. Fay made only one more appearance for Warner, billed near the bottom of the cast in Stars Over Broadway (1935), in which, presiding over a radio amateur hour, he made sly remarks at the contestants' expense. Most of the trade reviews paid scant attention to Fay but Variety'''s Joe Bigelow remembered him: "An amateur radio broadcast bit includes some m.c.'ing by Frank Fay. It ends with Pat O'Brien beating Fay to the punch with a sarcastic topper. Out-boffing Fay is something else they can only do in pictures."

Fay's next screen effort did not come about until 1940, a Paramount feature with former Warner stars Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, and Gloria Dickson, I Want a Divorce. The same year Fay had a dramatic role in a major motion picture, They Knew What They Wanted.

Radio Fay had his own radio program, debuting in 1941. The variety show was broadcast on NBC Red.

Later career Frank Fay made a brief screen comeback in 1943 for the low-budget Monogram Pictures. He was teamed with comedian Billy Gilbert for a series of wartime comedies, but walked out after the opener, Spotlight Scandals. Fay was replaced by another comedian more congenial to Gilbert, Shemp Howard.

In 1944, Antoinette Perry cast Fay to star in the play Harvey, about an alcoholic and his friend Harvey, an invisible rabbit, which was his last Broadway success. They adopted a son in 1932. The marriage reportedly soured when Fay's career was eclipsed by Stanwyck's success, and they divorced in 1935.

In 1945, Actors' Equity president Bert Lytell censured Fay for demanding that the association must investigate each member who supported the Spanish Refugee Appeal, or who criticized the Spanish Catholic Church for executing leftists, for un-American activity. The House Committee on Un-American Activities investigated those members.

In January 1946, just months after Nazi Germany had been defeated, a rally of white supremacists gathered at Madison Square Garden for a pro-Fascist event called "The Friends of Frank Fay", organized by Franco supporters and members of the Ku Klux Klan. The number of people attending the rally, in which the speakers also castigated communism, labor unions, and the legacy of the then-recently-deceased president Franklin D. Roosevelt, varied in estimation, with reported figures ranging from 18,000 to 20,000 people.

In the late 1950s Fay was declared legally incompetent. On September 20, 1961, he was admitted to St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California. He died there five days later, aged 69, of a ruptured abdominal aorta. Fay was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles.

LegacyA Star Is Born'' (1937), starring Fredric March and Janet Gaynor, is thought to be an ironic portrayal of the real situation between Frank Fay and his recently divorced wife Barbara Stanwyck: the previously unknown wife shoots to stardom while her husband's career goes into sharp decline.

Fay has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Filmography