His carrot-chewing, side-of-the-mouth swagger inspired a legendary cartoon rabbit, and comic book writers borrowed his first name for the alter ego of the world's most famous superhero. Yet a studio boss once said he looked like an ape with oversized ears. This episode tears down the illusion of Hollywood's ultimate alpha male: born in rural Ohio in 1901, losing his mother as an infant, pushed by his oil-driller father toward hard labor, escaping with a $300 inheritance, and selling neckties in a Portland department store before meeting the woman who rebuilt him.

We examine how Josephine Dillon, an acting coach 17 years his senior, overhauled his posture, teeth and reedy voice; the punishment loan-out to a Poverty Row road-trip comedy that defined the screwball genre and won him the industry's top acting honor; his reluctance to play a cyni ...