Hugh Herbert

Hugh Herbert (August 10, 1885 – March 12, 1952) was an American comedian, playwright, screenwriter, and director born in Binghamton, New York, who built a career spanning vaudeville, Broadway, and Hollywood. He attended Cornell University and went on to write more than 150 plays and sketches over the course of his career.

Herbert's earliest professional work was in vaudeville, where he performed serious character roles, spending years on major circuits portraying what contemporaries described as a pathetic elderly Hebrew figure. His Broadway appearances ran from 1927 to 1945 and included the productions Oh, Brother! and the musical Polly of Hollywood. The arrival of sound cinema drew stage-trained performers to Hollywood, and Herbert was among those who made the transition successfully.

In films, Herbert developed a distinctive comic persona centered on a flustered, absent-minded character who would flutter his fingers together, mutter to himself, and repeat the exclamation "Hoo-hoo-hoo, wonderful, wonderful, hoo hoo hoo!" The catchphrase was imitated so widely — by Curly Howard of The Three Stooges, Mickey Rooney in his Andy Hardy films, and the comic book character Etta Candy in the Wonder Woman series, among others — that by the 1940s Herbert himself had adopted the variant "woo woo" that imitators had popularized.

His early screen appearances, such as a supporting role in the Wheeler and Woolsey feature Hook, Line and Sinker (1930), placed him in generic comedy parts. He subsequently developed a more individualized screen character built around a signature silly giggle, and that persona gained traction quickly with audiences. Throughout the 1930s he was a frequent presence in Warner Bros. productions, appearing in Bureau of Missing Persons, Footlight Parade (both 1933), Dames, Fog Over Frisco, and Fashions of 1934 (all 1934), Gold Diggers of 1935, and the Shakespeare adaptation A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935). He also took leading roles in smaller comedies, including the comedy-mystery Sh! The Octopus (1937). Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes unit caricatured him in animated shorts during the same period, among them Speaking of the Weather (1937) and The Hardship of Miles Standish (1940).

Herbert signed with Universal Pictures in 1939, continuing a pattern of supporting roles in larger productions alongside leading roles in more modest ones. At Universal he appeared in Hellzapoppin' (1941), the Olsen and Johnson comedy in which he played a eccentric detective. He moved to Columbia Pictures in 1943, where he became a regular in two-reel short subjects produced by the same personnel responsible for the Three Stooges shorts. His Columbia shorts included Who's Hugh? (1943), His Hotel Sweet (1944), A Knight and a Blonde (1944), and Woo, Woo! (1945), and he continued making such films for the rest of his life.

Beyond performing, Herbert contributed substantially to film as a writer and director. He co-wrote the screenplays for Lights of New York (1928) and Second Wife (1930), contributed to The Great Gabbo (1929), and directed the 1930 film He Knew Women. He also acted in three films co-written by the unrelated screenwriter F. Hugh Herbert: Fashions of 1934, We're in the Money (1935), and Colleen (1936).

In his personal life, Herbert was married to Rose Epstein, who also used the name Anita Pam. He died on March 12, 1952, in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, from cardiovascular disease at the age of 66. A star bearing his name was dedicated on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6251 Hollywood Boulevard on February 8, 1960.