The Silent Film Star Who Was a Roaring Chicken

It is impossible to dislike Edward Everett Horton.

I am of the vintage where my exposure to him was as the wonderfully quirky narrator of the Fractured Fairy tales on Rocky and Bullwinkle. He enjoyed his words. He chuckled at his words. He groaned at his words. He was unique among narrators.

With age came exposure to those wonderful musical comedies of the 1930s—The Gay Divorcee, Top Hat, well, I needn’t go on. Despite all this—and his career starring in two-reelers in the silent days—he struck me as a man of the theatre. He just had that bearing.

Setting aside the Jay Ward-Bill Scott cartoons, Horton’s first regular television series was “F Troop”. To me, the series was too broad to be a good fit for him and he wasn’t on it very long.

You might be surprised to read about the television role he wanted to play but never got. Here’s syndicated columnist Margaret McManus in a feature that appeared in papers around September 19, 1965.

At 77, Horton’s TV ‘Rookie’
By MARGARET McMANUS
NEW YORK — The week past, and this week coming, the television screen is dancing with comparatively new names and unfamiliar faces. It is the time of beginnings.
Which new names and faces will come into fame and familiarity, everybody wishes they knew. They dare not even guess.
Among the unknown and the hopeful, and the already well established fixtures on television, a man stands tall and strong. He wears the buckskins and feathers and black wig of an Indian medicine man but no viewer could deny him. His face, his distinctive voice, his gestures, have been part of the entertainment scene for 57 years. Edward Everett Horton, at the age of 77, is going into his first television series. He will play Chief Roaring Chicken in ABC's Western spoof, “F Troop,” 9 p. m. Tuesdays, with Forrest Tucker as the star.
AT THIS beautiful age, Horton takes the pleasure of saying what he thinks. He is a witty man, enjoying the luxury of honesty. He no longer has to feint and dodge and reach for the diplomatic word.
"I don't watch much television, I mean, if you have the thing on, you have to get up from your comfortable chair to turn it off," he said. "A nuisance. But I'm going to watch “F Troop.” I'll watch if it kills me.
"There are two things about television I like. If I'm working with a good director and he is pleased with my performance that is satisfying. I don't need a big audience. All I really need is a mirror.
"The other thing is they pay you so well. There's no applause, but they keep asking you to come back for more money."
EDWARD EVERETT HORTON, who prefers to be called Edward to Eddie, is here in New York to appear in a revival of "Carousel," at the City Center.
At the end of the month, he will go on tour with the show until January. He has filmed five episodes of “F Troop,” and he hopes to get back to the coast on intermittent days to film more.
He looks forward to the tour. The days are often a terrible drag. He has trouble filling the time, but for him, the price is still right.
"I never tire of acting," he said. "I've never wished to do anything else. If you have your moment on the stage, and when the show is over, you step forward and take your bows, you can go back to the loneliest, dreariest hotel room, and you still feel the day has been worth something."
HORTON HAS another compensation while on the road. Over the years, he has built up his own stable of tennis pros. In whatever city he is, he has a tennis pro engaged to play with him at eight o'clock each morning.
"We play my rules," he said. "I call them the King of Sweden rules. They have very little to do with the game of tennis.
"I want absolutely nothing at the net; no backhands; and the ball has to come directly to me. I don't run.
"The object for the pro is to make it look as if I'm playing. That's in case anybody comes to watch. I like them to think the old boy is in there trying."
He said when his agent telephoned to ask him to make the pilot of “F Troop”, he at first refused.
"They didn't ask me to do the only series I ever wanted to do on television," he said. "I wanted the part of Vivian Vance's husband on ‘I Love Lucy,’ but I wasn't asked. I must say they seem to have done well enough without me. "However, my agent coaxed me a little and I agreed to do the pilot. Then I forgot all about it. I never dreamed it would get on the air, but I had some fun with it. It's an amusing part."
HORTON SAID his role in "Carousel," that of the star-keeper, is small but satisfying.
"Let me not pretend that I like having a small part," he said. "I'd much rather be carrying the entire responsibility of the show on my shoulders, but I'm not, and that's the way it is.
"One must be philosophical. I prefer to be working, than not to be working at all."
HORTON IS INCLINED to live in the past, to be sweetly nostalgic. He likes to remember back when, and he has theatrical anecdotes beyond number.
For instance, he recalls that on the first job he ever had, as a chorus boy in a light opera production on Staten Island, the boy in the line next to him was Wallace Beery and he remembers that Beery had the biggest hands and feet he had ever seen. He has no plans to write his memoirs.
"I've been on television for years, telling everything I know," he said. "There's nothing left to tell. This week I was on Today. They asked me to be on with Douglas Fairbanks to reminisce about his father. Well, we started out that way, but we ended up reminiscing about me."
THE PLAY MOST identified with Horton is, of course, "Springtime for Henry," which he played for more than 2,000 performances in New York, and in road companies. (He repeated it this Summer during his annual visit to Canal Fulton Summer Arena.)
The movie role he remembers most fondly was in "Lost Horizon," and one of his most favorite directors is Frank Capra, who directed that movie.
HORTON WAS BORN in Brooklyn, went to City College in Baltimore, where his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather were born, and attended Columbia University.
He never married, and for the past 30 years, he has lived in Van Nuys, in a 17-room southern colonial- house, furnished with English antiques.
Until her death a few years ago, Horton's mother made her home with him. He has two brothers, one a teacher, one a builder, and a sister, Mrs. J. D. Grant. His sister, now a widow, has moved into the Van Nuys house.
"I'm not sure she believes all my English antiques, but she accepts them," he said. "I made nine films in England during the thirties and I never brought any money home. I spent it all there. All somebody had to say was 'This was a table that belonged to Mary Queen of and I'd buy it.
"My friends know it's perfectly safe to buy antiques in England. I've already bought all the junk."
NOW THAT HE has himself a television series, Horton may be in the market for some more of the same kind of ‘junk.’ If only he can force himself to watch the show. It doesn't seem fair and square to him to be part of a series you don't watch.
There is a point, however, where he draws the line. He will absolutely not watch himself on old movies.
"If I see myself coming on the screen, I turn it off fast," he said.
"That's like reading old love letters. Either you're reminded of days you wish weren't over, or you're reminded of things you would rather not remember, like lousy notices. There's nothing to be gained.”
Doesn't sound like a man living absolutely in the past.

