Irvin S. Cobb, journalist, fiction
writer, and humorist, was born in Paducah, Kentucky, on June
23, 1876, the oldest son of Joshua and Manie (Saunders) Cobb. A war injury made
it difficult for his father to support the family, who lived with Irvin's
maternal grandfather, Dr. Reuben Saunders, a prominent citizen of Paducah. Irvin alternated
between public and private schools in the area. Irvin left school when he was
sixteen to support the family as an apprentice reporter for the Paducah
Evening News. When the paper was sold in 1896, he became managing editor.
His youthful recklessness provoked several lawsuits, and after a year he
returned to reporting for the Louisville Evening Post. In his three
years there, Cobb developed a statewide reputation as a trial reporter,
enhanced by his coverage of the trial of the accused assassin of Gov. William Goebel
(1900). He also became known as a humorous essayist -- the reporter's reporter.
In 1901 Cobb returned to Paducah as managing editor
of the new Democrat. In 1904 he left the Democrat for New York
City, to pursue his ambition of being a reporter on a major newspaper. He found
work with the Evening Sun, and his successful reporting on the
Portsmouth Peace Conference enabled him to move to Joseph Poultice's Evening
Herald, where his reputation rose dramatically, bolstered by his coverage
of the murder trials of socialite Harry Thaw in 1907 and 1908. Developing his
natural talent for humor, Cobb published numerous articles, many in extended
series such as " The Hotel Clerk." As Cobb's reputation grew,
so did the stature of his byline and the number of his pieces that were
syndicated nationally. His sociable demeanor gave him entry to the fashionable
society of the day, from which he drew much of his material.
Cobb also began to write fiction,
returning to the rural material of his Kentucky childhood. The Saturday
Evening Post published his stories, and in 1912 he left newspaper
journalism for the Post staff; shortly thereafter the Post
published " Words and Music," the first of more than fifty
short stories and novels of post-Civil War Paducah. Perhaps the best
of these stories are in the early collection Back Home (1912). Sinclair
Lewis wrote, "Cobb has made Paducah and all the other Paducah's -- in
Kentucky and Minnesota and California and Vermont -- from which the rest of us
come live in fiction."
In 1914 Cobb went to Europe to
report on the war for the Post. The United States was still neutral, and
Cobb's descriptions of Germany's strength and the war's devastation were the
most vivid available to most Americans. Cobb and four companions slipped behind
the German lines and were captured, but they were released unharmed.
On his return from Europe, Cobb
embarked on a successful lecture tour of all states east of the Mississippi.
Back in New York, he was honored by a banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria featuring
a film biography, From Paducah to Prosperity, Or the Life of Irvin S. Cobb.
His plans to return to covering the war were interrupted by the illness that
prompted his best-seller, Speaking of Operations (1915), which literary
historian Norris Yates has characterized as a landmark in the development of
twentieth century American humor.
A supporter and friend of President
Woodrow Wilson, Cobb reluctantly supported the nation's entrance into the war
in 1917, and he returned to the front to report on the American soldier for the
Post -- the most popular source of war information in America. Upon his
return in 1918, Cobb took up the cause of racial tolerance. His admiring
descriptions of black soldiers at the front made him a hero to black Americans,
and he spoke at Carnegie Hall with Theodore Roosevelt in support of relief for
black soldiers. He was honored by the blacks in Paducah in December 1918.
Cobb became involved in activities to quell the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, even
returning to Paducah
in 1922 to edit the Paducah News-Democrat for one day, running a strong
anti- Klan editorial.
In the meantime Cobb continued his
prodigious output of fiction and humorous essays, and in 1923 he left the Post
for a similar position with Cosmopolitan. Fascinated with the potential
of cinema, Cobb sold several scripts to Hollywood in the 1920s. In 1934 he and
his family moved to California, where Irvin advised his friend Will Rogers on a
movie, Judge Priest, based on Cobb's stories of a wily small-town
jurist. In Hollywood Cobb served as a consultant on several films with Old
South settings, was master of ceremonies for the 1935 Academy Awards,
and played the Mississippi riverboat captain in the 1935 film Steamboat
Round the Bend. He appeared in five other movies. In 1936 he had his own
radio show, " Paducah Plantation," and later served as a
regular on other shows.
Cobb's autobiography, Exit
Laughing (1941), brought him a resurgence of national acclaim. Between 1900
and 1950, Cobb shared with U.S. Vice- President Alben Barkley
the distinction of being the American celebrity most widely associated with his
home state of Kentucky.
Cobb married Laura Spencer Baker of
Savannah, Georgia, in 1900; they had one child, Elizabeth. Cobb died on March
10, 1944, and was buried in Paducah's
Oak Grove Cemetery under a granite boulder inscribed "Back Home."
ANITA LAWSON,
Entry Author
Selected
Sources from UK Libraries:
Judge Priest [videorecording] ; Doctor Bull /
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc.
AV-D7647, Young Media Library
Speaking of operations, and other stories, by
Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb.
PS3505.O14 S6 1923, Young Library - 5th Floor
Exit laughing, by Irvin S. Cobb ...
PS3505.O14 Z5 1941, Young Library - 5th Floor
No comments:
Post a Comment