Betty Jane Kathleen Crowley (born December 26, 1931) was an American actress and was Miss New Jersey in 1949 and a contestant for Miss America in the same year (she came in sixth). After the pageants, she became an actress who specialized in being phenomenally seductive in TV series and movies. Most well known for playing a variety of sirens in TV's Maverick (1957) opposite James Garner, Jack Kelly, and Roger Moore, she appears in eight episodes, a series record for leading ladies; "The Jeweled Gun" (with Jack Kelly), "Maverick Springs" (with James Garner and Jack Kelly), "The Misfortune Teller" (with Garner), "A Bullet for the Teacher" (with Roger Moore), "Kiz" (with Moore), and "Dade City Dodge," "The Troubled Heir," and "One of Our Trains Is Missing," with Kelly. Crowley made 81 television appearances on various series and appeared in twenty movies between 1951 and 1970 (one of her last movie roles was in Downhill Racer with Robert Redford). Many of her films were low-budget sci-fi and horror movies, but she seemed to appear in practically every narrative television series produced in the late '50s and '60s, including Bourbon Street Beat, Surfside 6, Hawaiian Eye, 77 Sunset Strip, Bat Masterson, Bonanza, Branded, My Three Sons, Donna Reed, Perry Mason, Checkmate, Bronco, Route 66, Thriller, Batman, Disneyland, Family Affair, Rawhide, The Lone Ranger, and many others.
Crowley was often confused with her acting contemporary Pat Crowley (frequently billed as "Patricia Crowley"), who appeared as guest leading lady in different episodes of many of the same television series and was not related. The two Crowleys were apparently never cast in the same episode.
In the Philip Roth novel American Pastoral, the protagonist marries Miss New Jersey 1949, in the book named Dawn Dwyer and having few similarities to Crowley's post-Miss New Jersey life (including a poorer finish in the Miss America pageant).
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Forever and fondly remembered as Don Adams' foil on the popular Mel Brooks/Buck Henry spy series Get Smart (1965), character actor Ed Platt (also billed as Edward C. Platt) had been around for two decades prior to copping that rare comedy role. Born in Staten Island, New York, on Valentine's Day, 1916, he inherited an appreciation of music on his mother's side. He spent a part of his childhood in Kentucky and in upstate New York where he attended Northwood, a private school in Lake Placid, and was a member of the ski jump team. He majored in romantic languages at Princeton University but left a year later to study at the Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati after his thoughts turned to a possible operatic career. He later was accepted into Juilliard.
Instead of opera, however, Ed first became a band vocalist with Paul Whiteman and Orchestra. He then sang bass as part of the Mozart Opera Company in New York. With the Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company in 1942, he appeared in the operettas "The Mikado," "The Gondoliers" and "The Pirates of Penzance".
WWII interrupted his early career. Ed served as a radio operator with the army and would find himself on radio again in the post-war years where his deep, resonant voice proved ideal. A number of musical comedy roles also came his way again. In 1947, he made it to Broadway with the musical "Allegro." Star José Ferrer took an interest in Ed while they both were appearing in "The Shrike" on Broadway in 1952.
Around 1953, Edward moved to Texas to be near his brother and began anchoring the local news and kiddie birthday party show called "Uncle Eddie's Kiddie Party." Ferrer remembered Platt and invited him to Hollywood where Ferrer was starring in the film version of The Shrike (1955). Ed recreated his stage role. He also earned fine notices as James Dean's understanding juvenile officer in the classic film Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
This led to a plethora of film and TV support offers where the balding actor made fine use of his dark, rich voice, stern intensity and pragmatic air, portraying a slew of professional and shady types in crime yarns, soap dramas and war pictures -- everything from principals and prosecutors to mobsters and murderers.
After years of playing it serious, which included stints on the daytime drama General Hospital (1963), Ed finally was able to focus on comedy as "The Chief" to Don Adams klutzy secret agent on Get Smart (1965), a show that inevitably found a cult audience. Picking up a few occasional guest spots in its aftermath, he later tried producing.
Twice married and the father of four, Platt died on March 19, 1974. Death was attributed to a massive heart attack at the time. Years later his son revealed that his father, suffering from acute depression and undergoing severe financial pressures, committed suicide at his Santa Monica, California apartment.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / [email protected]
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John Rollin Lupton (August 23, 1928 - November 3, 1993) was an American film and television actor.
Upon graduation from New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Lupton secured immediate stage work. Then he was signed as a contract player at MGM in Hollywood. Lupton was lanky and handsome like James Stewart or Henry Fonda, but never achieved similar fame.
In the 1954-1955 television season, Lupton appeared in several episodes as a college student in the CBS sitcom, The Halls of Ivy. In 1957, he was cast in the ABC western series, Broken Arrow, which ran for two seasons. In feature films he is primarily remembered for his role as "Sister Mary" in Battle Cry and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter.
Lupton also co-starred in 1956 with Fess Parker in Disney's The Great Locomotive Chase. He guest starred on several television series, including ABC's 1961-1962 crime drama Target: The Corruptors! with Stephen McNally and NBC's Daniel Boone.
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Ned Glass (April 1, 1906 – June 15, 1984) was a Polish-born American character actor who appeared in more than eighty films and on television more than one hundred times, frequently playing nervous, cowardly, or deceitful characters. Short and bald, with a slight hunch to his shoulders, he was immediately recognizable by his distinct appearance, his nasal voice, and his pronounced New York City accent.