Horton continued to work in theatre. And television casting directors still wanted him, as we read in this Associated Press story of March 18, 1970.

Edward Everett Horton: 84 and ‘good another 20’
By GENE HANDSAKER
HOLLYWOOD (AP) — Edward Everett Horton is 84 today alert, vigorous and he says; “good another 20 years, easily.”
Retire? “Never. An actor retires only when there’s no further interest in his work. Fortunately, it seems, life begins at 84."
Brooklyn-born, the nearly 6-foot comedian with the jittery mannerisms and anxious face went on the stage 60 years ago. Since 1920 he has made more than 100 movies but has lost count of his plays.
There were more than 2,000 performances in “Springtime for Henry" alone.
Recently he guest-starred in episodes of television's “Nanny and the Professor” and “Love American Style.”
The honorary governor of the San Fernando Valley—so titled by its various chambers of commerce—received a reporter Tuesday for a pre-birthday interview in his 17-room, three-story home. It's the only house on block-long Edward Everett Horton Lane—named as a tribute from Los Angeles city officialdom two years ago.
Horton built the rambling house gradually as his screen career prospered. The furnishings are English antiques, some dating back to 1580, purchased during performing trips abroad. He sleeps in a four-poster on the top floor. A younger brother, George, a retired chemistry teacher, lives on two acres adjoining Horton’s two.
Horton lighted a fire in the massive fireplace of an enormous living room. His widowed younger sister Hannabelle, who shares the house, had prepared delicious chicken salad. Horton—lively of voice, big-beaked, his wrinkled face pink, hair a thick, silvery eruption poured white wine. The blue eyes twinkled with humor.
His birthday? Just about like other days, he said. “Up about 7:30, hop under the ice-cold shower, setting-up exercises on the porch, then a little breakfast." No party was planned.
Part of the day would be spent answering 212 birthday cards and letters “from people all over, who’ve seen me in pictures. But I never considered myself a movie actor. I’m a stage actor, happiest on the stage in a good play.” The state of today’s sometimes nude theater? :You’ve got to give the people what they want.”
Why had he never married?
“Hard to say. You become so mesmerized by work that the idea of socializing you rather resent. I had some lovely romances, but now I'm in a very comfortable rut.”

Well, in 1970 it was “hard to say” why he wasn’t married.

Horton, alas, didn’t live another 20 years or even live out the rest of 1970. He died on September 29th. It’s pretty safe to assume you can enjoy some of his old films—maybe even F Troop—on home video. Personally, I think I’ll pull out a disc and listen to him “Once Upon a Time” about Sleeping Beautyland.