Peter Whitney
Encyclopedia
Peter Whitney, was an American
actor
in film
and television
. Born as Peter King Engle in Long Branch, New Jersey
, Whitney's corpulent, heavy build qualified him to play villains in many Hollywood
movies in the 1940s and 1950s.
From the late 1950s, he was more prolific playing character roles in many television series
, including The Public Defender
, Gunsmoke
, Combat!, City Detective
, My Friend Flicka
("A Case of Honor"), Sheriff of Cochise
, Behind Closed Doors
, Northwest Passage
, Tombstone Territory
(episode "Apache Vendetta"), Overland Trail
(as Governor Sutcliff in episode "First Stage
to Denver
"), Wagon Train
, The Rifleman
(nine times), Bonanza
, The Monkees
, Perry Mason
, The Beverly Hillbillies
, and Hawaii Five-O
.
From 1958-1959, Whitney had a co-starring role as Buck Sinclair, a former sergeant of the Union Army
, in all thirty-nine episodes of the ABC
western series The Rough Riders
.
One of his The Rifleman appearances was in "Mail Order Groom" (1960), in which Whitney portrayed John Jupiter, a man of great physical strength being harassed by two townsmen, played by John Anderson
and Sandy Kenyon
, who had quarreled with Whitney's intended spinster bride, Isabel Dent, played by Alice Backes (1923–2007). Whitney also played a French partisan fighter named Massine in a 1963 episode of the T.V. series Combat!, titled "Thunder from the Hill."
His final role was as a grave robber in writer Rod Serling
's Night Gallery
. Whitney died of a heart attack shortly afterwards at the age of fifty-five.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
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...
in film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
. Born as Peter King Engle in Long Branch, New Jersey
Long Branch, New Jersey
Long Branch is a city in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was 30,719.Long Branch was formed on April 11, 1867, as the Long Branch Commission, from portions of Ocean Township...
, Whitney's corpulent, heavy build qualified him to play villains in many Hollywood
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...
movies in the 1940s and 1950s.
From the late 1950s, he was more prolific playing character roles in many television series
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
, including The Public Defender
The Public Defender (TV series)
The Public Defender is a half-hour 69-episode television dramatic series starring Reed Hadley as Bart Matthews, an attorney for the indigent. The series aired on CBS from March 11, 1954 to June 23, 1955, a season and a half.-Premise:...
, Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West....
, Combat!, City Detective
City Detective (TV series)
City Detective is a half-hour syndicated crime drama starring Rod Cameron as 43-year-old Bart Grant, a tough 1950s New York City police lieutenant. The first of three consecutive Rod Cameron series, City Detective aired between January 1, 1953 and May 10, 1955...
, My Friend Flicka
My Friend Flicka (TV series)
My Friend Flicka is a 39-episode western television series set at the fictitious Goose Bar Ranch in Wyoming at the turn of the 20th century. The program was filmed in color but initially aired in black and white on CBS at 7:30 p.m. Fridays from February 10, 1956, to February 1, 1957. It was a...
("A Case of Honor"), Sheriff of Cochise
Sheriff of Cochise
Sheriff of Cochise , renamed U.S. Marshal , is a 58-episode syndicated western-themed crime drama set in Arizona and starring John Bromfield as law enforcement officer Frank Morgan. In the first two seasons, Morgan was sheriff of Cochise County...
, Behind Closed Doors
Behind Closed Doors (1958 TV series)
Behind Closed Doors is an American drama series set during the Cold War hosted by and occasionally starring Bruce Gordon in the role of Commander Matson. The series, which aired on NBC from October 2, 1958, to April 9, 1959, focuses, among other themes, on how the former Soviet Union stole American...
, Northwest Passage
Northwest Passage (TV series)
Northwest Passage is a 26-episode half-hour adventure television series produced by Metro Goldwyn Mayer about Major Robert Rogers during the time of the French and Indian War . The show derived its title and the main characters Rogers, Towne, and Marriner from the 1937 novel of the same name by...
