Editor's Note: Bruce Watson is a historian, author of seven books, and Contributing Editor of American Heritage. He regularly publishes essays on his delightful website, The Attic.     

Comedians yammer on and on, but humorists are a somber bunch. Though funny in print, their party personas tend to brooding. Their lives are often a mess. You don’t have to be Freud to see that sorrow is the soul of wit. But then, meet Robert Benchley.

During the Depression, as one of America’s most beloved humorists, Benchley was asked for a brief bio. Here is his response:

BORN: Isle of Wight, September 15, 1807. Shipped as a cabin boy on the Florence J. Marble, 1815.  Arrested for bigamy and murder in Port Said, 1817. Released 1820. Wrote A Tale of Two Cities.  Married Princess Anastasia of Portugal, 1831…Wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1850… Began Les Miserables, 1870, finished by Victor Hugo…Died 1871.  Buried in Westminster Abbey.
 

Benchley’s mock bio hid an upbringing so ordinary it does not bear repeating. Still, here goes. Born in very unfunny Worcester, Massachusetts, he grew up sadly lacking the pathos that demands joke after joke. Benchley was the pampered son of prosperous parents, groomed for corporate board rooms. He declined such a fate, however, preferring to mock it.The mocking began early.

While at Philips Exeter, where prep school students studied Milton and Shakespeare, Benchley wrote his senior thesis on “How to Embalm a Corpse.” Thus began a lifelong penchant for laughing at death. But death would not have the last laugh.

At Harvard, Benchley’s impromptu after-dinner speeches amused fellow frat boys with pseudo-serious nonsense, a la Monty Python’s John Cleese. One night, he might be a government official telling Harvard “what we are doing down there in Washington!” Another saw him a returning explorer ad-libbing “Through the Alimentary Canal with Gun and Camera.” When he graduated, with World War I underway, he was urged to grow up.  He refused.

“It took me 15 years to discover that I had no talent for writing,” he recalled, “but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.”  While working as an ad copywriter, Benchley submitted humorous essays to magazines. In an America already glutted by expertise, his touch was deft and delightful.  One essay reviewed “The Social Life of the Newt.” In “The Most Popular Book of the Month,” he wrote a review — of the phone book.  “It is the opinion of the reviewer that the weakness of plot is due to the great number of characters which clutter up the pages…”

Hired as drama critic for LIFE, Benchley perfected a rambling style that spoofed the grave issues of the day. Titles suggest his zaniness.  “Coffee vs. Gin,” “All Aboard for Dementia