On stage since age 15, Roscoe Karns parlayed his machine-gun delivery and street-wise demeanor (although many thought of him as a New Yorker, he was actually from San Bernardino, California) into character roles in dozens of films from the 1920s to the 1960s. His peak period, though, was in the 1930s, where he often played a wisecracking cab driver or a brash newspaper reporter (as in His Girl Friday (1940), usually the friend of the hero who helps him solve the murder/catch the bad guys/find the missing heiress, etc.