Review - A Few Robert Benchley Quotes To Pass The Time

"Me Benchley. Benchley bad boy. Benchley go."

Theatre critic and Algonquin Round Table founding member Robert Benchley was heard muttering the above words as he got up from his chair and walked out in the middle of the opening night performance of Jean Bart's 1926 Broadway play, The Squall. What prompted his departure was that Suzanne Caubet, playing the role of a gypsy girl who spends the entire evening speaking in a cartoonish broken English, had just uttered the line, "Me Nubi. Nubi good girl. Nubi stay."

On opening night of another long-forgotten Broadway play, a scene began with nobody on stage and the phone ringing. A bored Robert Benchley is said to have risen out of his chair and scooted out of the theatre at that point, announcing, "I think that's for me."

And perhaps Mr. Benchley's most famous quote, "It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."

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