Slim Summerville

Biography

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1892, rustic-looking George "Slim" Summerville possessed one of those malleable mugs that made you laugh even before he opened his mouth. Young Slim ran away from home as a youth and lived a rather wanderlust life until a chance meeting with Mack Sennett through his comedian friend Edgar Kennedy changed everything. He broke into silent films at age nineteen as one of Sennett's pie-hurling Keystone Kops and became part of the stock company of players. Making an unbilled appearance in Keystone's first feature film Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), Summerville's gangly build and naive innocence, not to mention his potato-like nose, mournful mug, and slim, curling upper lip, helped set him apart -- so much so that Summerville eventually branched out into his own short vehicles. Much more comfortable in rumpled clothes and overalls than a suit and tie, he later learned the ropes of directing and in the 1920s helmed a string of short films for both Fox and Universal studios. He refocused on acting come the advent of sound and made a rather easy transition, standing out in a number of commercial films, both comedic and dramatic, including the mammoth war epic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), the landmark musical film King of Jazz (1930), Hecht-MacArthur's classic The Front Page (1931), the Shirley Temple vehicles Captain January (1936) and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938), and John Ford's Tobacco Road (1941). In addition he scored in a series of short comedies opposite Zasu Pitts, and a slew of supports in Hoot Gibson westerns. Usually playing much older than he was, the sleepy-eyed, slow-drawling Summerville played his last role in The Hoodlum Saint (1946), before dying of a stroke on January 5, 1946, at the not-so-old age of 53. He left a strong enough legacy, however, to be remembered as one of the screen's more reliable comedians. He was survived by his wife Eleanor and son Elliot.