Charles Butterworth: the city's comic actor

Born 26 July 1896, South Bend · died June 1946, Los Angeles, aged 49

The tie: Charles Edward Butterworth was born in South Bend on July 26, 1896, the son of a South Bend physician. He is this record's headline find precisely because he is in no other part of it: not in the people record, not in the film record — a first-rank comic actor of the studio era who was born, schooled, and first employed in this city, carried here whole. He took his law degree at Notre Dame in 1924 and went to work as a reporter at the South Bend News-Times. The paper's own tradition carries the story — flagged as anecdote in the accounts that repeat it — that he was fired for reporting the fictitious death of a prominent South Bend citizen; the Hollywood Walk of Fame's biography gives a different account of a firing at the paper — fired, then rehired when it came out that he was courting the daughter of a big local advertiser. Both versions print here at the size they carry, as anecdote, because the two tellings do not agree and neither is documented beyond the telling. From the News-Times he moved to Chicago journalism, and the Walk of Fame biography adds a brief turn in the legal profession his Notre Dame degree had trained him for, before the stage took him.

The craft record: Butterworth was a comedian in vaudeville from 1924, then in Broadway musicals, then in films — some forty of them between 1929 and 1944, nearly all comedies, in which his specialty was the dithering, soft-voiced, perpetually undecided man his New York Times obituary summed up as characterizing "the man who could not make up his mind." The standing shelf: Love Me Tonight (1932), as the Count de Savignac; Forsaking All Others (1934), where his turn beside Clark Gable is the one the accounts keep; Every Day's a Holiday (1937), in which he is credited with the line "Why don't you slip out of those wet clothes and into a dry martini?"; Second Chorus (1940); and the role the obituaries named his most memorable, the bugle-playing Private Eddie Dibble in This Is the Army (1943).

He carried top billing in We Went to College (1936), the title role in Baby Face Harrington (1935), and shared top billing with Ann Corio in The Sultan's Daughter. The supporting shelf, as the Walk of Fame biography recites it, is the era's comedy company: Jeanette MacDonald in Love Me Tonight and The Cat and the Fiddle, Mae West in Every Day's a Holiday, Myrna Loy in Penthouse, Laurel and Hardy and Jimmy Durante in Hollywood Party, Clark Gable, Robert Montgomery, and Joan Crawford in Forsaking All Others, Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray in Swing High, Swing Low, Bob Hope in Thanks for the Memory, Fred Astaire, Paulette Goddard, and Burgess Meredith in Second Chorus, and the Andrews Sisters in What's Cookin'?, Give Out, Sisters, and Always a Bridesmaid. His voice outlived the face: Daws Butler, working for the Jay Ward studio, took Butterworth's distinctive delivery as the inspiration for Cap'n Crunch.

The end, and the conflict it carries: Butterworth was killed in an automobile accident on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, his car striking a lamp post. The date prints as a conflict and is not averaged: some accounts date the accident to June 13, 1946; the New York Times obituary and the Los Angeles Times of June 14, 1946, place his death on June 14. He was 49. His resting place is given in the reference record as St. Joseph Valley Memorial Park in Granger — the record brought him home. In 1960 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 7036 Hollywood Boulevard, posthumously.

Sources

1. New York Times, obituary of Charles Butterworth, June 14, 1946 — the death date, the accident on Sunset Boulevard, and "the man who could not make up his mind."
2. Hollywood Walk of Fame, biography of Charles Butterworth — the South Bend birth, the physician father, the 1924 Notre Dame law degree, the News-Times years and the firing-and-rehiring version with its advertiser's-daughter reason, the legal-profession turn, vaudeville from 1924, the supporting-role shelf as recited, the 1960 star at 7036 Hollywood Boulevard.
3. The South Bend News-Times reference record — the fictitious-death firing story, carried there flagged as anecdote.
4. The standard Butterworth reference record — the filmography as listed, the Cap'n Crunch voice attribution to Daws Butler and the Jay Ward studio, the resting place at St. Joseph Valley Memorial Park, Granger.