John Dehner (born John Forkum; November 23, 1915 – February 4, 1992) was an American actor and animator. He had a long and prolific career in radio, television, and film, often as droll villains. Between 1940 and 1989, he appeared in over 260 films, television series, and made-for-television movies.
Early years
Dehner was born in Staten Island, New York City.
He initially went into art after studying at the Grand Central School of Art in New York City, New York. He worked as an animator at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank.
Radio
Dehner’s early radio jobs included being a news editor and a disc jockey. While working at KFWB in Los Angeles, California, he was a member of a news team that won a Peabody Award for its reporting on the first United Nations conference.
Possessing a deep, resonant voice, Dehner had an extensive career as a radio actor and was once recognized by Radio Life Magazine as having the entertainment industry’s “best radio voice”. He performed as a lead or supporting player in such series as The Whistler, Gunsmoke, Laramie, and Philip Marlowe. He also starred as Paladin in the radio version of Have Gun – Will Travel,:146 one of the few times a show began on television and then was later adapted for radio. On CBS Radio in 1958, he starred in the series Frontier Gentleman, a Western that opened with a trumpet theme by Jerry Goldsmith and the following introduction:
Herewith, an Englishman’s account of life and death in the West. As a reporter for The London Times, he writes his colorful and unusual accounts. But as a man with a gun, he lives and becomes a part of the violent years in the new territories. Now, starring John Dehner, this is the story of J. B. Kendall, Frontier Gentleman. …
Written and directed by Antony Ellis, the short-lived series followed the adventures of journalist Kendall as he roamed the West in the post-Civil War United States searching for dramatic stories for his newspaper.
Dehner portrayed Elmer Truitt on The Trouble with the Truitts:339–340 and the title character on The Judge.:181 He also performed regularly on Family Skeleton,:114 Escape,:110 and The Black Book.:43
Films
Over a 45-year movie career in Hollywood, between 1940 and 1986, Dehner appeared in no fewer than 126 feature films and shorts. He played Sheriff Pat Garrett in Gore Vidal’s The Left Handed Gun opposite Paul Newman as Billy the Kid.
He appeared too in Scaramouche (1952) as Doutreval of Dijon; and he played a district attorney in Please Murder Me, an American film noir film released in 1956, a production directed by Peter Godfrey and starring Angela Lansbury and Raymond Burr. The following year, he performed a non-singing role of Mr. Bascombe, the mill owner and intended robbery victim, in the film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. In 1951, he appeared in the film The Texas Rangers. He also played the villain in The Man from Bitter Ridge (1955), as well as Taylor Swope, one of Vinnie Harrold’s (Broderick Crawford) bad guy gang in The Fastest Gun Alive (1957), starring Glenn Ford. In 1978’s The Boys From Brazil, he portrayed Henry Wheelock, the last man killed by Dr. Josef Mengele.
Television
Dehner’s roles on TV programs included Marshal Edge Troy on Young Maverick,:1207 Jim Duke Williams on The Roaring 20’s,:899 Dr. Charles Claver on Temperatures Rising,:758 T. Jacob Broggi on Enos,:308–309 Cyril Bennett on The Doris Day Show,:278–279 Billy Erskine on The Colbys,:198–199, Soapie Smith on The Alaskans and Colonel Harvey on the Andy Griffith Show. He also performed regularly on The Don Knotts Show:275 and The Betty White Show (1958).:94
In the summer of 1955, Dehner was cast as Lieutenant Zetterquest in The Soldiers.:990 He also acted in the episode “Crack-Up” of Gunsmoke. In that 1957 episode he portrays Nate Springer, an unpredictable, psychopathic gunman who coldly kills a small dog on the main street of Dodge City before he faces Marshall Dillon in a formulaic TV showdown.
Dehner played an extremely broad range of starkly different characters in the 1957–1962 series Maverick opposite James Garner and Jack Kelly, including his pivotal role as the banker Bates in the famous episode “Shady Deal at Sunny Acres” as well as a deftly comedic performance in “Greenbacks, Unlimited” with Garner and Gage Clarke.
In the 1958 episode “Twelve Guns” on NBC’s Western Cimarron City, Dehner portrays a prosperous area rancher whose outlaw son, played by Nick Adams, joins a gang that demands $50,000 from the citizens of Cimarron City.[citation needed]
In 1959 he played Cleve Colter, a rebellious member of a group trudging thru a winter storm en route to California in “The Annie Griffith Story” on Wagon Train.
In 1960, Dehner was cast as Major Randolph in the episode “Friend of the Family” on the CBS western The Texan, starring Rory Calhoun.[citation needed]
Dehner guest starred twice in the western TV series Bonanza: he played Captain Pender in the 1960 episode “The Mission” and he portrayed Jean Lafitte in the 1964 episode “The Gentleman from New Orleans”.
Late in 1962, Dehner guest-starred as Dan Tabor in the episode “Echo of a Man” of the NBC western with a modern setting Empire, starring Richard Egan as rancher Jim Redigo. In 1961 and ‘64, Dehner starred in The Twilight Zone episodes “The Jungle” and “Mr. Garrity and the Graves”.
Of all the television series on which Dehner performed over the years, his 12 appearances on the long-running series Gunsmoke perhaps showcased best the full range of his acting talents. Between 1955 and 1968, he portrayed a diverse cast of characters, such as a psychotic gunman in the episode “Crack Up”, a pathetic town drunk in “The Bottle”, a distraught, lonely widower who marries an Indian and must deal with the anger of his only son from that decision in “The Squaw”, a dejected and childless farmer in “Caleb”, a brain-damaged freight operator who undergoes a drastic personality change in “Ash”, bar owner Kitty Russell’s long, lost father in “Daddy-O” and a timid resident of Dodge City who gains fleeting celebrity after killing an outlaw in the episode “The Pariah”.
In 1966, as Morgan Starr, episode “One Spring Like Long Ago” that included Warren Oates, and as Marshall Eliazer Teague, both in the 90 minute TV western series The Virginian in the 1969 episode titled “Halfway Back from Hell”.
Personal life and death
Dehner was married twice, the first time in 1941 to Roma Leonore Meyers, with whom he had two children. Three years after the couple’s divorce in 1970, he wed Evelyn Severance. They remained together for 19 years, until his death.
In 1992, at the age of 76, Dehner died from complications of emphysema and diabetes in Santa Barbara, California. He was cremated and his ashes interred at Carpinteria Cemetery in Carpinteria, California.
Selected filmography
Fantasia (1940, animator)
The Reluctant Dragon (1941) as Tall Baby Weems Storyboard Artist with Mustache (uncredited)
Bambi (1942, animator)
Tarzan’s Desert Mystery (1943) as Prince Ameer (uncredited)
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) as Lieutenant Commander (uncredited)
Hollywood Canteen (1944) as Norwegian Sailor (uncredited)
Lake Placid Serenade (1944) as Radio Announcer (uncredited)
The Corn Is Green (1945) as Miner with Pipe in Bar (uncredited)
Twice Blessed (1945) as Contest Announcer (uncredited)
Captain Eddie (1945) as Ambulance Attendant (uncredited)
Christmas in Connecticut (1945) as State Trooper #2 (uncredited)
State Fair (1945) as Hog Contest Announcer (uncredited)
She Went to the Races (1945) as Winner’s Announcer (uncredited)
Club Havana (1945) as Jeffreys (uncredited)
The Undercover Woman (1946) as Walter Hughes
The Catman of Paris (1946) as Georges
Her Kind of Man (1946) as Guest (uncredited)
Rendezvous 24 (1946) as Harris (uncredited)
O.S.S. (1946) as German Radar Captain (uncredited)
The Searching Wind (1946) as American Reporter in Paris (uncredited)
The Last Crooked Mile (1946) as Jarvis – Gang Leader
Big Town (1946) as Willard Erskine (uncredited)
Out California Way (1946) as Rod Mason
It’s a Joke, Son! (1947) as Reporter (uncredited)
Vigilantes of Boomtown (1947) as Bob Fitzsimmons
Golden Earrings (1947) as SS Officer with Hoff (uncredited)
Blonde Savage (1947) as Joe Comstock
Bury Me Dead (1947) as Reporter (uncredited)
Dream Girl (1948) as Radio Announcer (uncredited)
He Walked by Night (1948) as Assistant Bureau Chief (uncredited)
Let’s Live a Little (1948) as Dempster (uncredited)
State Department: File 649 (1949) as Third Oral Examiner (uncredited)
I Cheated the Law (1949) as Newspaperman (uncredited)
Tulsa (1949) as Oilman (uncredited)
Riders of the Pony Express (1949) as John Dakin
Kazan (1949) as Henri Le Clerc
The Secret of St. Ives (1949) as Couguelat
Barbary Pirate (1949) as Murad Reis
Prejudice (1949) as Office Bigot (uncredited)
Bandits of El Dorado (1949) as Charles Bruton
Feudin’ Rhythm (1949) as Serious Actor (uncredited)
Mary Ryan, Detective (1949) as Belden (uncredited)
Horsemen of the Sierras (1949) as Duke Webster
Bodyhold (1949) as Sir Raphael Brokenridge
Backfire (1950) as Blake – Plainclothes Cop (uncredited)
Dynamite Pass (1950) as Anson Thurber
Captive Girl (1950) as Hakim
Texas Dynamo (1950) as Stanton
Destination Murder (1950) as Frank Niles
Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950) as Sir Baldric (uncredited)
David Harding, Counterspy (1950) as Frank Reynolds (uncredited)
Three Secrets (1950) as Gordon Crossley (uncredited)
Last of the Buccaneers (1950) as Sgt. Belchue
Counterspy Meets Scotland Yard (1950) as Agent Bob Reynolds
The Flying Missile (1950) as Lieutenant Commander (uncredited)
Fort Savage Raiders (1951) as Capt. Michael Craydon
When the Redskins Rode (1951) as John Delmont
Lorna Doone (1951) as Baron de Wichehalse
The Texas Rangers (1951) as John Wesley ‘Wes’ Hardin
China Corsair (1951) as Pedro
Corky of Gasoline Alley (1951) as Jefferson Jay – Confidence Man (uncredited)
Hot Lead (1951) as Turk Thorne aka John H. Smith
Ten Tall Men (1951) as Jardine
Harem Girl (1952) as Khalil
The Green Glove (1952) as Narrator (uncredited)
Aladdin and His Lamp (1952) as Prince Bokra
Scaramouche (1952) as Doutreval
Desert Passage (1952) as Bronson
California Conquest (1952) as Fredo Brios
Cripple Creek (1952) as Emil Cabeau
Lady in the Iron Mask (1952) as Count de Fourrier
Junction City (1952) as Emmett Sanderson
Plymouth Adventure (1952) as Gilbert Winslow
Man on a Tightrope (1953) as The Chief
Powder River (1953) as Harvey Logan
Fort Algiers (1953) as Major Colle
Gun Belt (1953) as Matt Ringo
Vicki (1953) as Police Capt. J. ‘Chief’ Donald (uncredited)
The Steel Lady (1953) as Sid Barlowe
Southwest Passage (1954) as Matt Carroll
The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (1954) as Dr. Derek Gravesend
Apache (1954) as Weddle
The Prodigal (1955) as Joram
The Man from Bitter Ridge (1955) as Ranse Jackman
Tall Man Riding (1955) as Ames Luddington
The Scarlet Coat (1955) as Nathanael Greene
The King’s Thief (1955) as Capt Herrick
Duel on the Mississippi (1955) as Jules Tulane
Top Gun (1955) as Tom Quentin
Carousel (1956) as Mr. Bascombe
Please Murder Me (1956) as Ray Willis
Terror at Midnight (1956) as Lew Hanlon
A Day of Fury (1956) as Preacher Jason
The Fastest Gun Alive (1956) as Taylor Swope
Tension at Table Rock (1956) as Hampton
Gunsmoke (1957 episode “Daddy-O”) as Wayne Russell, Kitty’s father.
Revolt at Fort Laramie (1957) as Maj. Seth Bradner
The Iron Sheriff (1957) as Roger Pollack
Trooper Hook (1957) as Fred Sutliff
The Girl in Black Stockings (1957) as Sheriff Jess Holmes
The Left Handed Gun (1958) as Pat Garrett
Apache Territory (1958) as Grant Kimbrough
Man of the West (1958) as Claude
Timbuktu (1958) as Emir Bhaki aka The Lion of the Desert
Wanted Dead or Alive (1959) as Sheriff Hayes
Cast a Long Shadow (1959) as Chip Donohue
Wagon Train (1959) as Cleve Colter
Bat Masterson (1959) as a vengeful Sheriff
Vice Raid (1960) as Narrator (uncredited)
Maverick (1961) as Luther Cannonbaugh
The Canadians (1961) as Frank Boone
Gunsmoke (1961 episode “The Squaw”) as Hardy Tate
The Chapman Report (1962) as Geoffrey Harnish
The Virginian (1963 episode “To Make This Place Remember”) as Frank Sturgis
The Virginian (1963 episode “Echo of Another Day”) as Bleeck
Critic’s Choice (1963) as S.P. Champlain
The Andy Griffith Show (1963 episode “Aunt Bee’s Medicine Man”) as Colonel Harvey
Youngblood Hawke (1964) as Scotty Hawke
Combat! (1964) as Gen. Armand Bouchard
The Wild Wild West (1965) as John Maxwell Avery in “Night of the Casual Killer” and (1966) as Colonel “Iron Man” Torres in “The Night of the Steel Assassin”
The Hallelujah Trail (1965) as Narrator (uncredited)
The Helicopter Spies (1968) as Dr. Parviz Kharmusi
The Beverly Hillbillies (1968) as Dr. Rex Goodbody
Stiletto (1969) as District Attorney Frank Simpson
The High Chaparral (1969) as Gar Burnett
Quarantined (1970) as Dr. John Bedford
Tiger by the Tail (1970) as Sheriff Chancey Jones
The Cheyenne Social Club (1970) as Clay Carroll (uncredited)
Dirty Dingus Magee (1970) as Brig. Gen. George
Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971) as Colonel Ames
Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) as Prof. Rumfoord
The Day of the Dolphin (1973) as Ben Wallingford – Foundation
The Missiles of October (1974) as Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson
Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1975) as Capt. Vernon Rausch
The Killer Inside Me (1976) as Bob Maples
Guardian of the Wilderness (1976) as John Muir
Fun with Dick and Jane (1977) as Jane’s Father
The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977) as Col. Lafayette C. Baker
The Boys from Brazil (1978) as Henry Wheelock
Nothing Personal (1980) as Senator
Airplane II: The Sequel (1982) as The Commissioner
The Winds of War (1983) as Admiral Ernest King
The Right Stuff (1983) as Henry Luce
Jagged Edge (1985) as Judge Carrigan
Creator (1985) as Paul
War and Remembrance (1989, television miniseries) as Admiral Ernest King (final appearance)
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External Links
Actor John Dehner – Wikipedia
