Jack Kruschen

Biography

Jack Kruschen (Winnipeg, 1922 - 2002) was a Canadian-born actor who built most of his career in the United States across film, television and radio. He is best remembered as a supporting and character performer, and his name is closely linked to The Apartment, Billy Wilder's comedy that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

He moved with his family to Los Angeles as a teenager and, at sixteen, began working at a local radio station. During the Second World War he served in the Army, assigned to the Armed Forces Radio Service. After the war he returned to network programming, becoming a regular on radio drama, anthology series, westerns and crime shows, with credits on Dragnet, Gunsmoke and Suspense.

His film career took off in the late 1940s with Red, Hot and Blue. He soon built up a steady run of supporting parts across different genres. Among them were Salvatore, one of the first victims in The War of the Worlds (1953), the saloon owner in The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Jake Birnbaum in McLintock!, opposite John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. His sturdy build and mustache led casting directors to offer him warm, ethnic father figures, often men who stood on the side of the law.

On television he was just as busy. He played the villain Eivol Ekdal in two episodes of Batman, the grandfather Papadopolis in Webster, and a Greek grandfather in Full House, and he appeared in the Columbo episode titled The Most Dangerous Match. His last screen appearance came in Til There Was You (1997). He died in 2002 at the age of 80, after a period of poor health. Today he is remembered as one of those familiar supporting faces that audiences recognize at once.

Key films

• The Apartment (1960), directed by Billy Wilder: plays Dr. Dreyfuss, the neighbor who earned him his Oscar nomination.
• The War of the Worlds (1953), directed by Byron Haskin: plays Salvatore, one of the first three victims of the Martian attack.
• Cape Fear (1962), directed by J. Lee Thompson: plays attorney Dave Grafton in the thriller starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum.
• The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), directed by Charles Walters: plays saloon owner Christmas Morgan alongside Debbie Reynolds.