Edward Everett Horton
Horton in 1941
Born	Edward Everett Horton Jr. (1886-03-18)March 18, 1886 New York City, U.S.
Died	September 29, 1970(1970-09-29) (aged 84) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting place	Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, California
Other names	E. E. Horton Edward Horton Edward E. Horton
Alma mater	Oberlin College (no degree) Brooklyn Polytechnic Columbia University
Occupations	Actor singer dancer
Years active	1906–1970

Edward Everett Horton Jr. (March 18, 1886 – September 29, 1970) was an American character actor.^[1] He had a long career in film, theater, radio, television, and voice work for animated cartoons.

Early life

Horton was born March 18, 1886, on the west end of Long Island in Kings County, New York, (now the Borough of Brooklyn, in the City of New York, since consolidation of five boroughs in 1898) to Edward Everett Horton, a typesetter / compositor in the press room for The New York Times, and his wife, Isabella S. (née Diack) Horton.^[2] His father had his same name with English and German ancestry, and his mother was Cuban / Spanish born in Matanzas Province, Cuba, to George and Mary (née Orr) Diack, also natives of Scotland.^[3] He first attended the old Boys' High School in Brooklyn (now merged as Boys and Girls High School). Later at the turn of the 20th century, the family moved south to Baltimore, Maryland and he went to The Baltimore City College (an all-boys "magnet" and the third-oldest active public high school in the United States.^[4] Its curriculum focused on humanities, social studies, the arts and the classics. He attended in 1902-1904 and later was inducted into the school's alumni/faculty Hall of Fame in 1959.^[5]

He was a student at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, where he majored in German language and literature. However, he was asked to leave after a prankish incident when he climbed to the top of a building and, after a crowd gathered, threw off a dummy, making them think he had jumped. Returning to New York City, he attended the old Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now incorporated as a graduate school within New York University) for one year, until the P.I.B. school discontinued its arts courses; he then moved on across the East River to the Columbia University (then as Columbia College) on Morningside Heights on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for a brief period, "until I got fouled up with The Varsity Show of 1909. This was the first time I had really ever been on the stage ... After that, to put it gently, Columbia and I came to an amicable parting of the ways. They were just as glad to see me go as I was to get out."^[6] That concluded Horton's brief collegiate period.

Stage and film career

Horton had begun his stage career at age 20 in 1906, singing and dancing and playing small parts in productions during his brief college experiences, then vaudeville, and Broadway productions. His father persuaded him to adopt his full name professionally. "Originally, I went under the name of just Edward Horton. My father said, 'I think you're making a mistake, Edward. Anybody could be Edward Horton, but nobody else could be Edward Everett Horton.' I said, 'I think I like that.'"^[7]

In 1919, he moved to Los Angeles, where he began acting in Hollywood films of the growing film community in southern California. His first starring role was in the silent film comedy Too Much Business (1922), and he portrayed the lead role of an idealistic young classical music composer in the comedy Beggar on Horseback (1925). In 1927–29, he starred in eight two-reel silent comedies produced by Harold Lloyd for Paramount Pictures release. He made the transition to sound films with Educational Pictures in 1929, in a series of sound-comedy playlets. As a stage-trained performer, he found more film work easily and appeared in several Warner Bros. movies, including The Terror (1928) and Sonny Boy (1929).

Horton soon cultivated his own special variation of the double take (an actor's reaction to something, followed by a delayed, more extreme reaction). In Horton's version, he smiled ingratiatingly and nodded in agreement with what just happened; then, when realization set in, his facial features collapsed entirely into a sober, troubled mask.

As Horton became known for his performances in movies, he continued to work on the legitimate stage, which he preferred.^[8] He appeared with Gavin Gordon in a 1931 production of Private Lives by Noël Coward.^[8]

Horton starred in many comedy features in the 1930s, usually playing a mousy fellow who put up with domestic or professional problems to a certain point and then finally asserted himself for a happy ending. He is best remembered, however, for his work in supporting roles. These include The Front Page (1931), Trouble in Paradise (1932), Alice in Wonderland (1933), The Gay Divorcee (1934, the first of several Astaire/Rogers films in which Horton appeared), Top Hat (1935), Biography of a Bachelor Girl (1935), Danger - Love at Work (1937), Lost Horizon (1937), Holiday (1938), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Pocketful of Miracles (1961), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), and Sex and the Single Girl (1964). His last role was in the comedy film Cold Turkey (1971), in which his character communicated only through facial expressions.

Horton continued to appear in stage productions, often in summer stock. His performance in the play Springtime for Henry became a perennial in summer theaters.^[9]

Horton was so prolific he sometimes found himself committed to two projects at the same time. One project would be in progress while the second project suddenly came up sooner than expected, forcing Horton to make other arrangements. In 1953, Horton announced on the ABC-TV game show The Name's the Same that his next picture would be one of the Ma and Pa Kettle comedies. A scheduling conflict compelled Horton to bow out, and his role in Ma and Pa Kettle at Home was played by Alan Mowbray.

