Charles Halton

Appears in seven Oscar Best Picture nominees: Dead End (1937), Foreign Correspondent (1940), One Foot in Heaven (1941), Wilson (1944), The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946), It's A Wonderful Life (1946) and Friendly Persuasion (1956 (1956). The Best Years of Our Lives is the only winner.

Small, bespectacled American character actor with thinning gray hair and wire rims trained at American Academy of Dramatic Arts and maintained a durable presence on Broadway. He later came to Hollywood and showed off his modest versatility in hundreds of minor roles, playing snively, harried and acrid old fellers all over the place during the late 1930s and '40s.

A respected stage actor -- he trained at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts -- since the 1920s, birdlike Charles Halton's thinning hair, rimless glasses and officious manner were familiar to generations of moviegoers. Whether playing the neighborhood busybody, a stern government bureaucrat or weaselly attorney, you could count on Halton to try to drive the "immoral influences" out of the neighborhood, foreclose on the orphanage, evict the poor widow and her children from their apartment, or any other number of dastardly deeds, all justified by "I'm sorry but that's my job.