Edward Buzzell (November 13, 1895 – January 11, 1985) was an American film actor and director whose credits include Child of Manhattan (1933); Honolulu (1939); the Marx Brothers films At the Circus (1939) and Go West (1940); the musicals Best Foot Forward (1943), Song of the Thin Man (1947), and Neptune's Daughter (1949); and Easy to Wed (1946).

Edward Buzzell
Edward Buzzell in Easy to Wed (1946)
Born(1895-11-13)November 13, 1895
Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.
DiedJanuary 11, 1985(1985-01-11) (aged 89)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)Actor, director, producer, writer
Years active1929–1961
Spouses
(m. 1926; div. 1931)
Sara Clark
(1934⁠–⁠1934)
(m. 1949)
Relatives

Born in Brooklyn, Buzzell appeared in vaudeville and on Broadway, and he was hired to star in the 1929 film version of George M. Cohan's Little Johnny Jones with Alice Day. Buzzell appeared in a few Vitaphone shorts and the two-strip Technicolor short The Devil's Cabaret (1930) as Satan's assistant. He wrote screenplays in the early 1930s and later produced the popular The Milton Berle Show, which premiered on television in 1948.

In 1926, Buzzell married actress Ona Munson, who later played Belle Watling in Gone with the Wind. They divorced in 1931. He married socialite Sara Clark on August 11, 1934, but the marriage only lasted five weeks.[1] He married actress Lorraine Miller on December 10, 1949.[2] He died in Los Angeles in 1985 at the age of 89. Buzzell's brother, Samuel Jesse Buzzell, was a music patent attorney in New York City; his daughter (Edward's niece) Gloria Joyce Buzzell was married to Academy Award-winning film producer Harold Hecht, and his son (Edward's nephew) Loring Buzzell was a music publisher and partner in the firm Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music, and was married to singer Lu Ann Simms.[3][4]

Filmography

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As Actor

References

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  1. ^ San Diego Evening Tribune, October 17, 1934
  2. ^ New Orleans Times-Picayune, December 12, 1949
  3. ^ "Marriages", Variety, November 5 1947, p56
  4. ^ "Music business shocked by death of Buzzell". Cash Box. Cash Box Pub. Co. October 31, 1959. p. 50. Digitized by William and Mary Libraries Special Collections Research Center.
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