Gerald Mohr

Gerald Mohr
Born (1914-06-11)June 11, 1914
Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
Died November 9, 1968(1968-11-09) (aged 54)
Stockholm, Sweden
Cause of death Heart attack
Resting place Columbarium of Lidingö Kyrkogård in Sweden
Occupation Actor
Spouse(s) Rita Deneau (1938-57; divorced)
Mai Dietrich (1958-68, his death)

Gerald Mohr (June 11, 1914 – November 9, 1968) was an American radio, film, and television character actor and frequent leading man, who appeared in more than 500 radio plays, 73 films, and over 100 television shows.

Life and career

Gerald Mohr in the CBS Radio series The Adventures of Philip Marlowe (1948–1951)

Mohr was born in Manhattan to Henrietta (née Neustadt), a singer, and Sigmond Mohr.[1] He was educated in Dwight Preparatory School in Manhattan, where he learned to speak fluent French and German and also learned to ride horses and play the piano.

At Columbia University, where he was on a course to become a doctor, Mohr was struck with appendicitis and was recovering in a hospital when another patient, a radio broadcaster, realised Mohr's pleasant baritone voice would be ideal for radio. Mohr was hired by the radio station and became a junior reporter. In the mid-1930s, Orson Welles invited him to join his formative Mercury Theatre. During his time with Welles, Mohr gained theatrical experience on Broadway in The Petrified Forest and starred in Jean Christophe.

Mohr made more than 500 appearances in radio roles throughout the 1930s, '40s, and early '50s. He starred as Raymond Chandler's hardboiled detective, Philip Marlowe, 1948–1951, in 119 half-hour radio plays. He also starred in The Adventures of Bill Lance,[2] was one of the actors who portrayed Archie Goodwin in The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe, frequently starred in The Whistler, and acted in different roles in multiple episodes of Damon Runyon Theater and Frontier Town. Other radio appearances include The Jack Benny Program, Our Miss Brooks, The Shadow of Fu Manchu, Box 13, Escape, and Lux Radio Theatre.[3]

Mohr began appearing in films in the late 1930s, playing his first villain role in the 15-part cliffhanger serial Jungle Girl (1941). After three years' service in the US Army Air Forces during World War II, he returned to Hollywood, starring as Michael Lanyard in three movies of The Lone Wolf series in 1946-47. He made cameo appearances in Gilda (1946) and Detective Story (1951), and co-starred in "The Magnificent Rogue" (1946) and The Sniper (1952). In 1949, he was co-announcer, along with Fred Foy, and narrator of 12 of the shows of the first series of The Lone Ranger.[3]

From the 1950s on, he appeared as a guest star in more than 100 television series, including the Westerns The Californians, Maverick, Johnny Ringo, The Alaskans, Lawman, Cheyenne, Bronco, Overland Trail (as James Addison Reavis, "the Baron of Arizona", in the episode "The Baron Comes Back"), Sugarfoot, Bonanza, The Rifleman, Wanted: Dead or Alive (episode "Till Death do us Part"), Death Valley Days (as Andrés Pico in "The Firebrand"), and Rawhide.[3]

Mohr also guest-starred on Crossroads, The DuPont Show with June Allyson, Harrigan and Son, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, Perry Mason, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Lost in Space, Ripcord, and many other television series of the era, especially those being produced by Warner Bros. Studios and Dick Powell's Four Star Productions.[4]

Mohr made guest appearances on such network television comedy shows as The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1951), How to Marry a Millionaire (1958), The Jack Benny Program (1961 & 1962), The Smothers Brothers Show (1965) and The Lucy Show (1968). He had the recurring role of newsman Brad Jackson in My Friend Irma (1952). He played "Ricky's friend", psychiatrist "Dr. Henry Molin" (real life name of the assistant film editor on the show), in the February 2, 1953 episode of I Love Lucy, "The Inferiority Complex". His repeated line was, "Treatment, Ricky. Treatment".[3]

In 1954-1955, he starred as Christopher Storm in 41 episodes of the third series of Foreign Intrigue - Cross Current, produced in Stockholm for American distribution. During several episodes of Foreign Intrigue, but most noticeably in "The Confidence Game" and "The Playful Prince", he can be heard playing on the piano his own musical composition, "The Frontier Theme", so called because Christopher Storm was the owner of the Hotel Frontier in Vienna. Foreign Intrigue was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1954 under the category "Best Mystery, Action or Adventure Program" and again in 1955 under the category "Best Mystery or Intrigue Series".

Mohr guest-starred seven times in the 1957-62 television series Maverick, twice playing Western outlaw Doc Holliday, a role he reprised again in "Doc Holliday in Durango", a 1958 episode of Tombstone Territory. In one of the other "Maverick" episodes, he portrayed Steve Corbett, a character based on Bogart's in Casablanca. That episode, "Escape to Tampico", used the set from the original film, this time as a Mexican saloon where Bret Maverick (James Garner) arrives to hunt down Mohr's character for an earlier murder. Mohr made four guest appearances on Perry Mason (1961–66). In his first appearance, he played Joe Medici in "The Case of the Unwelcome Bride". In 1963, he played murder victim Austin Lloyd in "The Case of the Elusive Element". In 1964, he played the murderer, Alan Durfee, in "The Case of a Place Called Midnight". In 1966, he played agent Andy Rubin in the series' final episode, "The Case of the Final Fadeout".[3]

In 1964 Mohr, together with his second wife Mai, planned the formation of an international film company, headquartered in Stockholm, with Swedish and American writers. The company was to have featured comedy, adventure, crime, and drama shows for worldwide distribution. By then fluent in Swedish, he also planned to star in a film for TV in which his character, a newspaperman, would speak only Swedish. In 1964, he made a comedy Western, filmed in Stockholm and on location in Yugoslavia, called Wild West Story in which, unusually, the good guys spoke Swedish and the bad guys (Mohr, inter alia) spoke in English. He also essayed Captain Vadim, an Iron-Curtain submarine commander, in the Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea episode "The Lost Bomb."

He continued to market his powerful voice, playing Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic) in the Fantastic Four cartoon series during 1967 and Green Lantern in the 1968 animated series Aquaman. In 1968, he appeared in his last film role, as Tom Branca in William Wyler's Funny Girl, before guest-starring in the TV Western series The Big Valley. He sang in the 1956 Cheyenne episode "Rendezvous at Red Rock".

Death

Mohr flew to Stockholm in September 1968, to star in the pilot of a proposed television series, Private Entrance, featuring Swedish actress Christina Schollin.[3]

Shortly after the completion of filming, Mohr died of a heart attack in the evening of November 9, 1968, in Södermalm, Stockholm, aged 54. Mohr is interred in the columbarium of Lidingö Kyrkogård on the island of Lidingö, Sweden.

Family

Mohr had a son, Anthony Jeffrey Mohr, born in 1947.[5]

Selected filmography

References

  1. ↑ "Actor Mohr Dies; Played 'Lone Wolf'". Chicago Tribune. November 11, 1968.
  2. ↑ Terrace, Vincent (1999). Radio Programs, 1924-1984:A Catalog of Over 1800 Shows. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0351-9.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Wild West Story at the Internet Movie Database
  4. ↑ Boyd Magers, Bob Nareau and Bobby Copeland, Best of the Badmen (2005); ISBN No. 978-0-944019-43-6, pp. 230-31.
  5. ↑ "Dad's Day" (PDF). Radio Life. June 8, 1947. Retrieved 3 December 2014.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 "Gerald Mohr". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. AFI. Retrieved June 27, 2014.

Further reading

External links

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