Joseph Cawthorn

Joseph Bridger Cawthorn (March 29, 1868 – January 21, 1949) was an American stage and film comic actor born in New York City into a minstrel-show family. He entered show business as a child, making his first appearance at Robinson's Music Hall in New York in 1872. His early career encompassed minstrel shows and vaudeville, where he performed as a "Dutch" comic using a thick German dialect, and he subsequently worked in British music halls and American touring companies.

Cawthorn's Broadway career began in 1895, 1897, or 1898 and extended through 1922. An early highlight was the role of Boris in Victor Herbert's 1898 operetta The Fortune Teller, which marked his first significant stage success. He went on to play the title character in Mother Goose in 1903 and took on the role of inventor Dr. Pill in the fantasy musical Little Nemo in 1908. During one performance of Little Nemo, a backstage problem required him to ad lib while the scene called for him to describe imaginary animals he had hunted; in doing so, he invented the word "whiffenpoof" on the spot. Yale students in the audience adopted the term as the name of their glee club. Additional Broadway credits included The Half Moon, The Hoyden, Girlies, and The Rounders, among other productions.

After his Broadway stardom waned, Cawthorn relocated to Hollywood in 1927 and built a second prolific career in film, appearing in more than 50 pictures through 1942. He portrayed Gremio in the 1929 first sound adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, which starred Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and played Schultz in Gold Diggers of 1935. He also appeared as Florenz Ziegfeld's father in The Great Ziegfeld in 1936.

In his personal life, Cawthorn was the third husband of Queenie Vassar; the two were married from 1902 until his death. He died on January 21, 1949, in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 80, and is buried at Hollywood Forever cemetery.