Charles Lane Overview:

Character actor, Charles Lane, was born Charles Gerstle Levison on Jan 26, 1905 in San Francisco, CA. Lane died at the age of 102 on Jul 9, 2007 in Santa Monica, CA and was laid to rest in Home of Peace Cemetery and Emanu-El Mausoleum in Colma, CA.

MINI BIO:

One could think of no better choice to play the kind of "peeper" a husband would hire to trail his wife with a view to grounds for divorce. Consequently, he was cast as bailiffs, reporters, tax inspectors, debt collectors, and various shady characters in pin-stripe suits, trilby hats and (often) rimless spectacles, from behind which beady eyes fastened on their victim. Still acted into his eighties, "though there aren't many roles for old goats like me."

(Source: available at Amazon Quinlan's Film Character Actors: an Illustrated Directory).

HONORS and AWARDS:

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BlogHub Articles:

1905-2007

By KC on Jul 12, 2007 From Classic Movies

Often, played the kind of characters that made you scowl: uptight, cranky, and certainly not the matinee idol you came to see. Despite all that, he would grow on you, partly because he showed up in so many movies and television programs (over 300) that he became "that one guy"... Read full article


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Charles Lane Quotes:

Constable Locke: That was pretty good, Professor, but you made a couple of mistakes.
Harold Hill: Oh?
Constable Locke: Yeah, the billiard hall and that pool table belong to Mayor Shinn.
Harold Hill: Oh
[looks thoughtful]
Harold Hill: What was my other mistake?
Constable Locke: That Zaneta, she's the mayor's oldest girl.


Brad Dunham: I want a pack of American cigarettes.
Hotel Cigar Stand Clerk: Sorry, but we're all out.
Brad Dunham: How much are they when you're all out?
Hotel Cigar Stand Clerk: Ten dollars.


Hotel Desk Clerk: If I may say so, Mr. Ellis' sickness bears a curious relationship to whiskey.


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Charles Lane Facts
For prime displays of Lane's acting forte, one may see him as the stage manager (billed as "Charles Levison") in Howard Hawks' Twentieth Century (1934), in which he played with John Barrymore, or as the tax assessor in Frank Capra's You Can't Take It with You (1938), pitted against - coincidentally enough - Lionel Barrymore. Thus may one learn who ordinarily got the better (or the worst) of whom! Years later Lane would again star with Lionel in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), as mean Mr. Potter's rent collector.

Starting on the stage in the late 1920s, he was a founding member of SAG at its first public meeting on October 8, 1933.

He was one of the last survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

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