Paul McCullough

Vaudeville comedian with Bobby Clark as Clark and McCullough.

Biography in: "Whos Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith. Pg. 105-106 (article "Clark and McCullough"). New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387

In 1935, having completed their last short for R.K.O., McCullough and his partner Bobby Clark went on tour in a version of "George Whites Scandals." The frenetic pace of touring emotionally discombobulated McCullough and, suffering from nervous exhaustion, he entered a sanitarium in Medford, Massachusetts. In March 1936, he was released. As he was driving home with a friend, he decided to have a shave. They stopped at a local barber shop where McCullough struck up a friendly conversation with the barber. Without warning, as the barbers back was turned, McCullough grabbed a straight razor and slashed his own throat and wrists. In critical condition, he was taken to a nearby hospital where he died several days later. Clark, who was emotionally devastated by the loss of his old friend, made only one film appearance as a solo performer, in The Goldwyn Follies .

The great comedy team of Clark & McCullough are little know in the 21st century, despite their great popularity in the first half of the 20th Century. One of the reasons likely is the fact that their short films were not packaged and sold to television in the 1950s, unlike The Three Stooges and Laurel & Hardy, who then went on to entertain new generations of fans. Bobby Clark wrote much of the dialogue, and it was very risqu and was considered borderline in the more liberal 1930s. Clark & McCullough shorts were geared towards adults, and thus would have been inappropriate on television in the 1950s as the comedy shorts of the Stooges and Laurel & Hardy were programmed for children. The short films of the equally famous-in-the-1930s and now-almost-forgotten comedy team Wheeler & Woolsey were never released to commercial television either as they were considered too vulgar.

Bobby Clark coined the motto of the Clark & McCullough comedy duo: "Omnia Cafeteria Rex".

Father: Cyrus Brower McCullough; Mother: Ellen M. McKeough.