Biography

Edgar Vincent Durling was a syndicated columnist and screenwriter. He was born in Manhattan on July 24th. While some sources give the year of his birth as 1892, 1900, 1910 & 1920 US census records, his World War One draft registration card and several steamship passenger manifests indicate the year was more likely 1887 or 1888. Durling was the son of Charles and Lillie Robinson Durling. His father was English, coming to America in 1870 while in his early twenties. By 1880 he was working as a clerk in a dry goods store and was later employed in shipping. Durling's mother was born in New York City, the daughter of English immigrants. While born in Manhattan,Edgar Durling was raised in Brooklyn.

Durling attended Phillips Andover Academy, a boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts and later Wesleyan University at Middletown, Connecticut, where he captained both the baseball and football teams. He began his newspaper career while still at college and would go on to work for papers on both coasts. After serving in the US Army during The First World War, Durling returned to newspapers work, often as a sports or entertainment reporter. It was also around this time that he began working in Hollywood as a screenwriter.

Durling was known for his droll sense of humor and claimed to be an expert on women and horses. His nationally syndicated column "On the Side" (in some papers "Life With Salt On The Side") was published by King Features Syndicate from 1939 to 1957 in approximately 100 papers nationally and a number abroad. In his column Durling would often answer questions, usually in a humorous fashion, submitted by his readers on any number of topics. Durling and his wife, Yonkers, NY native Jean Marie Boisin, maintained households in New York City and Pasadena, California, dividing their year equally at both.

Edgar Vincent Durling died from a brain tumor on 13 September, 1957 at Doctor's Hospital on Staten Island, a borough of New York City. He was survived by his widow Jean Marie. Among his honorary pallbearers were columnists Walter Winchell and Arthur 'Bugs' Baer, publisher Randolph Hearst and financier Bernard Baruch.

Source: 1880, 1900, 1910, & 1920 US census, 1917 WWI draft reg. card, Pasadena Star-News 17 Sep 1957 Time Magazine 23 September, 1957, New York Times 14 September, 1957.
- IMDb mini biography by: John F. Barlow