Name: John Anderson
Born: 1922
Place: Clayton, Illinois, USA
Died: 7 August 1992
Place: Sherman Oaks, California
Cause: Heart attack
Dour, lantern-jawed character actor
John Anderson attended the University of Iowa before inaugurating his performing career on
a Mississippi showboat. After serving in the Coast Guard during World War II, Anderson
made his Broadway bow, then first appeared on screen in 1952's The Crimson Pirate.
The actor proved indispensable to screenwriters trafficking in such stock characters as
The Vengeful Gunslinger, The Inbred Hillbilly Patriarch, The Scripture-Spouting Zealot and
The Rigid Authority Figure. Anderson's many screen assignments included used-car huckster
California Charlie in Psycho (1960),
the implicitly incestuous Elder Hammond in Ride the High
Country (1962), the title character in The Lincoln
Conspiracy (1977) and Caiaphas in In Search of
Historic Jesus (1980). A dead ringer for 1920s baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw
Mountain Landis, Anderson portrayed that uncompromising gentleman twice, in 1988's Eight Men Out
and the 1991 TV biopic Babe Ruth. A veteran of 500 TV appearances (including four guest
stints on The Twilight Zone), John Anderson was seen as FDR in the 1978 miniseries
Backstairs in the White House, and on a regular basis as Michael Spencer Hudson in the
daytime drama Another World, Virgil Earp in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955-61)
and the leading man's flinty father in MacGiver (1985-92). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
View
actors filmography at IMDb
|
