Frank Faylen(1905-1985)
- Actor
- Soundtrack
American character actor who specialized in average-guy parts and who
could be equally effective in sympathetic or unlikeable roles. His
parents, the vaudeville team of Ruf and Cusik, took him onstage with
them when he was a baby, and Faylen grew up in the theatre. He attended
St. Joseph's Preparatory College in Kirkwood, Missouri, but returned to
vaudeville as a comic pantomimist. He toured the country throughout the
late Twenties and early Thirties as a clown and later as song-and-dance
man with acrobatic agility. During a tour stop in Los Angeles, he was
screen tested and began a thirty-year career as one of Hollywood's most
familiar character players. His most famous film roles were as the
vicious male nurse Bim in The Lost Weekend (1945) and as the cabdriver Ernie in
It's a Wonderful Life (1946). But his greatest fame came in television, particularly as
Dobie's dad Herbert T. Gillis in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959). Faylen was married to actress
Carol Hughes, with whom he had two daughters. He retired after Funny Girl (1968), and
died in 1985.
