television. Each installment ended with Kennedy embarrassed, humbled or defeated, looking at the camera and doing his patent slow burn. The Edgar Kennedy Series, with its theme song "Chopsticks", became a standard part of the moviegoing experience. He made six "Average Man" shorts a year for 17 years. In 1938, he worked as a straight man for British comedian Will Hay in Hey! Hey! USA. Kennedy became so identified with frustration that practically every studio hired him to play hotheads. He often played dumb cops, detectives, and even a prison warden; sometimes he was a grouchy moving man, truck driver, or blue-collar workman. His character usually lost his temper at least once. In Diplomaniacs, he presides over an international tribunal where Wheeler & Woolsey want to do something about world peace. "Well, ya can't do anything about it ," yells Kennedy, "This is a " Kennedy, established as the poster boy for frustration, even starred in an instructional film titled The Other Fellow, where he played a loudmouthed roadhog venting his anger on other drivers (each played by Kennedy as well), little realizing that, to them, is "the other fellow." Perhaps his most unusual roles were as a puppeteer in the detective mystery The Falcon Strikes Back, and as a philosophical bartender inspired to create exotic cocktails in Harold Lloyd's last film, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947). He also played comical detectives opposite two titans of acting: John Barrymore, in Twentieth Century (1934); and Rex Harrison, in Unfaithfully Yours (1948). In the latter, he tells Harrison's character, a symphony conductor, "Nobody handles Handel like you handle Handel." Death Kennedy died of throat cancer at the Motion Picture Hospital, San Fernando Valley on November 9, 1948. Tom Kennedy (no relation) and Charles Coburn spoke at the funeral service held at St. Gregory's Church, with Chester Conklin, Jimmy Finlayson, Del Lord and Billy Gilbert among the mourners. Kennedy was interred at the Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, Los Angeles County, California. Selected filmography As actor: Brown of Harvard (1911, Short) as Claxton Madden Hoffmeyer's Legacy (1912, Short) as Keystone Kop (uncredited) The Bangville Police (1913, Short) as 3rd Deputy (in straw hat) The Star Boarder (1914, Short) as Landlady's Husband The Knockout (1914, Short) as Cyclone Flynn (uncredited) Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) as Restaurant Owner / Butler (uncredited) The Stolen Triumph (1916) as Edwin Rowley, Jr. His Bitter Bill (1916) as