1891–1961 · American vaudeville comedian & stage actor
Frank Fay (born Francis Anthony Donner, 1891–1961) was an American vaudeville comedian and stage and film actor, often described as the first stand-up — a performer who worked the audience directly rather than through a sketch. In the 1920s he was vaudeville’s highest-paid headliner, and he later created the role of Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey on Broadway. He is also remembered as the first husband of Barbara Stanwyck; Walter Winchell’s gossip column, where this retort surfaced in 1928, was exactly the sort of place his off-stage quarrels ended up.