In 1960, Horton was approached by his former director Frank Capra to work in the new film Pocketful of Miracles. Horton wanted to rejoin Capra, but had a commitment to finish a stage run of the play Once Upon a Mattress; the show wouldn't be closing for another two weeks. Horton phoned Buster Keaton, who had played the same role in an earlier production, and asked if Keaton could replace him. Keaton finished the play's run, and Horton made the Capra film.

Radio and television

From 1945 to 1947, Horton hosted radio's Kraft Music Hall. An early television appearance came in the play Sham, shown on The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre on December 13, 1948. During the 1950s, Horton worked primarily in television. One of his best-remembered appearances is in an episode of I Love Lucy, broadcast in 1952, in which he is cast against type as a frisky, amorous suitor. In 1960, he guest-starred on The Real McCoys as J. Luther Medwick, grandfather of the boyfriend of series character Hassie McCoy (Lydia Reed). In the story, Medwick clashes with the equally outspoken Grandpa Amos McCoy (played by Walter Brennan).

He remains, however, best known to younger Saturday morning television viewers of the "baby boomers" generation (born after World War II era, 1946-1964) as the distinctive memorable voice of the venerable narrator of Fractured Fairy Tales segments with the retelling of earlier famous fairy tales and legends from previous centuries on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show animation / cartoon program (1959–1961),^[10] an American animated / cartoon television series that originally aired from November 19, 1959, to June 27, 1964.

In 1962, he portrayed the character Uncle Ned in three episodes of Dennis the Menace. In 1965, he guest-starred in an episode of The Cara Williams Show. He also played occasionally in two memorable TV shows from the 1960s as the medicine man, "Roaring Chicken" of the neighboring non-hostile peace-loving but cowardly Kioway Indian tribe, decked out in beaded / fringed deerskin native Indian garb, in F Troop (1965-1967). This spoof Western / U.S. Cavalry comedy series set after the American Civil War era also starring troopers Forrest Tucker, Ken Berry and Larry Storch at fictional Fort Courage. He echoed this funny Indian role, portraying a "Chief Screaming Chicken", on the 1966-1968 TV show version of Batman two years later, as a pawn to another guest villain portrayed by Vincent Price's "Egghead".

Personal life

Horton never discussed his private life publicly, but in 1968 he granted an interview to writers Bernard Rosenberg and Harry Silverstein in which he reviewed his life and career, punctuated by self-effacing remarks ("Nobody's older than I am. Oh, a few people are, but they are not in circulation").^[7] Published in 1970, the interview only skims through his personal relationships. Horton recalled that, rather than dating or nightclubbing, he would invite his female co-stars to attend parties he was throwing. "I never married. However, I have not given up hope. This is Leap Year [1968], you know."^[7]

Death and legacy

Horton died of cancer on September 29, 1970, at age 84 in the Encino area of Los Angeles, California, where he had lived for 45 years, since buying property there in the mid-1920s, early in his Hollywood career. His remains were interred in nearby Glendale's Whispering Pines section of Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.^[11]

In 1925, Horton purchased several acres in the district of Encino, Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley and lived on the property at 5521 Amestoy Avenue until his death. He named the ranch estate "Belleigh Acres", and it contained Horton's own house and several adjacent houses for his brother, his sister and their respective families.^[1] In 1939, just before the Second World War, the famous author F. Scott Fitzgerald (also from Baltimore), rented a house on the estate. He was working on his unfinished last novel The Last Tycoon in his final years. In the 1950s, the State of California forced Horton to sell a portion of his property for construction of the adjacent Ventura Freeway. The freeway construction left a short stump of Amestoy Avenue south of Burbank Boulevard, and shortly after his death the City of Los Angeles renamed that portion of the avenue as Edward Everett Horton Lane in his honor / memory.^[12]

Later British radio DJ and comedian Kenny Everett adopted the last name of Everett in honor of Horton, who was a childhood hero of his. (His real name was Maurice Cole).^[13]

Horton is commemorated with a plaque / photo since the 1960s among dozens of other alumni and faculty in the Hall of Fame corridor at the "Castle on the Hill" current building / campus since 1928 of his alma mater, The Baltimore City College (high school) on "Collegian Hill", at 33rd Street and The Alameda, 21218, in northeast Baltimore.

Plus a similar memorial photo/plaque in a wall exhibit listing famous successful graduates of Baltimore City Public Schools at their Alice Pinderhughes Administrative Headquarters at East North Avenue and North Calvert Street, Baltimore 21218, from the 150th Anniversary celebration of 1829-1979 and the renovation / reconstruction of the old 1913-1967 building of the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute (high school) as BCPS offices in 1983-1984.

For his contribution to the Hollywood motion picture industry, Horton has a star on the famed list of sidewalk stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6427 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.^[14]

Filmography

Partial television credits

Radio appearances