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Byron Foulger (27 August 1899 – 4 April 1970) was an American film character actor. ==Career== He was born in Ogden, Utah. Foulger attended the University of Utah, and started acting through his participation in community theatre.〔 He made his Broadway debut in March 1920 in a production of ''Medea'' featuring Moroni Olsen, and performed in four more productions with Olsen on the 'Great White Way',〔IBDB (Search )〕 back-to-back, ending in April 1922. He then toured with Olsen's stock company, and ended up at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he both acted and directed.〔Erickson, Hal (Biography (Allmovie) )〕 Foulger made his first films in 1934 and 1936 – ''The Little Minister'' and ''The President's Mystery'', the latter based on a story by Franklin Delano Roosevelt – but his career didn't start in earnest until 1937, after he performed opposite Mae West in a racy 'Adam and Eve' sketch on the Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy network radio program which resulted in West being banned from the airwaves almost immediately. (Foulger played the voice of the serpent.) From this point on, Foulger worked steadily in motion pictures. He played many parts: storekeepers, hotel desk clerks, morticians, professors, bank tellers, ministers, confidence men, and a host of other characterizations, usually timid, whining, weak-willed, shifty, sanctimonious or sycophantic. His earliest films show him clean-shaven, but in the 1940s he adopted a wispy moustache that emphasized his characters' worried manner. When the mustache went gray in the 1950s, he reverted to a clean-shaven look. Foulger was a resourceful actor and often embellished his scripted lines with memorable bits of business: in ''The Falcon Strikes Back'', for example, hotel clerk Foulger announces a homicide by bellowing across the lobby: "Mur-''der!'' Mur-''der! In real life, Foulger was not as much of a pushover as the characters he played. In one memorable incident at a party he threatened to punch Errol Flynn for flirting with his wife, the actress Dorothy Adams, with whom he was married from 1921 until his death in 1970.〔 In the 1940s, Foulger was part of Preston Sturges' unofficial "stock company" of character actors, appearing in five films written by Sturges, ''The Great McGinty'', ''Sullivan's Travels'', ''The Palm Beach Story'', ''The Miracle of Morgan's Creek'' (recreating the role of McGinty's secretary he played in ''The Great McGinty'') and ''The Great Moment''. In "A" pictures, such as those of Sturges', Foulger would often not receive a screen credit: in B movies such as 1939's ''The Man They Could Not Hang'', he would get more substantial billed parts.〔 By the late 1950s, Foulger was so well established as a mild-mannered worrywart that just the showing of his face would receive a welcoming audience laugh (this happens in the cameo-laden Frank Capra comedy ''Pocketful of Miracles''). In a humorous coup, the actor was cast against type for the most prominent role of his career: he played the Devil opposite The Bowery Boys in ''Up in Smoke'', and was billed in ads and posters as one of the film's three stars. Beginning in , Foulger made over 90 appearances on television, in programs such as ''Death Valley Days'', ''I Love Lucy'', ''The Cisco Kid'', ''My Little Margie'', ''The Man Behind the Badge'', ''The Lone Ranger'', ''Maverick'', ''Lawman'', ''The Red Skelton Show'', ''Rawhide'', ''Wagon Train'', ''Bonanza'', ''Burke's Law'', ''Daniel Boone'', ''Hazel'', ''The Patty Duke Show'', ''The Monkees'', ''Perry Mason'', ''Laredo'' and ''Gunsmoke''. He played multiple-episode characters on ''Dennis the Menace'' ("Mr. Timberlake"), ''Lassie'' ("Dan Porter") and ''The Andy Griffith Show'' ("Fred, the hotel clerk"). On ''Petticoat Junction'' he played two recurring roles: "Mr. Guerney" and engineer "Wendell Gibbs". Notable later television credits included the ''Twilight Zone'' episode "Walking Distance" – in which Gig Young tells Foulger, who is playing a drugstore counterman, that he thinks he's seen him before, to which Foulger replies: "I've got that kind of face"〔 – the short-lived comedies ''My Mother the Car'' (as one of the villain's browbeaten advisors) and ''Captain Nice'' (as the hero's often silent father), and ''The Mod Squad'', his last appearance in episodic television.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Byron Foulger」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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