What an amazing life and career was the portion of British-American comedy character actor Richard Haydn (1905-1985), a creature of live theatre, film, radio, television, and the printed page. The core of Haydn’s reputation rested on a character he created named Edwin Carp, a stuffy, affected yet ineffectual, pedant who was clearly meant to be gently satirical of British culture. The Brits revel in this kind of portrait of themselves, but Yanks like it, too, so Hayden developed his own niche in the U.S. quite early in his career, becoming a frequent sight (and sound) in the ensembles of Hollywood screwball comedies.
Originally from London, Haydn performed in music hall and West End revues in his early years. A show called Betty in Mayfair (1926) brought him his first substantiual attention. Throughout the ’30s he performed on radio, and towards the end of the decade, early TV experiments. In 1939 he was in Noel Coward’s Set to Music with Bea Lillie. It transferred to Broadway, and that was how Haydn came to move to the U.S. This was followed by Two for the Show (1940) with Betty Hutton, Keenan Wynn, and Eve Arden.
Haydn’s fairly charmed Hollywood career includes roles in Charley’s Aunt (1941), with Jack Benny, Billy Wilder’s Ball of Fire (1941), Rene Clair’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (1945), Lubitsch’s Cluny Brown (1946), and Wilder’s The Emperor Waltz (1948) with Bing Crosby. Having worked with so many great directors, Haydn briefly tried his hand at that occupation a handful of times, the most successful of which was Mr. Music (1950), again with Crosby. This was followed by his entertaining turn as the voice of the Caterpiller in Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951). He was the narrator in Cukor’s Let’s Make Love (1960) with Marilyn Monroe, and was in two sci fic vehicles produced by Irwin Allen, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1960) and Jules Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962). Other well-known pictures in which he played supporting roles include Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960), The Sound of Music (1965), and Young Frankenstein (1974).
In the ’40s Haydn appeared on the radio shows of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, as well as George Burns and Gracie Allen. The closest he came to marriage was in 1943, when he dated Marlene Dietrich’s daughter Maria Riva for several months. His humor book The Journal of Edwin Carp was published in 1954. He also appeared frequently on television shows such as The Twilight Zone, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bewitched, Bonanza, and Love American Style. He also performed on variety programs like The Ed Sullivan Show and Washington Square, with Ray Bolger.
For more on the history of show business, including English music hall, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, for more on classic comedy please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.
(Travalanche) 
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