Fred Sanborn

Fred C. Sanborn (November 23, 1899 – March 9, 1961) was an American actor, musician, and vaudeville performer whose career spanned stage, film, and television. He is particularly remembered for his association with Ted Healy's comedy troupe, Ted Healy and his Southern Gentlemen, a group that also included Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Shemp Howard — the trio who would go on to become the Three Stooges.

Sanborn's stage persona drew on physical comedy and silence rather than spoken dialogue. He played a small man with a lopsided walk who communicated by whispering into other characters' ears while moving his thick eyebrows, a character with notable similarities to Charlie Chaplin's Tramp. His live performances typically combined xylophone playing with pantomime, and his wife contributed to the act by executing off-stage gags to which Sanborn would react in front of audiences.

His Broadway career ran from 1929 to 1942 and encompassed three productions. The first was A Night in Venice in 1929, which he performed as part of Healy's troupe. His other Broadway credits were Folies Bergère and Keep 'em Laughing. Around the time of A Night in Venice, Sanborn also appeared alongside Healy and the Howard brothers in the Rube Goldberg film Soup to Nuts, for which he additionally wrote a song. Following that project, he departed the group, choosing to pursue his own musical direction rather than remain identified as a member of Healy's ensemble.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Sanborn appeared in films sporadically, frequently in small, non-speaking comedy roles. Two of those films featured Olsen and Johnson. His 1945 musical comedy Night Club Girl was a departure from that pattern, as he served as emcee and delivered spoken lines — making it a rare instance of Sanborn speaking on screen and his final film appearance. His last television credit was a comedian appearance on The Ed Wynn Show in 1950. Sanborn died on March 9, 1961, in Cupertino, California.