In Memoriam: Dolph Menjou

I’ll never really believe that the human dynamo christened Adolphe Menjou has actually departed stage center. When the phone rings, I’m almost certain it’s Dolph, ready to break into an outburst at the latest damfool action of some silly politico, Republican or Democrat.

The newspaper biographies told of the fabulous career that began as little more than an extra in the silent movies; of his first important break in Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris; and of that sparkling performance as the editor in The Front Page, which lifted him from coffee-and-rolls and sent him orbiting into stardom and into the astronomical salary brackets. In any record of the Hollywood era between the early ‘20s and the late ‘50s, his name will always loom large.

MR

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Morrie Ryskind

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I’ll never really believe that the human dynamo christened Adolphe Menjou has actually departed stage center. When the phone rings, I’m almost certain it’s Dolph, ready to break into an outburst at the latest damfool action of some silly politico, Republican or Democrat.

The newspaper biographies told of the fabulous career that began as little more than an extra in the silent movies; of his first important break in Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris; and of that sparkling performance as the editor in The Front Page, which lifted him from coffee-and-rolls and sent him orbiting into stardom and into the astronomical salary brackets. In any record of the Hollywood era between the early ‘20s and the late ‘50s, his name will always loom large.