Born Today May 6: Bill Quinn

1912-1994

Well known character actor Bill Quinn was born William Tyrrell Quinn on this day in New York City.  He is a very well known actor both on and off the screen--as at home on the big screen as on the small one. His career was famously very long, with well over 220 filmed acting credits to his name; and when one adds in his vaudeville & serious stage credits, the list becomes jaw dropingly long!  A child actor who started out vaudeville, he appeared in two silent films in the 1920's as a teen. The first of these was No Mother to Guide Her (1923), a melodrama based on a Lillian Mortimer play (the only time, incidentally, that her work has ever been used for a screenplay).  The second was The New School Teacher, a comedy directed by Gregory La Cava, and dates from 1924.  Returning to the stage for a VERY long career, he doesn't appear again on film until 1956 and that was to go directly into television. That role comes in the western series "Cheyenne", episode: Death Deals the Hand, which aired on the 9th October 1956. He didn't appear in a film again until he had a a bit part in the B-Movie science fiction horror I Was A Teenage Frankenstein in 1957.  And since I am a horror nut, it's worth mentioning that he also appeared in Dark Intruder 1965 with Leslie Nielsen, "The Munsters", Rod Serling's "Night Gallery", Satan's School for Girls a 1973 made-for-tv film, Psychic Killer (1975), Terror Out of the Sky (1978), Dead & Buried (1981), The Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), and both of Alfred Hitchcock's early series--as well his The Birds.  He career in television is so long and vast that it would be impossible to even scratch the surface of it with a list; but a short highlight would include:  "Death Valley Days", "One Step Beyond", "Perry Mason", "The Beverly Hillbillies", "The Lucy Show", "Mister Ed", "Batman", "Bonanza", "Bewtiched", "I Dream Of Jeannie", "Ironside", "The Six Million Dollar Man", "Charlie's Angels", "The Rockford Files", "Little House On The Prairie, "Hunter", and "The Golden Girls".   As well as recurring roles on McHale's Navy, My Three Sons, The Odd Couple, McMillan & Wife & All In The Family and it's spin-off series Archie Bunker's Place. But there were two separate television series' on which his appearances were extra special:  The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart, owed to the fact that Quinn was Bob Newhart's actual father-in-law.  His last television role came on an episode of Highway To Heaven (Whose Trash Is It Anyway?) in 1988. His last role before retirement, which came in 1989, was a doozy! He appeared as McCoy's Father in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.  He died five years later on the 29 of April, just a week shy of his 82nd birthday--having worked almost the entirety of his life in acting of one sort or another. He is buried, along with his wife of 55 years, at the San Fernando Mission cemetery in Los Angeles. 

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