Frank Tinney

Frank Tinney (March 29, 1878 – November 28, 1940) was an American blackface comedian and actor born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the third of four children of Hugh Francis and Mary (née Carroll) Tinney, both first-generation Irish-Americans. His parents had hoped he would pursue medicine, but Tinney instead worked as a chief lifeguard in Atlantic City, a fire engine driver, and an undertaker's assistant. His behavior in the latter job led to an offer to join a traveling minstrel show, setting him on a path toward a performing career. As a young man he had sung in the church choir and performed with his brother Joseph at church and social functions, with one brief childhood appearance on a vaudeville stage.

By 1907 Tinney was working vaudeville venues across the United States and Canada. His New York debut came in 1910 in vaudeville programs headlined by Gertrude Hoffman and later Eva Tanguay. Those appearances led to a spot the following year in the Shubert brothers' Revue of Revues at the Winter Garden Theatre, marking the beginning of a Broadway career that would span from 1911 to 1923. In 1912 he played Noah in A Winsome Widow, a Ziegfeld adaptation of Charles Hoyt's A Trip to Chinatown starring Emmy Wehlen and featuring a young Mae West. He went on to perform in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1913 and the musical revues Watch Your Step (1914–1915), The Century Girl (1916–1917), and Doing Our Bit (1917–1918). During this period Tinney also recorded for Columbia Records; a release titled "Frank Tinney's First Record" (Columbia 1854), consisting of jokes and a comedic argument with Columbia's musical director Charles A. Prince, became a hit in early 1916.

Tinney's Broadway credits also included the musicals Atta Boy, Daffy Dill, and Tickle Me, the last of which ran from August 1919 to April 1922 and generated subsequent touring productions. In Tickle Me he played himself as the central character, opening the show with a skit in his established blackface persona before taking on the role of a Hollywood studio property manager. He abandoned blackface from his performances after that production. His final major Broadway engagement was the Music Box Revue of 1922–23, which ran for 273 performances between September 1923 and May 1924. Comedian Joe Cook described Tinney as the greatest natural comic ever developed in America. Tinney also appeared in at least two motion pictures: The Governor's Boss (1915), with former New York governor William Sulzer, and Broadway After Dark (1924), starring Adolphe Menjou, Norma Shearer, and Anna Q. Nilsson.

On August 17, 1913, Tinney married Edna Davenport, a singer and dancer who had performed in vaudeville and burlesque, in a ceremony at Hempstead, Long Island. Davenport was the daughter of Millie Davenport, a former vaudeville star who later worked as a Broadway wardrobe supervisor, and the sister of Stella Jones, known on the vaudeville stage as the Spanish dancer La Estrellita. The couple's son, Frank Jr., was born in January 1918 and later appeared in the 1933 Cecil B. DeMille film This Day and Age. He subsequently served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Tinney himself had served as a captain with the Army Quartermaster Corps during World War I.

On the night of May 29, 1924, Tinney was arrested at his home in Baldwin, Long Island on charges of assaulting Ziegfeld Follies dancer Imogene Wilson, who had appeared before a New York City magistrate covered in bruises. A grand jury declined to indict him the following month. Davenport filed for divorce on August 6, 1924, the same day Tinney sailed for England. Wilson followed him to London, where the two continued their relationship until she left to perform in German motion pictures. In 1941 Wilson described the affair, which she said had begun when she was fourteen, as a mixture of fights and laughs. The scandal destroyed Tinney's public reputation and effectively ended his career.

When Tinney returned to New York in 1925, his standing with both colleagues and audiences had sharply declined. His attempts to reconcile with Davenport came to nothing by March 1926. A series of health problems followed, beginning with complications from broken ribs sustained in a fall and culminating in a nervous breakdown. By 1930 he had returned to Philadelphia to live with his father, his career essentially over. At the height of his career Tinney had commanded up to $1,500 per week, but by the time of his death his finances had been depleted by a divorce settlement, legal fees, and medical expenses. He died on November 28, 1940, of a pulmonary condition following a lengthy stay at the Veterans Hospital in Northport, Long Island, and was accorded a military funeral at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, Pennsylvania.