Fred Sanborn


Fred Sanborn was an American vaudeville performer, actor, and musician. He was most notable as a member of Ted Healy's comedy troupe Ted Healy and his Southern Gentlemen.
Sanborn was frequently featured in the group's early vaudeville acts, as well as their 1929 Broadway show, A Night in Venice. However, after starring with Healy, Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Shemp Howard in the Rube Goldberg film Soup to Nuts—for which Sanborn also wrote a song—he left the group, preferring to concentrate on his music rather than become known as a "Healyite". Sanborn's character was a quasi-Chaplinesque little fellow who is never heard speaking, preferring to whisper in other characters' ears while waggling his thick eyebrows. He popped up in films sporadically throughout the 1930s-1940s- two with Olsen and Johnson- often in small, unspeaking comedy roles; a rare exception was his final film, the 1945 musical comedy Night Club Girl, in which he acts as an emcee and does have several lines.
His last film/TV performance was as a comedian on The Ed Wynn Show in 1950.

Filmography