Andrew Tombes

You'd think with a last name like that, character player Andrew Tombes was doomed to play gravediggers in horrors or coroners in crime drama. Not usually, and when he did, it was often played for laughs. Born June 29, 1885 in Ohio, he was an athletic sort who played a lively, talented game of college baseball at Phillips-Exeter Academy but the dreams of entertaining quickly took over. As a performer he started things off in minstrels and musical revues, and appeared notably as a vaudevillian comic. Appearances in "Flo-FLo (1908), The College Girls" (1909), "Miss 1917" (1917) and "Poor Little Ritz Girl" (1920) led to the really big time for a comedian -- Ziegfeld. He slayed 'em as a star headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies in the 1920s, and played a wide range of squirrely parts in everything from Shakespeare to screwball farce. It was friend 'Will Rogers' from his old Follies days, who invited Tombes, at age 50, to settle in Hollywood as a prime featured performer in Rogers' film vehicle