For those who are paying a visit to Millard Fillmore's grave in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, there's a far different type of celebrity only a few hundred yards away. And this isn't a plug for the grave site of musician Rick James, although it could be.
Meet Al Boasberg, one of the funniest men in show business in the 1930's. He was called "America's greatest natural gagmen," which seems like high praise. Let's put it this way. Remember the stateroom scene in the Marx Brothers' movie, "Night at the Opera"? Boasberg wrote it. He worked on other parts of that movie too, and of "Day at the Races." Studios hired him to add some fun to movie plots, giving him the title of "script doctor."
By the way, it is said that Boasberg did his best work when he was sitting in a bathtub. He'd stay for hours at a time, speaking into a Dictaphone.
The marker at left is correct. He died in 1945, and came back to Buffalo for a last visit. We're still laughing at one of the great comic minds of his generation. He'd like that.
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