John Bunny

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Old Print Article: “John Bunny Dies; Movie Funmaker,” New York Times (1915)

August 16, 2010 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

John Bunny: "Round and puffy, with little gimlet-hole eyes."

Before Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd and the rest, New York City native John Bunny was the first international film comedian. But Bunny, a stage actor who made a very successful transition to the big screen, died in Brooklyn in 1915 during the still-nascent film era, and he isn’t remembered as well as the other silent greats. I came across his obituary in the New York Times. An excerpt form the article subtitled, “Fat, Big, Round-Faced Actor Who Made Millions Laugh Succumbs at 52”:

“John Bunny, the moving picture actor whose big round face and fat form were familiar to millions of patrons of the movie theaters, died yesterday at his residence, 1.416 Glenwood Road, Brooklyn, from Bright’s Disease. Mr. Bunny was stricken with illness about three weeks ago while on a tour with his production, “John Bunny in Funnyland.”

The name of John Bunny will always he linked with the movies. For while he was identified with this branch of the amusement world during only a comparatively small part of his career as an actor, it was the motion picture that first brought him fame and fortune.

Mr. Bunny had been a comedian for a quarter of a century before he went into moving pictures. He was the ninth John Bunny of a line of English sea captains, and the first of the line not to follow the sea. He was born in this city fifty-two years ago. As a young man he made up his mind to be an actor and he began as a member of a small touring minstrel show. Moderate success was the reward of his efforts and eventually he gained that goal of all American actors–a place in Broadway’s incandescent sun. He was blessed with a strong comedy sense, to which endowment nature had added a comic aspect that proved especially valuable for his later work. He was seen frequently in musical comedies, with Hattie Williams in one of her successes, and with Lew Fields in “Old Dutch,” among others.

But it was with the coming of the movies that Mr. Bunny’s fame became universal, till at the time of his death his face was one of the best known in the world. The comedian foresaw the importance of cinema was to play in amusing the multitude, and at the same time he appreciated his abundant qualifications as a comedian of the screen. He had grown exceedingly heavy–he weighed 260 pounds–and as he was beneath the average height his figure immediately suggested the comic. His face, in keeping with his pudgy body, was round and puffy, with little gimlet-hole eyes that peered out from their depths in a kindly, humorous way. It was a mobile face that broke into ripples when Mr. Bunny laughed.”

Below: “Troublesome Secretaries” (1911).


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