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SCHALLERT, WILLIAM (1922– ). American actor.
Acted in films: The
Man from Planet X (Edgar G. ULMER 1951); Captive Women (Stuart
Gilmore 1952); Port Sinister (Harold Daniels 1953); Gog
(Herbert L. Strock 1954); The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack
ARNOLD 1957); The Story of
Mankind (Irwin ALLEN
1957); Macbeth (tv
movie) (Paul Almond 1961); The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (Robert
Butler 1969); Colossus: The Forbin Project (Joseph SARGENT 1969); Escape
(tv movie) (John Llewellyn Moxey 1971); The Strongest Man in the World
(Vincent McEvetty 1975); Hangar 18 (James L. Conway 1980); The
Twilight Zone—The Movie (Dante, John LANDIS, George MILLER, and Steven
SPIELBERG
1983); Amazons (tv
movie) Paul Michael Glaser 1984); Innerspace (Dante 1987); Matinee
(Dante 1993); Harvey (tv movie) (George Schaefer 1996); The
Second Civil War (tv movie) (Dante 1997); Bag of Bones (tv movie)
(Mick Garris 2011).
Acted in
television episodes: "The Hidden Reflector" (1951), "Lost in the Snow-Cap
Region of Mars" (1952), episodes of Space Patrol; "Enemies of the
Universe," "Atomic Peril," "Cosmic Vengeance" (1955), episodes of Commando
Cody, Sky Marshal of the Universe; "A Visit from Dr. Pliny"
(1955), episode of Science Fiction Theatre; "Epilogue"
(1959), "Tidalwave" (1960), episodes of One Step Beyond;
"A Handful of Hours" (1960), episode of Men into Space;
"Mr. Bevis" (1960), episode of The Twilight Zone;
"Dialogues with Death" (1961), episode of Thriller;
"Bad Actor" (1962), episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents;
"The Train" (1967), episode of Mission Impossible; "The
Trouble with Tribbles" (1967), episode of Star Trek; "The Night
of the Bubbling Death" (1967), "The Night of the Gruesome
Games" (1968), "The Night of the Winged Terror" (two-part
episode) (1969), episodes of The Wild, Wild West; "A Man Called
Smart" (three-part episode) (1967), "Return of the Ancient
Mariner," "With Love and Twitches" (1968), "Witness for
the Execution" (1970), episodes of Get Smart; "Samantha's
Curious Cravings" (1969), episode of Bewitched; "The
Clones" (1969), episode of Land of the Giants; "The Praying
Mantis Kills" (1973), episode of Kung Fu; "Eyewitness to
Murder" (1974), episode of The Six Million Dollar Man;
"Claws" (1976), episode of The Bionic Woman; The Nancy
Drew Mysteries (tv series) (1977-1978); The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew
Mysteries (tv series) (1978); "The Stableboy's Christmas" (1978), episode
of This Is the Life; The Legends of the Super-Heroes (tv
series) (1979); "Call Me Responsible" (1984), episode of The
Duck Factory; "Shadow Play" (1986), episode of Twilight Zone;
"Man's Best Friend" (two-part episode) (1987), episode of Highway
to Heaven; "So Help Me God" (1989), episode of Quantum Leap;
"Sanctuary" (1993), "Trials and Tribble-ations" (1996), episodes of
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; "The Source" (1994), episode of Lois
and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman; "I Never Promised You
Charoses, Martin" (1994), "Second Time Around" (1996), episodes of Dream
On; "Sparks Fly Out," "Cold Ground" (2008), "She's Not There" (2011),
episodes of True Blood; "Will the Real Fred Rovick Please Stand Up?
(2010), episode of Medium.
Provided
voice for animation: The Smurfs (tv series) (1981-1990); "The Ogre's
Bride" (1986), episode of Wildfire; David and Goliath (short)
(Ray Patterson 1986); Sparky's Magic Piano (short) (Lee Mishkin 1987);
'Tis the Season to Be Smurfy (tv movie) (Patterson 1987);
"Rumpelstiltzkin" (1990), episode of Timeless Tales from Hallmark;
"Power Erupts" (1992), episode of Dinosaurs; "The Two Gills"
(1992), episode of Fish Police; "The Plaque" (1998), episode of Jumanji;
"The Day the Earth Got Really Screwed Up" (1998), episode of The Angry
Beavers; "The River Rising" (2002), episode of The Zeta
Project; "Big Appetite in Little Tokyo" (2003), "Farmed and Dangerous"
(2005), episodes of What's New, Scooby Doo?; The Bard's Tale
(video game) (Dennis Michael Miller 2004); Lincoln's Eyes (short)
(Charles Otte 2005); Green Lantern: First Flight (video) (Lauren
Montgomery 2009).
