Ben Blue | The Canadian Encyclopedia

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Ben Blue

Ben Blue, born Benjamin Bernstein, actor (born 12 September 1901 in Montréal, QC; died 7 March 1975 in Hollywood, California). Ben Blue, a superb, sad-faced, rubber-limbed mime and dancer, began his 50 years in show business at 15 years old as a chorus boy in a Montréal tryout of George M. Cohan's musical comedy Irene.

Ben Blue, born Benjamin Bernstein, actor (born 12 September 1901 in Montréal; died 7 March 1975 in Hollywood, California). Ben Blue, a superb, sad-faced, rubber-limbed mime and dancer, began his 50 years in show business at 15 years old as a chorus boy in a Montréal tryout of George M. Cohan's musical comedy Irene. He played the American vaudeville circuit during the 1920s, then starred in a series of silent comic shorts for Warner Bros., Hal Roach and other Hollywood studios. Warner Bros.' animator Chuck Jones used Blue as inspiration for one of his earliest cartoon creations, Conrad the Cat.

Ben Blue's humorous character cameos were the highlight of many features made first for Paramount and then MGM during the 1930s and 1940s, such as The Big Broadcast of 1938, with W.C. Fields and Bob Hope, and For Me and My Gal, with Gene Kelly and Judy Garland. In 1950 he hosted "The Ben Blue Show," and for the rest of the 1950s he made regular guest appearances on television and performed in nightclubs he owned.

Recurring TV series roles included "The Frank Sinatra Show" (1950-51), "Saturday Night Revue" (1953-54), and the sitcom "Accidental Family" (1967-68). Ben Blue returned to the movies in the 1960s, with notable cameos in Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) and Norman Jewison's The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966).