Kenneth Tobey

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Kenneth Tobey (March 23, 1917 – December 22, 2002) was an American stage, television and film actor.

Born in Oakland, California, Kenneth Tobey was headed for a law career when he first dabbled in acting at the University of California Little Theater. That experience led to a year-and-a-half of study at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, where his classmates included Gregory Peck, Eli Wallach and Tony Randall. Throughout the 1940s, Tobey acted on Broadway and in stock; he made his film debut in a 1943 short, The Man of the Ferry. He made his Hollywood film debut in a Hopalong Cassidy Western, and went on to appear in scores of features and on numerous television series. A sentry guard dressed down by the General (Peck) in Twelve O' Clock High. A brief comedy bit in I Was A Male War Bride caught the attention of director Howard Hawks, who promised to use Tobey in something more substantial.

In 1951, Tobey was cast in Hawks' production The Thing from Another World, playing Captain Patrick Hendry, a USAF pilot and leader of the arctic polar station's dogged defense against the movie's title character, as portrayed by James Arness. That role led to other sci-fi film roles in the [1950s], usually cast in the role of a military man.

In 1957, he co-starred with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in John Ford's Wings of Eagles. That same year, he even had his own TV series Whirlybirds, a syndicated adventure produced by Desilu, in which he played a helicopter pilot. In 1964, he began a long run on Broadway opposite Sammy Davis, Jr. in the musical version of Clifford Odets' play Golden Boy. He became a semi-regular on the NBC series I Spy as the field boss of agents Robinson and Scott. Chris Nyby, director of The Thing, was often director of these episodes. Tobey continued to work in features and television through the 1970s and 1980s, appearing in such movies as Walking Tall and Airplane!.

In his "retirement" years, he frequently received acting jobs from people who had grown up on his 50s sci-fi films, particularly Joe Dante, who considered Tobey a good-luck charm. Two appearances on the sit-com "Night Court" came the same way, though fans of his work. Along with other character actors who had been in 1950s sci-fi and horror movies (John Agar, Robert O. Cornthwaite, Gloria Talbott, etc.), Tobey starred in a spoof originally titled "Attack Of The B Movie Monster." In 2006 Anthem Pictures released the completed feature version on DVD under the new title, The Naked Monster. Tobey's scenes were actually shot in 1985, but this posthumously became his final released film credit. Tobey made a memorable appearance in the 1994 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Shadowplay" as Rurigan, an alien who recreated his dead friends as holograms, and frequent appearances on L.A. Law as a judge.