Ian Wolfe

Ian Marcus Wolfe (November 4, 1896 – January 23, 1992) was an American character actor with around 400 film and television credits. Until 1934, he worked in the theatre. That year, he appeared in his first film role and later television, as a character actor. His career lasted seven decades and included many films and TV series; his last screen credit was in 1990.

Wolfe's stage debut came in The Claw (1919). His Broadway credits include The Deputy (1964), Winesburg, Ohio (1958), Lone Valley (1933), Devil in the Mind (1931), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1931), Lysistrata (1930), The Seagull (1930), At the Bottom (1930), Skyrocket (1929), Gods of the Lightning (1928), and The Claw (1921).Wolfe made his film debut in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934). He appeared in many notable films, including Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), Julius Caesar (1953), James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and George Lucas's THX 1138 (1971). Although he was American by birth, his experience in the theatre gave him precise diction, and he was often cast as Englishmen on screen, including a fictional commissioner of Scotland Yard in the final film in the 1939-1946 Sherlock Holmes film series, Dressed to Kill (1946). He also appeared as an American antiques dealer in another film in the series, Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943), and Carter, Sir Wilfrid Robarts's clerk and office manager in Witness for the Prosecution (1957). Wolfe played a crooked small town doctor in "Six Gun's Legacy", an episode from the first (1949) season of The Lone Ranger. Wolfe appeared in the 1966 Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Midnight Howler" as Abel Jackson. In 1966, he portrayed the new Rev. Leighton on The Andy Griffith Show ("Aunt Bee's Crowning Glory", broadcast October 10, 1966). He also appeared in two episodes of the original Star Trek television series: "Bread and Circuses" (1968) as Septimus, and "All Our Yesterdays" (1969) as Mr. Atoz, guest-starred in a 1977 episode of the ABC crime drama The Feather and Father Gang, and portrayed the wizard Tranquil in the series Wizards and Warriors (1983). In 1982, Wolfe had a small recurring role on the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati as Hirsch, the sarcastic, irreverent butler to WKRP owner Lillian Carlson. Central to Wolfe's appeal as a character actor was that, until he reached actual old age, he always looked considerably older than he actually was. In the film Mad Love (1935), he played Colin Clive's stepfather, yet he was only four years older than Clive. In the film Houdini (1953), he warned the magician to avoid occult matters, telling him to "take the advice of an old man". He appeared in movies for another 37 years; his last film credit was for Dick Tracy (1990).

Wolfe was a veteran of World War I, serving as a volunteer medical specialist. He was married to Elizabeth Schroder for 68 years, from 1924 until his death; the couple had two daughters. Wolfe wrote and self-published two books of poetry, Forty-Four Scribbles and a Prayer: Lyrics and Ballads and Sixty Ballads and Lyrics In Search of Music. Wolfe continued acting until the last few years of his life and died of natural causes at the age of 95 on January 23, 1992.