Guy Kibbee

 

(Immortal Ephemera) One of the most popular and lovable character actors of the 1930s and ‘40s, Guy Kibbee specialized in playing goofballs and patriarchs in just over one hundred Hollywood movies. Well past forty, and usually looking over fifty, Kibbee first excelled as pre-Code sugar daddy and come-on king in titles like City Streets, Laughing Sinners, Blonde Crazy (all 1931), Girl Missing, and 42nd Street (both 1933). Sometimes he was lecherous, other times not intended to be taken too seriously: it was the latter personality that caught on and led to Kibbee spending a career playing Pa’s and Pop’s, judges and cops.

... The Kibbees had six, possibly seven sons, and one daughter—Guy Kibbee was third or fourth born of this group, the last of the clan born in Texas, or so the 1900 census convinces me. The youngest four boys, including youngest brother Milne—Milton Kibbee of the screen—were all born in New Mexico. Father James was a publisher of small papers such as the Concho Times and Burnet Bulletin around El Paso, Texas, and Roswell, New Mexico. Continued