An encounter with actress Mildred Holland when he was 17 led to Pangborn's first professional acting experience. He was working for an insurance company when she learned about his ambitions for acting and offered him an extra's position with her company at $12 per week, initially during his two weeks' vacation. That opportunity grew into four years' touring with Holland and her troupe. Following that, he acted in Jessie Bonstelle's stock company.[3]
Pangborn played essentially the same character: prissy, polite, elegant, highly energetic, often officious, fastidious, somewhat nervous, prone to becoming flustered but essentially upbeat, and with immediately recognizable high-speed, patter-type speech.[citation needed] He typically played an officious desk clerk in a hotel, a self-important musician, a fastidious headwaiter, or an enthusiastic birdwatcher, and was usually put in a situation where he was frustrated or flustered by the antics of other characters.
Many years after Pangborn's death, LGBTQ historians claimed some of the characters he had portrayed onscreen had been gay stereotypes.[citation needed] Throughout his long career, such a topic was too sensitive to be discussed overtly by screenwriters, directors, studio executives or the newspaper columnists and critics who publicized movies.[citation needed] In 1933, before the Hays Office began censoring films, International House included a rare instance of a screenwriter and director briefly alluding to homosexuality in a scene that included Pangborn’s character. A character known as Professor Quail, portrayed by W.C. Fields, has just landed his autogyro on the roof of the titular hotel in the Chinese city of Wuhu, but he does not know where he is. He has the following exchange with the hotel manager, portrayed by Pangborn:
Professor Quail: Hey! Where am I?
Woman: Wu-Hu.
Professor Quail: Woo-Hoo to you sweetheart! Hey Charlie! Where am I?
Pangborn: WU-HU!
(Fields then removes the flower from his lapel)
Professor Quail: Don't let the posy fool ya!
Pangborn was an effective foil for many major comedians, including Fields, Harold Lloyd, Olsen and Johnson, and The Ritz Brothers. He appeared regularly in comedies, including several directed by Preston Sturges, and in some musicals of the 1940s.[citation needed] When movie roles became scarce, he worked in television, including The Red Skelton Show (in which he played a comical murderous bandit) and a This Is Your Life tribute to Mack Sennett, his old boss. Pangborn was briefly the announcer on Jack Paar's The Tonight Show in 1957, but was fired after the first few weeks for a lack of "spontaneous enthusiasm" and replaced by Hugh Downs.[citation needed]
Pangborn's final public performance came as a supporting player in The Red Skelton Show episode for April 22, 1958.[4]
Selected filmography
All feature films are listed below. Many short films, however, are missing.
The Jelly Fish (1926, Short) - Clarence, the Jelly Fish
Exit Smiling (1926) - Cecil Lovelace (feature film debut)
Alistair, Rupert (2018). "Franklin Pangborn". The Name Below the Title : 65 Classic Movie Character Actors from Hollywood's Golden Age (softcover) (First ed.). Great Britain: Independently published. pp. 212–214. ISBN978-1-7200-3837-5.
