On a Man Named Dull

It’s quite true — there once was a director and producer named Orville O. Dull (Orvid Oscar Dull, 1888-1978). The jokes just write themselves, and I’m shocked that Bob and Ray didn’t seize on it: “This has been another DULL Picture”….”DULL films are coming your way!”…”Many were the motion pictures which bore the signature known as the DULL Touch”.

Dull was a stage actor and WWI vet from Ohio, who apparently broke into films as a bit player in Thomas Ince films in the teens. Billed as “Bunny Dull” he was assistant directing by 1925, and by the following year he was hired to direct comedy shorts at Fox, starring the likes of Earl Foxe, Tyler Brooke, and Hallam Cooley. He also produced and directed westerns with Tom Mix and Buck Jones such as The Broncho Twister and Black Jack, both in 1927. For a brief period, he experimented with various credits, including O.O. Dull, and his given name Orvid O. Dull, which was finally tweaked to Orville. No one seems to have advised him that it was his last name that needed replacing.

When sound came in he directed a couple of musical shorts and then had a period lasting into the mid-to-late ’30s where he worked in various capacities on feature films, including supervisor, business manager, production manager, and assistant director. By the late ’30s he had settled in as an associate producer at MGM, and by 1941, full producer. Under that heading he was responsible for several minor comedies, including When Ladies Meet (1941) with Joan Crawford, Spring Byington, Greer Garson, Robert Taylor, and Herbert Marshall; We Were Dancing (1942) with Melvyn Douglas and Norma Shearer; Tish (1942) with Marjorie Main, Zasu Pitts, and Aline MacMahon; The Man from Down Under (1943) with Charles Laughton; and three with Wallace Beery: Rationing (1944), Barbary Coast Gent (1944), and Bad Bascomb (1946). He also co-produced the war film Stand By for Action (1942), and the Oscar winning documentary The Secret Land (1948), about a wartime mission in Antarctica which involved Admiral Byrd. His only credit after this was some location scouting for Across the Wide Missouri (1951).

For more on silent comedy shorts please check out: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube — now also available on audiobook.