Toby Tolliver
Toby Tolliver was a character in the "Toby and Susie Show," a long-running act in early 20th-century American theatrical tent shows.
He was largely a Midwest product. His prototype is found everywhere in America, but is most closely identified with the tall corn and cotton country. He has been called by some the most enduring theatrical figure in the American theatre.
Toby Tolliver is a rube in the grand tradition. His hair is bright as a fire truck and he usually wears overalls that are likely as not held up by one gallus. He speaks a brand of English and many of the more cultivated customs of society are beyond his ken.
Underneath Toby's country appearance and unsophisticated manner there runs deep currents of native wit, of cunning and resourcefulness. Unlike many of the rubes before him, Toby is True Blue. Sometimes he actually rises to the heroic, though invariably he makes it appear accidental.
Toby is awkward, unlettered, boisterous, full of fun, with a great amount of common sense. He is the fellow in the play who says what the man in the audience wishes he could have thought of. Toby has been a show-business character for a long time - some say since Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" first hit the "boards". For thirty-eight years Toby and his counterpart Susie were the chief asset for Neil and Caroline, the Schaffner Players. They made the characters nationally famous by their appearance in their tent theatre, as radio stars and as features in countless national magazines and network television appearances.