, Tombstone Territory
Tombstone Territory
Tombstone Territory is an American Western series starring Pat Conway and Richard Eastham. The series' first two seasons aired on ABC from 1957 to 1959...
(episode "Apache Vendetta"), Overland Trail
Overland Trail (TV series)
Overland Trail is a short-lived American Western series which aired on NBC from February 7 to June 6, 1960. The series starred William Bendix and Doug McClure,-Synopsis:...
(as Governor Sutcliff in episode "First Stage
Stagecoach
A stagecoach is a type of covered wagon for passengers and goods, strongly sprung and drawn by four horses, usually four-in-hand. Widely used before the introduction of railway transport, it made regular trips between stages or stations, which were places of rest provided for stagecoach travelers...
to Denver
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...
"), Wagon Train
Wagon Train
Wagon Train is an American Western series that ran on NBC from 1957–62 and then on ABC from 1962–65...
, The Rifleman
The Rifleman
The Rifleman is an American Western television program that starred Chuck Connors as homesteader Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark McCain. It was set in the 1880s in the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show, filmed in black-and-white with a half hour running time, ran...
(nine times), Bonanza
Bonanza
Bonanza is an American western television series that both ran on and was a production of NBC from September 12, 1959 to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 430 episodes, it ranks as the second longest running western series and still continues to air in syndication. It centers on the...
, The Monkees
The Monkees (TV series)
The Monkees is an American situation comedy that aired on NBC from September 1966 to March 1968. The series follows the adventures of four young men trying to make a name for themselves as rock 'n roll singers. The show introduced a number of innovative new-wave film techniques to series...
, Perry Mason
Perry Mason
Perry Mason is a fictional character, a defense attorney who was the main character in works of detective fiction authored by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason was featured in more than 80 novels and short stories, most of which had a plot involving his client's murder trial...
, The Beverly Hillbillies
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Beverly Hillbillies is an American situation comedy originally broadcast for nine seasons on CBS from 1962 to 1971, starring Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, Donna Douglas, and Max Baer, Jr....
, and Hawaii Five-O
Hawaii Five-O
Hawaii Five-O is an American police procedural drama series produced by CBS Productions and Leonard Freeman. Set in Hawaii, the show originally aired for twelve seasons from 1968 to 1980, and continues in reruns. The show featured a fictional state police unit run by Detective Steve McGarrett,...
.
From 1958-1959, Whitney had a co-starring role as Buck Sinclair, a former sergeant of the Union Army
Union Army
The Union Army was the land force that fought for the Union during the American Civil War. It was also known as the Federal Army, the U.S. Army, the Northern Army and the National Army...
, in all thirty-nine episodes of the ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
western series The Rough Riders
The Rough Riders (TV series)
The Rough Riders is an American Western television series set in the West after the American Civil War. It aired on ABC for the 1958-1959 television season...
.
One of his The Rifleman appearances was in "Mail Order Groom" (1960), in which Whitney portrayed John Jupiter, a man of great physical strength being harassed by two townsmen, played by John Anderson
John Anderson (actor)
-Biography:Born in Clayton, John Anderson grew up in Quincy and Adams County, Illinois.Prior to a prolific acting career, Anderson served in the United States Coast Guard during World War II where he met artist Orazio Fumagalli who became one of his best lifelong friends.He was known for several...
and Sandy Kenyon
Sandy Kenyon
Sandy Kenyon, born Sanford Klein was an American voice-over artist and character actor, best-known for voicing Jon Arbuckle in the first Garfield animated television special Here Comes Garfield, and other roles in film and television...
, who had quarreled with Whitney's intended spinster bride, Isabel Dent, played by Alice Backes (1923–2007). Whitney also played a French partisan fighter named Massine in a 1963 episode of the T.V. series Combat!, titled "Thunder from the Hill."
