Dick Bennard
actor
- Birth name:
- Richard Arthur Obenaus
- Born:
- 1874-04-20, Dresden, Germany
- Died:
- 1941-12-17, Albany, New York, USA
- Professions:
- actor
Biography
Long before Kingston, New York, knew him as the barber on North Front Street, Dick Bennard had already lived a dozen lifetimes. Born in Germany, he sailed into Albany as a wide-eyed boy and, by 1898, was wearing Uncle Sam’s uniform in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Between mustering out and picking up scissors, he spent two decades on the move: juggling fire under canvas skies, turning back flips on vaudeville planks, playing heavies and comics for silent cameras in Ithaca’s fledgling film studios, powdering noses at Paramount, and running the Manhattan Theater downtown. When the spotlight finally dimmed, he traded greasepaint for a striped pole, but never lost the showman’s touch—twirling a baton at the head of every parade, staging basement melodramas for the Elks and Masons, and regaling customers with tales of sawdust rings and 1-reel shoots along Cayuga’s banks.
