Sheldon Leonard (
February 22 1907 –
January 10,
1997) was a pioneering American
film and
television producer, director, writer, and actor.
Biography
Leonard was born
Sheldon Leonard Bershad in
New York City, the son of
middle class Jewish parents Anna and Frank Bershad.
[Obituary: Sheldon Leonard | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com][Sheldon Leonard Biography - Yahoo! Movies] As an actor, Leonard specialized in playing supporting characters, especially gangsters or "heavies", in films such as
It's a Wonderful Life (1946),
To Have and Have Not (1944), and
Open Secret (1948). His trademark was his especially thick New York accent. In the cult classic
Decoy, Leonard uses his "heavy" persona to create the hard-boiled police detective Joe Portugal. In the 1950s, Leonard provided the voice of lazy cat Dodsworth in two
Warner Bros. cartoons directed by
Robert McKimson.
In radio, Leonard played an eccentric racetrack
tout on
The Jack Benny Program in the late 1940s and early '50s. His role was to salute Benny out of the blue in railroad stations, on street corners, or in department stores ("hey Bud, come here a minute"), ask Benny what he was about to do, and then proceed to try to argue him out of his course of action by resorting to inane and irrelevant racing logic. Ironically, as "The Tout," he never gave out information on horse racing, unless Jack demanded it. One excuse the tout gave was "Who knows about horses?" He also appeared frequently on "The Adventures of the Saint," often playing gangsters and heavies, but also sometimes in more positive roles.
