John Dehner

Dehner was born in Staten Island, New York City.

He initially went into art after studying at the Grand Central School of Art in New York City. He worked as an animator at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank.[4]

Dehner's early radio jobs included being a news editor and a disc jockey.[4] While working at KFWB in Los Angeles, California, he was a member of a news team that won a Peabody Award for its reporting on the first United Nations conference.[5]

Possessing a deep, resonant voice, Dehner had an extensive career as a radio actor and was once recognized by Radio Life Magazine as having the entertainment industry's "best radio voice".[6] He performed as a lead or supporting player in such series as The Whistler,[7] Gunsmoke, Laramie, and Philip Marlowe.[8] He also starred as Paladin in the radio version of Have Gun – Will Travel.[9]^: 146 On CBS Radio in 1958, he starred in the Western series Frontier Gentleman.

Dehner portrayed Elmer Truitt on The Trouble with the Truitts[9]^{: 339–340} and the title character on The Judge.[9]^: 181 He also performed regularly on Family Skeleton,[9]^: 114 Escape,[9]^: 110 and The Black Book.[9]^: 43

Over a 45-year movie career in Hollywood, between 1940 and 1986, Dehner appeared in no fewer than 126 feature films and shorts.[10] He played Sheriff Pat Garrett in The Left Handed Gun.

He appeared too in Scaramouche (1952) as Doutreval of Dijon, and he played a district attorney in Please Murder Me (1956).[11] The following year, he performed a non-singing role of Mr. Bascombe, the mill owner and intended robbery victim, in the film version of Carousel. In 1951, he appeared in the film The Texas Rangers. He also played the villain in The Man from Bitter Ridge (1955), as well as Taylor Swope, one of Vinnie Harrold's bad guy gang in The Fastest Gun Alive (1957). In 1978's The Boys from Brazil, he portrayed Henry Wheelock, the last man killed by Dr. Josef Mengele.

Dehner and Nick Adams in The Rebel (1961)

Dehner's roles on TV programs included Marshal Edge Troy on Young Maverick,[12]^: 1207 Jim Duke Williams on The Roaring 20's,[12]^: 899 Dr. Charles Claver on Temperatures Rising,[12]^: 758 T. Jacob Broggi on Enos,[12]^{: 308–309} Cyril Bennett on The Doris Day Show,[12]^{: 278–279} Billy Erskine on The Colbys,[12]^{: 198–199}, Soapie Smith on The Alaskans and Colonel Harvey on the Andy Griffith Show.[12][13] He also performed regularly on The Don Knotts Show[12]^: 275 and The Betty White Show (1958).[12]^: 94[14]

In the summer of 1955, Dehner was cast as Lieutenant Zetterquest in The Soldiers.[12]^: 990 Dehner also played characters in the 1957–1962 series Maverick, including the banker Bates in the episode "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres" as well as a performance in "Greenbacks, Unlimited". In the 1958 episode "Twelve Guns" on NBC's Western Cimarron City, he portrays a prosperous area rancher whose outlaw son joins a gang that demands $50,000 from the citizens of Cimarron City. The next year he played Cleve Colter, a rebellious member of a group trudging thru a winter storm en route to California in "The Annie Griffith Story" on Wagon Train. Then, in 1960, Dehner was cast as Major Randolph in the episode "Friend of the Family" on the CBS Western The Texan, starring Rory Calhoun.

Dehner guest-starred twice in the Western TV series Bonanza. In the 1960 episode "The Mission", he portrays Captain Pender and the character Jean Lafitte in the 1964 episode "The Gentleman from New Orleans".[14]

Late in 1962, Dehner guest-starred as Dan Tabor in "Echo of a Man", an episode of the NBC Western Empire, starring Richard Egan as rancher Jim Redigo.[15] Dehner is featured as well on the popular science-fiction series The Twilight Zone, appearing in episodes "The Lonely" (1959), "The Jungle" (1961), and "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" (1964).[14]

Of all the television series on which Dehner performed, the diversity of his roles in his 12 guest appearances on the long-running Western Gunsmoke demonstrate the full range of his acting talents.[16] Between 1955 and 1968, he portrayed a diverse cast of characters, such as a psychotic gunman in the episode "Crack Up"; a pathetic town drunk in "The Bottle”; another town drunk–yet a protective torn father in “The Bottleman”; a distraught, lonely widower who marries an Indian and must deal with the anger of his only son from that decision in "The Squaw"; a dejected and childless farmer in "Caleb"; a brain-damaged freight operator who undergoes a drastic personality change in "Ash"; bar owner Kitty Russell's long-lost father in “Daddy-O”; and as a timid resident of Dodge City who gains fleeting celebrity after killing an outlaw in the episode "The Pariah".[17]

In the 90-minute TV Western The Virginian, Dehner also guest-stars as Morgan Starr alongside fellow actor Warren Oates in the 1966 episode "One Spring Like Long Ago" and then as Marshall Eliazer Teague in the 1969 episode "Halfway Back from Hell".[14] In 1974, Dehner portrayed former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson in the ABC television docudrama The Missiles of October.

Dehner was married twice, the first time in 1941 to Roma Leonore Meyers, with whom he had two children. Three years after the couple's divorce in 1970, he wed Evelyn Severance. They remained together for 19 years, until his death.

In 1992, at the age of 76, Dehner died from complications of emphysema and diabetes in Santa Barbara, California. He was cremated and his ashes interred at Carpinteria Cemetery in Carpinteria, California.[5][18]

• John Dehner at IMDb
• John Dehner at Find a Grave