I’ve seen Eugene Pallette in only two movies: My Man Godfrey and The Adventures of Robin Hood, but anyone who’s seen him act at all could never forget him. I hate to keep quoting IMDB all the time, but their description of him as a "gargantuan-bellied, frog-voiced character actor" is right on the money. If you’re familiar with child actors George "Foghorn" Winslow or Billy "Froggy" Laughlin, then imagine them as big grown men, and you’ll have the idea.
Eugene was born in Kansas to theatrical parents, and he started performing on stage as a child. He worked as a street car conductor before he began his career in films in 1913, appearing in 242 films between then and 1946. He appeared in two of D.W. Griffith’s films, The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. Other well known films in which he performed include The Three Musketeers (1921), The Ten Commandments (1923), Huckleberry Finn, Topper, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
My favorite role of Eugene’s is that of Alexander Bullock in My Man Godfrey. Seemingly the only sane member of the family, he can only watch with Godfrey in amazement (making the occasional wisecrack) as his wife and daughters run around like maniacs. His best line: "All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people." Runner up: "Life in this family is one subpoena after another." His exchanges with Alice Brady, who plays his loopy wife, are priceless.
Eugene’s political views were, apparently, quite far to the right, and his "bomb paranoia" led him to purchase property in Oregon which he turned into a well-stocked compound, in case the Russians ever attacked. Clark Gable would visit him there sometimes to hunt and fish. He died in 1954 and is buried in Greenfield Cemetery in Grenola, Kansas.
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