Eugene Pallette's career spanned over an astounding four decades, appearing in 240 both silent and talkie films up until complications with throat cancer in the early '40s. Born in Winfield, Kansas to two long-retired stage actors on July 8th, 1889. It was while in the Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana his stage career began and Pallette began to appear in stock company roles. His first credited role was in "The Fugitive" (1913) after a slew of extra and stunt work in even earlier silent films before falling in with Laurel and Hardy as their usual comedic foil.
With talkies on the rise, his deep gravel-y voice was perfect for the new medium. It skyrocketed his career in the '30s and '40s playing patriarchs such as in "My Man Godfrey" (1936) and "The Lady Eve" (1941) but was best known as Friar Tuck in 1938's "The Adventures of Robin Hood." While shooting Otto Preminger's "In the Meantime, Darling" (1944), Preminger often clashed with Pallette, saying the overweight actor was "an admirer of Hitler" and refusing to sit in a kitchen table set with Clarence Muse claiming he "wouldn't sit next to a n*****r."
Preminger immediately took this to Fox head Darryl Zanuck and Pallette was immediately fired although with incomplete scenes in the currently shooting film. 9 years later, it is documented that Pallette was one of the attendees to a banquet honoring "The Birth of the Nation" (1915) costar Madame Sul-Te-Wan. During this time, Pallette would stick to the fact of his ailing health that would eventually become throat cancer. His final film made was "Suspense" (1946). Throat cancer would end up killing him in September 3, 1954 at the age of 65, his remains interred in an unmarked grave behind his parents' monument in Grenola, Kansas.
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