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Robert Shayne (October 4, 1900 – November 29, 1992), born Robert Shaen Dawe, was an American actor whose career lasted for over 60 years. He was best known for portraying Inspector Bill Henderson in the American television series Adventures of Superman.
Shayne became an actor after having worked as a reporter at the Illustrated Daily Tab in Miami, Florida. His initial acting experience came with repertory companies in Alabama, including the Birmingham Players.
Shayne's first Broadway appearance came by 1931 in The Rap. His other Broadway shows include Yellow Jack (1934), The Cat and the Canary (1935), Whiteoaks (1938), with Ethel Barrymore, and Without Love (1942), with Katharine Hepburn.
Shayne began his film career in 1934, appearing in two features. In 1942, he became a contract actor with Warner Bros.. He played many character roles in movies and television, including a film series of Warner Bros. featurettes called the "Santa Fe Trail" series such as Wagon Wheels West, and as a mad scientist in the 1953 horror film The Neanderthal Man.
He appears briefly in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, seated at a booth in a hotel bar, where his character meets Cary Grant's character, just as the latter is about to be kidnapped. He also had a small but pivotal role in the 1953 sci-fi classic Invaders From Mars as a scientist. He also enjoyed a brief rebirth in his career when he was cast as the blind newspaper vendor in The Flash television show. He was by this time actually blind and learned his lines by having his wife read them to him and then rehearse until he memorized them.
Shayne portrayed Police Inspector William "Bill" Henderson on the 1950s TV series Adventures of Superman. He appeared sporadically in the early episodes of the series, in part because he came under HUAC scrutiny and was briefly blacklisted on unproven and unspecific charges of association with Communism. As the program evolved, especially in the color episodes, he was brought into more and more of them, to the point where he was a regular on the series.
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Isaac Stanford Jolley (October 24, 1900 – December 7, 1978) was an American character actor of film and television, primarily in western roles as cowboys, law-enforcement officers, or villains. Recognized by his slight build, narrow face, and pencil-thin moustache, Jolley appeared some five hundred times on the large or small screen.
Isaac Stanford Jolley was born in a circus trailer in Elizabeth, New Jersey, while the circus owned by his father had a three-day stop there.[2] Jolley toured as a child with his father's traveling circus and worked in vaudeville. He was a student of the Edward Clark Academy Theater.
Television roles
From 1950 to 1953, Jolley first appeared on television with six castings in different role in the series, The Lone Ranger with Clayton Moore. He appeared twice in 1953 in the syndicated western series, The Range Rider. He made two appearances as Parker in Tales of the Texas Rangers, with series stars Willard Parker and Harry Lauter. Jolley guest starred as the henchman Walt, along with Clayton Moore and Darryl Hickman in the 1954 episode "Annie Gets Her Man" of the syndicated Western, Annie Oakley. He appeared as Sheriff Bascom in the 1954 episode "Black Bart" of Stories of the Century.
Jolley soon appeared multiple times on a wide range of other western series, including, The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (three times), The Cisco Kid (ten), Tales of the Texas Rangers (twice), Sergeant Preston of the Yukon (twice), The Roy Rogers Show (three), The Gene Autry Show (four), Sky King (four), Death Valley Days (five), 26 Men (five appearances, again with Tristram Coffin, the series star), Wanted Dead or Alive (two), Bronco (twice), Tales of Wells Fargo (twice), The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (six), Maverick (six), Lawman (six), Cheyenne (seven), Rawhide (five), Wagon Train (ten), The Virginian (two), Daniel Boone (two), Laredo (two), The Big Valley (three), Bonanza (eight), and Gunsmoke (nine).
In 1960, he guest starred as the Indian named Singing Arrow in the series finale, "The Search," of the syndicated western, Pony Express, with Grant Sullivan. In 1962, he was cast as The Stranger in the episode "Quarantine" of the NBC western series, The Tall Man, starring Barry Sullivan, and Clu Gulager.
In 1965, Jolley appeared as Enos Scoggins in "The Greatest Coward on Earth" of the Chuck Connors series, Branded. He had also appeared with Connors on ABC's The Rifleman in one of the last episodes of the series in 1963 in the role of Joe Fogner in "Hostages to Fortune" (1963). He appeared four times in 1956 in archival footage on the children's western The Gabby Hayes Show.
In 1966, Jolley appeared on the show F Troop as Colonel Ferguson in the episode "Survival of the Fittest". Jolley's last Western roles were in 1976: as (1) a farmer in ABC's The Macahans, the pilot of James Arness's second western series, How the West Was Won, and (2) as a drunkard in the short-lived Tim Matheson and Kurt Russell series The Quest. CLR
Gene Roth (January 8, 1903 – July 19, 1976) was an American film actor. Born in Redfield, South Dakota, Roth was born Eugene Oliver Edgar Stutenroth. He appeared in over 250 films between 1922 and 1967.
Roth is remembered for his portrayals of heavies and bad guys in Three Stooges short films such as Slaphappy Sleuths, Hot Stuff, Quiz Whizz, Outer Space Jitters and Pies and Guys. His most memorable role was as Russian spy Bortsch in Dunked in the Deep (1949), as well as its remake, Commotion on the Ocean (1956). His most famous line was his threat to Shemp Howard: "Give me dat fill-um!" ('fill-um' being 'film' with a Russian accent).
Roth also starred in the 1953 Columbia Pictures serial The Lost Planet, as the dictator of the lost planet Ergro.
He later made frequent television appearances including seven episodes of The Lone Ranger from 1949 to 1954. His Stooge film appearance was in The Three Stooges Meet Hercules.
Roth was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Los Angeles, California on July 19, 1976.
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