1876-1944
American humorist, author, columnist and occasional actor Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb was born on this day in Paducah, Kentucky. Cobb was known to be the "epitome" of the southern "character." He had a number of wild stories about his family history that were clearly contrived, often ignoring real accomplishments of his ancestors. For example, his maternal grandfather is credited with the discovery that the use of the mixture morphine-atropine with a hypodermic would stop cholera. True as it is, such facts were apparently of no interest or use to the man who would later in life be dubbed the "Duke of Paducah." Ironically, he would have to relocate to New York City to find the beginnings of success with his writings (I say ironically, because as southerner myself, I am familiar, even in my lifetime, of southern "views" of "yankee" cities like New York). By 1911, he was working at the Saturday Evening Post. He was their principle reporter covering World War I, marking one of the only times in his career that his writing turned deadly serious. In what would be another irony, for someone who was considered toward the end of his life to inappropriately using racial humor (one of the reasons he fell very out of fashion in the 1940's), many of his articles covering The Great War for the Post centered on Harlem Hellfightters in a positive light (his book The Glory of the Coming was born out these published articles). Even before this period in his life, producers of motion pictures were using his writing for scenarios in film; a fact most certainly not lost on Cobb! Never to be left out of any endeavour, when the films came looking for source material, they got more than just ideas for scripts...they got Cobb himself. The first film (as far as anyone knows) to bear his name was a scenario that he penned in 1914 for Our Mutual Girl, No. 30 was indeed the 30th installment of a short melodrama series produced by Reliance Film Co. for actress Norma Phillips aka Margaret, Our Mutual Girl. He, in fact, penned No's 31, 32 and 33 in the series as well. The first credit that appears for an actual adaptation of his work appears in the writing for the 1915 serial Graft, a Universal Manufacturing production; Cobb also appeared in a film for the first time in 1915 as well--taking on the role of "American tourist" in the Cecil B. DeMille directed The Arab (it would be the first of several acting appearances for Cobb during his life, most made in the sound era featuring him in shorts produced for him...sort of as himself--he only made one other film appearance in the silent era in 1920 Go and Get It--a horror mystery knock-off in the general vein of Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue). It should be pointed out that Cobb first began making appearances in film in early 1914 starting episode 24 of Our Mutual Girl in what would later be known as "cameos." Throughout the silent era, several of his stories were adapted to the screen, especially years 1916 to 1920. Just a sampling of actors that appeared in films based on his work include: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Irene Rich and Will Rogers. For a short period in 1921, he spent time writing directly for films. By the late 1920's the use of his stories had fallen out of favor and only two films were produced based on his work, the last of which was an early talkie by Paramount: Walls Tell Tales in 1928 (the last silent film produced from his work was Turkish Delight, produced by DeMille Pictures in 1927). It would take until 1933 for his work to appear in a production in the new era of sounded films; that came with The Woman Accused. From there, only six more films have been produced adapting his writing, four of them in 1934, one in 1938 and the last in an 1953 anthology. The last time his work was adapted for a script, was also the first time and only time--to date--that it has been used for television in a 1955 episode of the CBS series Danger: The Belled Buzzard. Despite all of his southern bluster, Cobb spent the vast entirety of his career in New York City, which is where he died on the 11th of March in 1944. His cremated remains were returned to Kentucky, where they were buried at Oak Grove Cemetery in Puducah.
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| [Source: Find A Grave] |
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| [Source: Find A Grave] |
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