Frank Fay (comedian)

Frank Fay was an American vaudeville comedian and film and stage actor. He is considered an important pioneer in stand-up comedy. For a time he was a well known and influential star, vaudeville's highest-paid headliner, earning $17,500 a week in the 1920s, but he later fell into obscurity, in part because of his abrasive personality and fascist political views. He played the role of Elwood P. Dowd in the 1944 Broadway play Harvey by the American playwright Mary Coyle Chase. He is best known as actress Barbara Stanwyck's first husband. Their troubled marriage is thought by some to be the basis of the 1937 film A Star Is Born, in which the previously unknown wife shoots to stardom while her husband's career goes into sharp decline. Fay was notorious for his bigotry and alcoholism, and according to the American Vaudeville Museum, "even when sober, he was dismissive and unpleasant, and he was disliked by most of his contemporaries".

17 November 1897

Born on the same birth day (17 November): AD 9 • Andreas Hedlund • Darren Beadman • Elise Mertens • István Rosztóczy • Jaanus Tamkivi • Jack Vettriano • Joanne Züger • Justin Cooper (actor) • Paul Allender • Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye • Rem Koolhaas • Roland Joffé • Taylor Gold • Tom Seaver

Born in the same month (November 1897): Choudhry Rahmat Ali • Dolly Stark (umpire) • Dorothy Shepherd-Barron • Germaine Krull • Gertrude Olmstead • Harvey Hendrick • Herman J. Mankiewicz • John Steuart Curry • Karl Marx (composer) • Nirad C. Chaudhuri • Patrick Blackett • Quentin Roosevelt • Sacheverell Sitwell