Once long ago, when theaters were not so obsessed with turning over their audiences, a feature film might be accompanied by a cartoon, a newsreel, and a Selected Short Subject.

The short might be a Robert Benchley lecture. At the time such shorts were enormously popular; a little murmur of anticipation might run through the audience. In Benchley's case they fit nicely with his writing career for The New Yorker.

Benchley became so popular that he sometimes made guest appearances in featur films, sich as "The Sky's the Limit" (1943) with Fred Astaire and Joan Leslie:

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