Albert Shean was a German born American vaudeville comedian, and later a character actor.
Background
He was born on May 12, 1868, according to most accounts, in Dornum, Germany, near Hannover, the son of Louis (or Lafe) Schoenberg and Fanny Schoenberg. Before immigrating to the United States about 1876, his Jewish parents had been beergarden performers, his father a magician and ventriloquist and his mother a harpist.
All four children, two boys and two girls, were to perform on stage at some time, but only Albert was to have a full career. His sister Minna, however, was to pass on the family tradition to her sons, the Marx Brothers, and to become their promoter and business manager.
Career
In New York City Albert worked as an usher and pants presser. At sixteen he organized the Manhattan Comedy Four and began touring the five-and-ten-cent burlesque houses and museums. It was at this time that he dropped his family name and billed himself as "Al Shean, " a name he later adopted legally. When, after fourteen years, the quartet disbanded, he joined with one Charles L. Warren to romp through the cheap theatres in a two-act burlesque entitled Quo Vadis, Upside Down.
Shean was over forty before he teamed up with Ed Gallagher in 1910 to form the famous act of Gallagher and Shean. For four years they played together in vaudeville, burlesque, and a musical revue, The Big Banner Show, with considerable success, but then broke up with unexplained ill feeling on both sides.
In 1920, however, under pressure from Shean's sister and sometimes business manager, Minna Marx, and attracted by a generous offer from the Shuberts to star at the Winter Garden in the revue Cinderella on Broadway, Gallagher and Shean reunited and went on to tremendous success. They signed for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1922, which was to run into the following year, an unprecedented sixty-seven weeks. Primarily responsible for this success was their theme song ("Absolutely, Mr. Gallagher?" "Positively, Mr. Shean!").
In spite of the popular following, Gallagher and Shean dissolved their act in 1925, four years before Gallagher's death. Although Shean continued for several years in vaudeville with other straight men, he began to develop a solid reputation as a character actor. Among his stage roles were those of Stonewall Moskowitz in Betsy (1926), Hans Wagner in The Prince of Pilsen (1930), Dr. Walther Lessing in the Oscar Hammerstein-Jerome Kern musical Music in the Air (1932), and the title role in Father Malachy's Miracle (1937). Of his performance as the simple priest Brooks Atkinson wrote, "Al Shean, graduate of vaudeville and the revue rowdy-dowdies, plays the part with a warmth and sincerity that make this imaginative comedy something to be cherished" (New York Times, 1937).
He died of a heart condition at the age of eighty-one in New York City.
Achievements
Albert Shean is most remembered for being half of the vaudeville team Gallagher and Shean. He and Gallagher also made an early sound film. Shean also appeared in more than twenty-five motion pictures, including his most famous film films Hitch Hike to Heaven (1936), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Too Hot to Handle (1938), and Ziegfeld Girl (1941).
Personality
Short and applecheeked, with expressive brown eyes.
Connections
On February 15, 1891, Shean married Johanna Davidson; they had one child, Lawrence.
