Bobby Vernon: Christie Comic Star
Five-foot-two and awfully daring (liked to perform many dangerous stunts) Bobby Vernon, better known as one of the Christie Film Company's most popular comedians, was a second-generation comedic actor, singer, and dancer, born of vaudeville entertainers Harry Burns and Dorothy Vernon on March 9, 1897, in Chicago. When he was eleven years old his parents moved to San Francisco where Bobby's first worked as a newspaper boy, but local citizens knew him as "Buttons, the singing newsboy." His talent for singing was soon discovered by Sid Grauman, which led to his first theatrical debut at the Empress Theatre and a modest career in vaudeville as a part of the Kolb and Dill act. By the time he was sixteen, he had moved on to the movies and began appearing in a series of Joker comedies at Universal. In 1915 he switched over to Keystone and starred in a string of romantic comedies with the then-teenaged Gloria Swanson. Bobby later began working for the Christie Fil
