Walter Catlett - The "Talkies"

The "Talkies"

Catlett made a handful of silent film appearances but his film career did not catch on until the advent of talking pictures allowed movie-goers see his full comic repertoire. Three of his most remembered roles were as the stage manager given to distraction by James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy, the local constable who throws the entire cast in jail and winds up there himself in the Howard Hawks classic screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, and as Morrow, the drunken poet in the restaurant who "knows when been a skunk" and takes Longfellow Deeds on a "bender" in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. In 1939, he appeared in the musical film Married in Hollywood. He played John Barsad in the 1935 David O. Selznick production of A Tale Of Two Cities starring Ronald Colman.