(1889-1945)
The wry humorist, critic, and sometime actor was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard University in 1912. His journalistic career took him from the New York Tribune to the editorship of Vanity Fair, even as he wrote for numerous other publications. He was drama editor of Life (1920-1929) and The New Yorker (1929-1940) and made his acting debut when Irving Berlin asked him to read one of his humorous pieces in the Music Box Revue of 1923-1924. Thereafter, Benchley occasionally performed his work on stage, in motion picture short subjects, and on radio. His books were humorous looks at his own travails as an ordinary man besieged by the trivial demands of daily life.
The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater. James Fisher.