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(September 12, 1894 - September 23,
1971)
 Born
William Gilbert Barron in Louisville, Kentucky, the child of singers
with the Metropolitan Opera, he began working in vaudeville at the
age of twelve and was 35 years old before he appeared in his first
film for the Fox Film Corporation in 1929.
Gilbert broke into comedy short subjects with producer Hal Roach,
and appeared in support of Roach's comedy stars Laurel and Hardy,
Charley Chase, Thelma Todd, and Our Gang. One of his Laurel and
Hardy appearances was the 1932 Academy Award-winning featurette The
Music Box. Gilbert generally played blustery tough guys in the Roach
comedies, but could play other comic characters, from fey couturiers
to pompous radio announcers to roaring drunks. Gilbert's skill at
dialects prompted Roach to give him his own series: big Billy
Gilbert teamed with little Billy Bletcher as the Dutch-comic
"Schmaltz Brothers.'" in offbeat musical shorts like Rhapsody in
Brew. Gilbert also directed these.
Like many other Roach contractees, Gilbert found similar work at
other studios. He appears in the early comedies of The Three Stooges
at Columbia Pictures, as well as in RKO short subjects. These led to
featured roles in full-length films, and from 1934 Billy Gilbert
became one of the screen's most familiar faces.
One of his standard routines had Gilbert progressively getting
excited or nervous about something, and his speech would break down
into facial spasms, culminating in a big, loud sneeze. He used this
bit so frequently that Walt Disney thought of him immediately when
casting the voice of Sneezy in 1937's Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs.
Billy Gilbert is prominent in most of the movies he appeared in. He
appeared as "Herring", the minister of war in Charlie Chaplin's The
Great Dictator; he danced with Alice Faye and Betty Grable in Tin
Pan Alley; he stole scenes as a mild-mannered bystander in the
fast-paced comedy His Girl Friday; he played a rare dramatic scene
opposite singer Gloria Jean in A Little Bit of Heaven. All choice
Gilbert roles, and all filmed the same year (1940), which indicates
how prolific and talented Billy Gilbert was.
Gilbert seldom starred in movies but did have occasional
opportunities to play leads. In 1943 he headlined a brief series of
two-reel comedies for Columbia Pictures. That same year Monogram
Pictures teamed him with the urbane stage comedian Frank Fay for a
comedy series; Fay left the series after the first entry, and was
replaced by a more appropriate foil, fellow vaudeville veteran Shemp
Howard.
Gilbert also worked in 1950s television, including a memorable
pantomime sketch with Buster Keaton. He retired from the screen in
1962, following his appearance in the feature Five Weeks in a
Balloon.
For his contributions to the motion picture industry, Billy Gilbert
has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6263 Hollywood Blvd. |
