Walter Baldwin
Acting
Born 1889-01-01
Died 1977-01-27
Lima, Ohio, USA
111 credits
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Walter S. Baldwin Jr. (January 2, 1889 − January 27, 1977) was a prolific character actor whose career spanned five decades and 150 film and television roles, and numerous stage performances.
Baldwin was born in Lima, Ohio from a theatrical family and served in the First World War.
He was probably best known for playing the father of the handicapped sailor in The Best Years of Our Lives. He was the first actor to portray "Floyd the Barber" on The Andy Griffith Show.
Prior to his first film roles in 1939, Baldwin had appeared in more than a dozen Broadway plays. He played Whit in the first Broadway production of Of Mice and Men, and also appeared in the original Grand Hotel in a small role, as well as serving as the production's stage manager. He originated the role of Bensinger, the prissy Chicago Tribune reporter, in the Broadway production of The Front Page.
In the 1960s he had small acting roles in television shows such as Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. He continued to act in motion pictures, and one of his last roles was in Rosemary's Baby.
Baldwin was known for playing solid middle class burghers, although sometimes he gave portrayals of eccentric characters. He played a customer seeking a prostitute in The Lost Weekend and the rebellious prison trusty Orvy in Cry of the City. Walter Baldwin was featured in a lot of John Deere Day Movies from 1949-59 where he played the farmer Tom Gordon. In this series of Deere Day movies over a decade he helped to introduce many new pieces of John Deere farm equipment year-by-year. In each yearly movie he would be shown on his in A Tom Gordon Family Film where he would be buying new John Deere farm equipment or a new green and yellow tractor.A picture of Walter Baldwin playing Tom Gordon can be found on page 108 of Bob Pripp's book John Deere Yesterday & Today
Hal Erickson writes in Allmovie: "With a pinched Midwestern countenance that enabled him to portray taciturn farmers, obsequious grocery store clerks and the occasional sniveling coward, Baldwin was a familiar (if often unbilled) presence in Hollywood films for three decades."
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Filmography
— top 60 of 111
Acting
54 credits
The Fugitive
The Andy Griffith Show
Wagon Train
Mannix
Petticoat Junction
Green Acres
Gunsmoke
The Millionaire
Rosemary's Baby
The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse
The Harder They Fall
Screen Director's Playhouse
Lux Video Theatre
Frontier
The Best Years of Our Lives
Cheyenne Autumn
Casey Jones
The Lost Weekend
Dragonwyck
They Died with Their Boots On
Cheaper by the Dozen
The Desperate Hours
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
Tall in the Saddle
Cry of the City
Storm Warning
Destry
The Fastest Gun Alive
The Man from Colorado
In This Our Life
Christmas in Connecticut
The Long, Long Trailer
Wild in the Country
Ride, Vaquero!
Living It Up
General Electric Theater
All That Money Can Buy
The Racket
Arizona
Thieves' Highway
Reconnaissance Pilot
Special Agent
Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man
You Can't Run Away from It
Sister Kenny
Carrie
Rachel and the Stranger
Return of the Bad Men
Stranger on Horseback
Wilson
The Unsuspected
Calamity Jane and Sam Bass
Mourning Becomes Electra
Framed
Other credits
6 credits
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