You just think you don’t know who Paul Hartman (1904-1973) is. Ironically, his greatest professional successes occurred in his parody dance act with his wife Grace (1907-1955), through 30 years of vaudeville, Broadway, films and tv (they even had their own sit com at one point). From Big Time vaudevillians they went on to be in such Broadway shows as Ballyhoo of 1932 and Red Hot and Blue (1936) and movies like Sunny (1941) and Higher and Higher (1943). Their sitcom The Hartmans (At Home) ran on NBC in 1949.
Without Grace, Paul was in Kazan’s Man on a Tightrope (1953. After she died two years later, he appeared in such films as Inherit the Wind (1960), The Young Savages (1961), The Thrill of It All (1963), Those Calloways (1965), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), The Reluctant Astronaut (1967) and Luv (1967).
Ironically, the odds are very good you know Hartman for another reason, however: he was a minor regular on The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry RFD, playing a character called “Emmett”, viz:
As my high school Latin teacher used to say: “EYDILC: Everything You Do in Life Counts.” Because, geez, you never know WHAT you’ll end of being remembered for.
To learn about the roots of variety entertainment, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
And don’t miss my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc
