Peter Whitney
| Peter Whitney | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 24, 1916 Long Branch, New Jersey, United States |
| Died | March 30, 1972 (aged 55) Santa Barbara, California, United States |
| Years active | 1941 - 1972 |
| Spouse | Adrienne Whitney (3 children) |
Peter Whitney, (May 24, 1916 – March 30, 1972) was an American actor in film and television. Born as Peter King Engle in Long Branch, New Jersey, Whitney's corpulent, heavy build qualified him to play villains in many Hollywood movies in the 1940s and 1950s.
From the late 1950s, he was more prolific playing character roles in many television series, including The Public Defender, Gunsmoke, Combat!, City Detective, My Friend Flicka ("A Case of Honor"), Sheriff of Cochise, Behind Closed Doors, Northwest Passage, Tombstone Territory (episode "Apache Vendetta"), Overland Trail (as Governor Sutcliff in episode "First Stage to Denver"), Wagon Train, The Rifleman (nine times), Bonanza, The Monkees, Perry Mason, The Beverly Hillbillies, Rawhide (episode "Incident of the Music Maker"), and Hawaii Five-O.
From 1958-1959, Whitney had a co-starring role as Buck Sinclair, a former sergeant of the Union Army, in all thirty-nine episodes of the ABC western series The Rough Riders.
One of his The Rifleman appearances was in "Mail Order Groom" (1960), in which Whitney portrayed John Jupiter, a man of great physical strength being harassed by two townsmen, played by John Anderson and Sandy Kenyon, who had quarreled with Whitney's intended spinster bride, Isabel Dent, played by Alice Backes (1923–2007).[1] Whitney also played a French partisan fighter named Massine in a 1963 episode of the T.V. series Combat!, titled "Thunder from the Hill."
His final role was as a grave robber in writer Rod Serling's Night Gallery. Whitney died of a heart attack shortly afterwards at the age of fifty-five.
[edit] Selected filmography
- Underground (1941)
- Whistling in Dixie (1942)
- Destination Tokyo (1943)
- Mr Skeffington (1944)
- Murder, He Says (1945)
- Three Strangers (1946)
- The Big Heat (1953)
- The Great Sioux Uprising (1953)
- The Sea Chase (1955)
- Man From Del Rio (1956)
- Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)
- The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962)
- In the Heat of the Night (1967)
- The Great Bank Robbery (1969)
- The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)
[edit] References
- ^ ""Mail Order Groom" on The Rifleman (January 12, 1960)". Internet Movie Data Base. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0686632/. Retrieved October 3, 2009.
