Ned Payne Austin was an American character actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 and a member of the Screen Actors Guild

Screen Actors Guild

The Screen Actors Guild is an American labor union representing over 200,000 film and television principal performers and background performers worldwide...

 and AFTRA.

Austin was in several films, including Annie Hall

Annie Hall

Annie Hall is a 1977 American romantic comedy directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay co-written with Marshall Brickman and co-starring Diane Keaton. One of Allen's most popular and most honored films, it won four Academy Awards including Best Picture...

and The Happy Ending

The Happy Ending

The Happy Ending is a 1969 film written and directed by Richard Brooks, which tells the story of a repressed housewife who longs for liberation from her marriage...

, and some regional movies and industrial films, and he played the bridgemaster in Stephen King

Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

's directorial debut, Maximum Overdrive

Maximum Overdrive

Maximum Overdrive is a 1986 American action-horror-science fiction film written and directed by novelist Stephen King. The screenplay was inspired by and loosely based on King's short story, Trucks, which was included in King's first collection of short stories, Night Shift.Maximum Overdrive is...

, where he introduced the phrase, "Can't you see we've got a situation here?!". After two seasons of summer stock in Surry, Maine

Surry, Maine

Surry is a town in Hancock County, Maine, United States. The population was 1,361 at the 2000 census.-Geography:According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it is water....

, he starred as Daniel Boone

Daniel Boone

Daniel Boone was an American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits mad']'e him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of...

 for the first three years (1952–1954) of Horn in the West

Horn in the West

Horn in the West, by Kermit Hunter, is an outdoor drama produced every summer since 1952 in the Daniel Boone Amphitheatre in Boone, North Carolina . The show, the oldest revolutionary war drama in the United States, is about the life and times of the first people to settle the mountains of western...

in Boone, North Carolina

Boone, North Carolina

Boone is a town located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, United States. Boone's population was reported as 17,122, as of 2010...

 and then moved to Denver, Colorado

Denver, Colorado

The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county, located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...

, where he appeared in about forty stage productions, in various theatre companies.

His television credits include several kiddie shows and parts in Movin' On

Movin' On (TV series)

Movin' On is an American drama series that ran for two seasons , between 1974 and 1976. It originally appeared on the NBC television network...

, Alias Smith and Jones

Alias Smith and Jones

Alias Smith and Jones is an American Western series that originally aired on ABC from 1971 to 1973. It stars Pete Duel as Hannibal Heyes and Ben Murphy as Jedediah "Kid" Curry, a pair of Western cousin outlaws trying to reform...

, Route 66

Route 66 (TV series)

Route 66 is an American TV series in which two young men traveled across America. The show ran weekly on CBS from 1960 to 1964. It starred Martin Milner as Tod Stiles and, for two and a half seasons, George Maharis as Buz Murdock. Maharis was ill for much of the third season, during which time Tod...

, and a CBS movie of the week, Company of Killers, as well as numerous commercials.

Austin's son, Sam Austin, starred in the Disney

Walt Disney Pictures

Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...

 film Mountain Born

Mountain Born

Mountain Born is a children's historical novel by Elizabeth Yates. Set in the sparsely-populated Rocky Mountains during the 19th century, it describes the life of a shepherd's family. The novel, illustrated by Nora Spicer Unwin, was first published in 1943 and was a Newbery Honor recipient in 1944....

in 1970, shot in Telluride, Colorado

Telluride, Colorado

The town of Telluride is the county seat and most populous town of San Miguel County in the southwestern portion of the U.S. state of Colorado. The town is a former silver mining camp on the San Miguel River in the western San Juan Mountains...

. Sam wrote the title song and became one of the youngest members of ASCAP at the age of 12.

In 1972, Austin returned to Boone, North Carolina

Boone, North Carolina

Boone is a town located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, United States. Boone's population was reported as 17,122, as of 2010...

to live, and he continued to act in community theatre productions and in regionally produced films. He lived there for the remaining 35 years of his life, and died peacefully, in the house in which he was born.

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