Robert Benchley

Humorist Robert Benchley attempts to find Walt Disney to ask him to adapt a short story about a gentle dragon who would rather recite poetry than be...

A 17th-century witch returns to wreak havoc in the life of a descendant of the Puritan witch hunter who burned her.

Jane is a nice girl and has had her eyes on a young man who seems more interested in his hand-built car than in Jane. She decides to shed her "nice...

A Broadway choreographer gets drafted and coincidentally ends up in the same army base as the boyfriend of his object of affection.

While on a ship to Skagway, Alaska, Duke and Chester find a map to a secret gold mine, which had been 'stolen' by thugs. In Alaska to recover her...

Flying Tiger Fred Atwell sneaks away from his famous squadron's personal appearance tour and goes incognito for several days of leave. He quickly...

Janie lives to dance and will dance anywhere, even stripping in a burlesque house. Tod Newton, the rich playboy, discovers her there and helps her...

Steve Raleight wants to produce a show on Broadway. He finds a backer, Herman Whipple and a leading lady, Sally Lee. But Caroline Whipple forces...

Returning to her hometown from New York, Susan Applegate learns that she hasn't enough for the train fare and disguises herself as a twelve-year-old...

A Braodway playwright wants to keep on writing plays for his wife to star in, but all she wants is to retire to Connecticut and, following a few...

Captain Alan Gaskell sails the perilous waters between Hong Kong and Singapore with a secret cargo: a fortune in British gold. That's not the only...

While a few Hollywood celebrities such as James Stewart and Clark Gable saw combat during World War II, the majority used their talents to rally the...

Journalist Marion Hargrove enters the Army intending to supplement his income by writing about his training experiences. He muddles through basic...

Anything can happen during a weekend at New York's Waldorf-Astoria: a glamorous movie star meets a world-weary war correspondent and mistakes him for...

Faith and Hope Banner, sisters, are "convention hostesses" in a hotel. A body is discovered next door as the magician's convention is leaving and the...

A young trumpeter rises through the jazz world and finds love.

Ad man Stephen Dexter asks his secretary Kendall to marry him as a loophole in order to protect his finances during an important business deal. Once...

A struggling painter takes a job as a secretary to a female advertising executive. While working to obtain an account from a tobacco company, they...

For those, if any, who have wondered why so many Paramount contractees appeared in United Artists' films during the war years, this is another one of...

Stewed, Fried and Boiled is a 1929 comedy short.

Robert Benchley shows how to successfully play croquet.

Furnace Trouble is a 1929 comedy short.

Lesson No. 1 is a 1929 comedy short.

The Spellbinder is a comedy short.

A series of vignettes with a loose plot. Featured are Frank Morgan, Groucho Marx, Frank McHugh, Robert Benchley and The Brian Sisters. Not bad, more...

A working girl shares her apartment with an artist, taking the place in shifts.

Director Hal Walker's 1945 musical comedy stars Betty Hutton as a hat-check girl at New York City's famous nightclub. The cast also includes Barry...

Anthology film of three tales of the supernatural. The first story is set at the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The second involves a psychic who...

Dr. Benchley is addressing the Ladies Club on the subject of the reproductive habits of the polyp, a small aquatic organism. Although he is not able...

Jim's father wants to marry Eugenia, but her sister Netta refuses to allow it. When Jim sees Ann at a club, he falls for her even though she is with...

A newsreel photographer neglects his love life to get the perfect shot.

This Robert Benchley 'How To' comedy short attempts to teach us how to profile criminals by physical characteristics.

In this screwball comedy a WW2 US pilot bombs a Japanese aircraft carrier, is assumed to be dead, and then is misquoted in the press as fondly...

A starving, uncompromising artist and an heiress fall in love on first sight and immediately get married. She loves his outrageous behaviour, his...

A lecturer seated at a desk promises an informative film about how to sleep; it's a sequel to and inspired by "How to stay awake," which put his...

A Night at the Movies is a short film starring Robert Benchley. It was Benchley's greatest success since How to Sleep, and won him a contract for...

A bookish husband tries to win back the affections of his horse-breeding wife.

Assistant Treasurer Benchley reports on the annual expenditures of the club for its home for "boys between the ages of 14", and other projects.

Teenage Janie falls in love with a private from an Army base opposed by her editor father.

Newlywed Janie's (Joan Leslie) World War II-veteran husband (Robert Hutton) goes to work at her father's (Edward Arnold) newspaper.

Benchley tries his best to demonstrate the routine one should follow to start the day right.

American crime reporter John Jones is reassigned to Europe as a foreign correspondent to cover the imminent war. When he walks into the middle of an...

Film adaptation of the Broadway hit, about the comic mayhem that erupts in a small town when a 15-year old high-schooler (Shirley Temple) is wrongly...

A New York magazine sends its editors to South America to find beautiful girls.

A look at the first years of Pixar Animation Studios - from the success of "Toy Story" and Pixar's promotion of talented people, to the building of...

Two Dartmouth football players fall in love with the same girl following college graduation.

