McCabe, John 1920–2005

(John Charles McCabe, III)

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born November 14, 1920, in Detroit, MI; died of congestive heart failure, September 27, 2005, in Petoskey, MI. Educator and author. A Shakespearean scholar and teacher by profession, McCabe was best known for writing biographies of famous actors and composers and for founding a well-known Laurel and Hardy fan club. After serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, he earned a Ph.B. in 1947 from the University of Detroit. He continued his education with an M.F.A. from Fordham University in 1948 and a Ph.D. from the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham in 1954. McCabe taught theater at Wayne State University in the late 1940s and speech at the City College of New York for a year before joining the faculty at New York University in 1956. He remained at New York University until 1967, serving the last four years there as professor of theater and chair of the department of educational theatre. During the late 1960s McCabe was a professor and chair of the theater department at Mackinac College; he then joined the faculty at Lake Superior State College from 1970 until his 1986 retirement. Though he was highly knowledgeable about Shakespeare, McCabe's writings were all about the movie performers he had loved since childhood; he himself had worked as a professional actor as early as 1928. He was producer and director at the Milford Playhouse in Pennsylvania from 1948 to 1953 and producer at the New York University Summer Theatre from 1963 to 1965. McCabe first met the famous comic duo of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in 1953, while he was studying at Stratford-upon-Avon. The comedians, best known for their films of the 1920s and 1930s, were on a tour of Europe at the time. He was thrilled to discover that Laurel and Hardy were very kind and generous people, and the three soon became friends. After Hardy's death in 1957, McCabe and Laurel became even closer, with the author considering the comic to be a kind of father figure. Their friendship resulted in McCabe's first and best-known book about the team, Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy (1961; revised edition, 1967). This was be followed by The Comedy World of Stan Laurel (1974), the cowritten Laurel and Hardy (1975), and Babe: The Life of Oliver Hardy (1990). McCabe was also the founder of the Sons of the Desert, a fan club and scholarly organization devoted to Laurel and Hardy that has grown to some two hundred chapters worldwide. In addition to this work, McCabe also published biographies on such entertainers as George M. Cohan, Charlie Chaplin, and James Cagney.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Daily Telegraph (London, England), October 17, 2005.

Independent (London, England), October 11, 2005, p. 36.

Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2005, p. B10.