Eddie Bracken

A DISTINCTIVE comedy actor who specialised in portraying affable bumblers, Eddie Bracken had a successful film career as a Paramount star in the Forties, and will be particularly remembered for his work in two classic comedies by the writer-director Preston Sturges.

Edward Vincent Bracken, actor: born New York 7 February 1915; married 1939 Constance Nickerson (died 2002; two sons, three daughters); died Montclair, New Jersey 14 November 2002.

A distinctive comedy actor who specialised in portraying affable bumblers, Eddie Bracken had a successful film career as a Paramount star in the Forties, and will be particularly remembered for his work in two classic comedies by the writer-director Preston Sturges.

The first, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1942), was noteworthy in its time for pushing the boundaries of censorship to the limit with its tale of a girl (Betty Hutton) who after a night drinking with servicemen finds she is pregnant and has no idea who the father is. Bracken played the shy, stuttering Norval Jones, who marries her just before she gives birth to sextuplets. The critic James Agee wrote,

The Hays office has either been hypnotised into a liberality for which it should be thanked, or has been raped in its sleep.

Sturges had wanted the actor Andy Devine to play Norval, but the studio chief Buddy DeSylva asked him to use Bracken, and Sturges had no objection.

Bracken's work pleased him so much that he wrote his next script, The Little Marine, especially for the actor, and the two men became close friends. "He was a father, big brother, and buddy to me," said Bracken. The Little Marine was retitled Hail the Conquering Hero (1943) and was another hit, with Bracken earning rave reviews as a young man rejected by the army because of his hay fever. Working in a shipyard, he sends letters recounting active service to his mother so as not to disappoint her and is mistaken by his home town for a war hero.

The film is regarded by many as showing Sturges at his satirical best, and Bracken always acknowledged the debt he felt he owed the director. In 1951, when a dinner-theatre business of Sturges was doing badly, Bracken agreed to star in a Sturges-directed revival of the play Room Service for no fee whatsoever. The venture paid off, with the show playing to capacity audiences for 18 weeks.

Born Edward Vincent Bracken in Queens, New York City, in 1915, he started performing while in nursery school. As a child, he was given a contract to appear with the American Sound Studio's Kiddie Troupers, playing the "Rich Kid" in a series of silent shorts filmed in New York. His parents then sent him to the New York City Professional Children's School for Actors, and at the age of 17 he made his Broadway début in the play The Lady Refuses (1933).

His major break came when the director George Abbott cast him in the comedy about military students, Brother Rat (1936). Abbott also cast him as "Dizzy" Evans, the best friend of scatterbrained adolescent Henry Aldrich, in the play What a Life! (1937). Bracken played the role of Aldrich on tour, by the end of which his leading lady, Constance Nickerson, had become his wife. They had five children and their marriage lasted until her death last August.

In 1939 Abbott chose Bracken for a leading part in the Rodgers and Hart musical Too Many Girls, in which he introduced the song "I Like to Recognise the Tune". He repeated his role in the 1940 film version, which co-starred Ann Miller. Decades later they appeared together in stage productions of Sugar Babies and Follies (the latter just three years ago), and Miller said recently, "When I think of Eddie Bracken, I just want to smile."

Paramount signed Bracken to a contract in 1941, and he became a staple of their comedies and musicals, his films including Caught in the Draft (1941) with Bob Hope who, according to Bracken, refused to be in another film with him after Louella Parsons wrote that Bracken stole the picture.

The Fleet's In (1942) was the first of several films in which he appeared with Betty Hutton. His timidity coupled with her aggressive vitality made them a popular duo. In a typical scene, the couple are confronted with an enormous flight of stairs: Bracken lifts Hutton into his arms and begins to climb, the scene dissolving to the pair arriving at the top, with Bracken now being carried by Hutton.

Happy Go Lucky (1943), Bring on the Girls (1945) and Duffy's Tavern (1945) were among his other films. In Out of This World (1945), a satire on the craze for Sinatra, he had one of his best roles as a crooner who has teenagers swooning. His singing in the film was dubbed by Bing Crosby.

Bracken's trademark style of guileless incompetence was beginning to pall by the end of the decade when his contract ended, but he had good supporting roles in the musicals Summer Stock (1950) and Two Tickets to Broadway (1951). When film roles became scarce, he acted on television (notably in the series Masquerade Party in the 1950s and later in Rawhide and Murder, She Wrote) and developed a love of repertory theatre, appearing in touring productions of Broadway hits, including The Seven Year Itch, The Odd Couple and Damn Yankees.

In the 1970s he played Horace Vandergelder opposite Carol Channing in a lengthy tour of Hello, Dolly. When the production moved to Broadway, Bracken earned a Tony nomination. "I'm the theatre's No 1 takeover guy for everybody," he said. "It's a great compliment to be asked to replace such a variety of performers." He also became involved in several business ventures including a disastrous attempt to start a chain of repertory theatres that lost over $2m.

Later screen roles included Mr Wally, the proprietor of "Wally World" in National Lampoon's Animal House (1983) and E.F. Duncan, proprietor of a large toy store in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). Both films were directed by John Hughes, who regarded Bracken as a "direct link" to old-time Hollywood:

He'd tell Preston Sturges stories, and I'd just sit there and think, "He was actually there. He was part of that whole thing."

Tom Vallance