Guy Kibbee

Kibbee was born in El Paso, Texas. His father was editor of the El Paso Herald-Post newspaper, and Kibbee learned how to set type at age 7.[2][3] His younger brother was actor Milton Kibbee. At the age of 14 he ran away to join a traveling show.[2]

Kibbee began his entertainment career on Mississippi riverboats. He became an actor in traveling stock companies. He began to lose his hair at 19, and in his early days on stage he was a romantic leading man.[4]

In 1930, he made his debut on Broadway in the play, Torch Song, which won acclaim in New York and attracted the interest of Hollywood.[3] Shortly afterwards, Paramount Pictures signed Kibbee and he moved to California. Later, he became part of Warner Bros.' stock company, contract actors who cycled through different productions in supporting roles. Kibbee's specialty was daft and jovial characters, and he is perhaps best remembered for the films 42nd Street (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Captain Blood (1935), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), though he also played the expat inn owner in Joan Crawford's Rain (1932). One of his few starring performances during this period was in the title role of Babbit (1934), a much altered and compressed version of the Sinclair Lewis novel.

Guy Kibbee (left), Dr. Irving Leroy Ress (center back), Leo Carrillo (right), ca 1950.

He is also remembered for his performance as Mr. Webb, editor of the Grover's Corners, New Hampshire newspaper, and father of Emily Webb, played by Martha Scott, in the film version of the classic Thornton Wilder play Our Town.

Kibbee was married for 31 years to Ethel "Brownie" Reed, and they had a daughter, Shirley Ann.[3] He was previously married to Helen Shay, raising a family in Staten Island until divorcing. One of their sons was Robert Kibbee, an academic who became the chancellor of the City University of New York.[5][6][7]

Kibbee died of Parkinson's disease at the Percy Williams Home for actors in East Islip, New York on May 24, 1956.[4][6]

Guy Kibbee eggs is the name for a breakfast dish which consists of a hole cut out of the center of a slice of bread, and an egg cracked into it, all of which is fried in a skillet.[8] The actor prepared this dish in the 1935 Warner Bros. film Mary Jane's Pa, hence the eponym. This dish is also known by other names, such as "egg in a basket" and "egg in a frame".

Guy Kibbee is also mentioned in the iconic Hot August Night concert/album performed by Neil Diamond in 1972 at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles:

Thank you people in the audience! Tree people out there, God bless ya, I'm singin for you too! Are you still there tree people? (laughter) This is, this is the Greek Theatre. This is the place that God made for performers when they die, they go to a place called the Greek Theatre. And you're met there by an MC, wearing a long robe and smoking a cigar, looks like Guy Kibbee, and that's what it is. It's performers' paradise.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Guy Kibbee.

• Guy Kibbee at IMDb
• Guy Kibbee at the Internet Broadway Database
• Guy Kibbee at the TCM Movie Database