Outgrowing his early career as a jockey, nasal-voiced Lynne Overman became a vaudeville performer, slowly but steadily developing his distinctive, sardonic, sing-song comic technique. After years of stage experience, Overman came to Paramount Pictures in 1934, where he would spend virtually his entire film career. During his nine years before the camera, Overman was sometimes cast in leading roles (1937's Night Club Scandal, 1938's Death of a Champion, 1939's Persons in Hiding); most often, however, he was third-billed as best friend and severest critic of the hero, notably Paramount's earliest Dorothy Lamour sarong epics. Some of Overman's best film work was manifested in his grizzled dialect parts in two Cecil B. DeMille epics, Northwest Mounted Police (1940) and Reap the Wild Wind (1942). Lynne Overman died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 55, not long after completing his comedy-relief work on Warner Bros.' The Desert Song (1944).
by Hal Erickson
biography