His final role was as a grave robber in writer Rod Serling
Rod Serling
Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter, novelist, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form...
's Night Gallery
Night Gallery
Night Gallery is an American anthology series that aired on NBC from 1970 to 1973, featuring stories of horror and the macabre. Rod Serling, who had gained fame from an earlier series, The Twilight Zone, served both as the on-air host of Night Gallery and as a major contributor of scripts, although...
. Whitney died of a heart attack shortly afterwards at the age of fifty-five.
Selected filmography
- UndergroundUnderground (1941 film)Underground is a 1941 film about the German Resistance opposing the Nazis in World War II. Jeffrey Lynn and Philip Dorn play two brothers initially on opposite sides.-Cast:*Jeffrey Lynn as Kurt Franken*Philip Dorn as Eric Franken...
(1941) - Whistling in DixieWhistling in DixieWhistling in Dixie is a 1942 crime comedy film, the second of three starring Red Skelton as murder mystery writer and amateur crime solver Wally Benton and Ann Rutherford as his girlfriend...
(1942) - Destination TokyoDestination TokyoDestination Tokyo is a 1943 submarine war film. It was directed by Delmer Daves and written by Daves, Steve Fisher and Albert Maltz, and stars Cary Grant and John Garfield with featured performances by Dane Clark, Robert Hutton and Warner Anderson. Production began on June 21, 1943 and continued...
(1943) - Mr Skeffington (1944)
- Murder, He SaysMurder, He SaysMurder, He Says is a slapstick comedy film about a murderous rural family and the hapless pollster who becomes entangled in their hunt for a cache of money.-Plot:...
(1945) - Three StrangersThree StrangersThree Strangers is a Warner Bros. crime drama, starring Peter Lorre, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Sydney Greenstreet, featuring Joan Lorring and Alan Napier. It was directed by Jean Negulesco from a script by John Huston and Howard Koch.-Plot:...
(1946) - The Big HeatThe Big HeatThe Big Heat is a 1953 film noir directed by Fritz Lang, starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, and Lee Marvin. It is about a cop who takes on the crime syndicate that controls his city after the brutal murder of his beloved wife. The film was written by former crime reporter Sydney Boehm based on a...
(1953) - The Great Sioux UprisingThe Great Sioux UprisingThe Great Sioux Uprising is a 1953 western film directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring Jeff Chandler.-Plot synopsis:During the Civil War, in Wyoming, horse dealers Joan Britton and Stephen Cook are competing to supply the Union Army with horses...
(1953) - The Sea ChaseThe Sea ChaseThe Sea Chase is a 1955 World War II drama film starring John Wayne and Lana Turner. It was directed by John Farrow and written by James Warner Bellah. The plot is basically a nautical cat and mouse game, with Wayne determined to get his German freighter home during the first few months of the war,...
(1955) - Man From Del Rio (1956)
- Buchanan Rides AloneBuchanan Rides AloneBuchanan Rides Again is a 1958 western film directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Randolph Scott. It is based on the 1956 William Ard novel The Name's Buchanan.-Plot:...
(1958) - The Wonderful World of the Brothers GrimmThe Wonderful World of the Brothers GrimmThe Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm is a 1962 American film directed by Henry Levin and George Pal. The latter was the producer and also in charge of the stop motion animation. The film was one of the highest grossing films of 1962. It won one Oscar and was nominated for three additional...
(1962) - In the Heat of the Night (1967)
- The Great Bank RobberyThe Great Bank RobberyThe Great Bank Robbery is a 1969 Western comedy film from Warner Brothers directed by Hy Averback and written by William Peter Blatty, based on the novel by Frank O'Rourke...
(1969) - The Ballad of Cable HogueThe Ballad of Cable HogueThe Ballad of Cable Hogue is a 1970 Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Jason Robards, Stella Stevens and David Warner.Set in the desert of Arizona during the transitional period when the frontier was closing, the movie follows three years in the life of Cable Hogue, a failed...
(1970)