Chorus girl Patsy Shaw crashes a high-society party, meets playboy Charlie Breen, they fall in love, and are on their merry way to wedded bliss....

Henry Fonda hosts this retrospective on the career and films of iconic filmmaker David O. Selznick, who epitomized the era of the auteur producer in...

Humorist Robert Benchley discusses the issue of food and how different situations can affect one's ability to consume and digest food, using his...

Robert takes a train ride to Washington, DC, on "important business."

Two men working below a manhole cover wonder what they would do if a woman was to fall in. This leads to one of the workers saying that Robert...

Joe Doakes is lamenting to his wife the lack of variety in his meals. In particular, he misses eating stewed tomatoes, the fruit which he believes...

This comedic short provides a lesson in how NOT to train a dog.

In this comedic short, a psychoanalyst encounters a patient who eerily resembles himself.

A brief, illustrated lecture on digestion. Aburdist humor is the hallmark of this pseudo-scientific description of biting, chewing, swallowing, and...

A 14-year-old boy lies about his age and enlists in the United State Marine Corps without his family's consent or knowledge. He is sent into battle...

Benchley shows how to budget one's time during lunch hour to get things done efficiently. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned.

A man humorously attempts to give an overview of income taxes.

A candidate has laryngitis, so his assistant must make a speech in his place. Both the speaker and his audience are soon befuddled.

When Joe Doakes listens to a quiz show on the radio and knows all the answers, his wife encourages him to go on a quiz show himself. He appears on a...

An anthropologist unwittingly takes a man disguised as a "primitive man" back to New York as a specimen.

A lecturer tells the audience that it is National Take Care Week. He tells the story of a man who gets stung in his garden and the problems the man...

A comedy short staring Robert Benchley. He tries to show us how to make our own movies.

The ringmaster of a flea circus inherits a fortune...if he can find which chair it's hidden in.

After some investigation, Robert Benchley finds his nerves are in a bad state. He has the jitters so bad he can't hold his cup still enough to drink...

Robert Benchley offers a humorous lecture on how to avoid different types of strain during reading.

This film gives a fictionalized version of how the popular real-life radio program of the title began.

American conductor John Meredith and his manager, Hank Higgins, go to Russia shortly before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Meredith falls in...

While his wife is away, Frederick Stumplefinger lets his kids go out jitterbugging on a school night, only to have his wife return early.

Joe Doakes, like most men, is unable to cope with personal emergencies or those in a position of authority (real or imagined).

Humorist Robert Benchley illustrates the fine points of attending an American football game.

A businessman goes home early to surprise his family and is treated with suspicion, mostly by his wife's bridge club.

A girl is desperate to get to Washington D.C. to be with her lonesome brother, a wounded G.I. She persuades Bing Crosby to let her join his caravan.

The staff of a record factory drown their sorrows at Duffy's Tavern, while the company owner faces threats of bankruptcy.

Robert Benchley explains Technocracy with visual aids in his classic befuddled manor.

American humorist Robert Benchley provides a comedic look at the difficulty in being a father.

Clip-filled promotional short by MGM Studios celebrating the body of work by producer David O. Selznick.

In this Robert Benchley instructional video, he demonstrates the pitfalls of a homebody husband attempting to take a vacation apart from his wife.

Robert Benchley lectures on physical witness in middle age.

Robert Benchley's wry forerunner to "Father of the Bride" detailing his perspective of the upcoming nuptials.

Robert Benchley aims his keen observational skills toward expectant fathers.

Robert Benchley answers questions ranging from across the political spectrum.

Joe Doakes tries to take a day off.

The City Treasurer stands in for the mayor, throwing out the first pitch on Opening Day.

A man fumbles through an apartment sub-let assessment while his wife is away.

A man buys a magic set for his son, but the tricks worked better in the store than they do at home.

Robert Benchley revamps his pre-code classic "Sex Life of the Polyp" for a new generation.

Robert Benchley's everyman spends an evening home alone.

A multi-studio effort to show the newsreel audience the progress of the Hollywood war effort.

Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire present more golden moments from the MGM film library, this time including comedy and drama as well as classic musical...

As Joe Doakes is reading the newspaper, he begins to talk to himself. Questioned by his wife, he explains that he is disturbed by the paper's account...

A police officer alerts his audience to the fact that inanimate objects can be as dangerous as human criminals. He then displays several offenders...

Benchley, in his own unique way, starts to drive his wife crazy. First he waits until just as she is serving dinner before he goes to wash his hands...

Benchley fills in for a music critic on a radio show. His performance is less than stellar.

The story of the legendary wits who lunched daily at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City during the 1920s. The core of the so-called Round Table...

Two classic animated shorts from the Disney studios. In 'The Reluctant Dragon' (1941), a young boy and a famous dragon fighter team up to teach a...

Film clips highlight the funniest scenes and brightest comic stars in MGM's history.

Winners of the Lucky Stars National Dance Contest - one woman from each state of the United States - are welcomed to Palm Springs. Palm Springs being...