But Schallert knew, even at the start of his
career, that his frail, faintly professorial appearance ensured that he would
forever be cast as Rosencrantz or Guildenstern, never Hamlet. With powerful
connections to exploit—his father was a major drama critic for The Los
Angeles Times—Schallert could get his foot in the door, but he would
generally be given small parts that required little talent, providing him with
only the mild challenge of going through the motions in a manner slightly
better than the hundreds of other actors who could have handled the part. If
you actually gave him something to do, however, he might seize the
opportunity with surprising ferocity. Thus, if The Man from Planet X
would serve as the strong opening of your William Schallert film festival, its
smashing conclusion would be Matinee, where director Joe DANTE's
film-within-a-film Mant (and a film vastly more entertaining than the
one that surrounds it) allowed Schallert to go deliriously over the top as a
crazed doctor slowly turning into an ant.
What other Schallert performances might merit
a second look? While he did appear in several major science fiction films of
the 1950s, his roles were often so small that he was left uncredited, and the
only time he was onscreen long enough to make an impression would be The
Incredible Shrinking Man, where he is characteristically ineffectual as the
physician trying to minister to his inexorably diminishing patient
(anticipating a long string of later performances in which he would be
described as a "Doctor"). As he did more and more work in television, he made
the rounds of the era's series of genre interest, where his noteworthy roles
included a fragile scientist who should never have been allowed to go to the
Moon in the Men into Space episode "A Handful of Hours" and a policeman
in the unwatchable, purportedly comic "Mr. Bevis" episode of The Twilight
Zone. In the 1960s, he garnered his greatest fame as the hapless father on The
Patty Duke Show while fidgeting his way through more guest appearances on
television shows, effortlessly adjusting his style as he ranged from inane
comedies (Get Smart and Bewitched) to serious dramas (Mission:
Impossible). As another routine assignment, he provided an archetypal
Schallert performance as a myopic, meddlesome bureaucrat in the classic Star
Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles," surely his best
remembered genre performance, reprised through stock footage in the 1996 sequel
"Trials and Tribble-ations" (though he was also invited to play a different
role, as a musician, in another Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode).
In the 1970s, having proven with Patty Duke
how well he could play a father easily manipulated by a strong-willed daughter,
he was a natural choice to play Carson Drew in the 1970s Nancy Drew
series. Now established as a television icon, Schallert also added such series
as Land of the Giants, Kung Fu, The Six Million Dollar Man,
and The Bionic Woman to his résumé, along with some occasional returns
to films, where his performances included two turns as the befuddled Professor
Quigley dealing with boy genius Kurt RUSSELL in The Computer Wore Tennis
Shoes and The Strongest Man in the World, a CIA Director who cannot
cope with a runaway computer in Colossus: The Forbin Project, and a
professor involved in the discovery of a UFO in Hangar 18. The year 1979
also brought another career highlight, the two-part series The Legends of
the Super-Heroes, where Schallert upstaged better-known colleagues as the
over-the-hill hero Retired Man. Oddly, even as he usually remained a
subordinate figure on the set, he was elected in the same year as the head of
the Screen Actors Guild, indicating that his solid professionalism and strong
work ethic had earned him the respect of his peers, if not casting directors
and the general public.
Reaching the age of retirement in the 1980s
did nothing to slow Schallert down, as he carried on like the Energizer Bunny,
mixing a few film roles—he was a special favorite of Joe DANTE—with more guest
performances on television, while sometimes returning to the stage and
launching a new career as a voice for animated films; my previous effort to
chronicle his career missed numerous roles, and even as he approaches the age
of ninety he is still quite active, appearing three times in the series True
Blood and taking on a major role in the television movie Bag of Bones.
And when he was recently being interviewed about his Star Trek
performances, Schallert opportunistically employed the occasion to advertise
his services, concluding his remarks by saying, "But I'm available if anybody
wants me." Let us hope that directors like Dante continue to employ this
remarkable and perpetually available performer, who can be both competently
inconspicuous and memorably conspicuous on the screen.
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