American actor Clarence Kolb came to prominence in the very early 1900s, as one half of the stage comedy team of Kolb and Dill. Kolb and his partner Max Dill were Dutch-dialect comics, their act patterned after the more famous Weber and Fields. The team supplemented their stage appearances with a brief series of short film comedies, released between 1916 and 1917. It wasn't until Kolb struck out on his own that he developed his familiar screen persona of the bullying, excitable business tycoon with the requisite heart of gold. Playing virtually the same part in virtually the same clothes in film after film, Kolb continued his patented characterization in the role of Mr. Honeywell on the popular '50s TV sitcom My Little Margie. Clarence Kolb's final screen appearance was in Man of 1000 Faces (1957), the screen biography of Lon Chaney Sr. For this guest appearance, Kolb decked himself out in his old Dutch vaudeville costume and false beard and played "himself," while character actor Danny Beck portrayed Kolb's stage cohort Max Dill(who'd died in 1949).
by Hal Erickson
biography
