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Charles Middleton (actor)

{{Short description|American actor (1874–1949)}}

{{Use American English|date=January 2014}}

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{{Infobox person

| name = Charles Middleton

| image = Charlesmiddleton.jpg

| caption = Middleton in 1922

| birth_name = Charles Brown Middleton

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1874|10|3|mf=y}}

| birth_place = Elizabethtown, Kentucky, U.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|1949|4|22|1874|10|3|mf=y}}

| death_place = Los Angeles, California, U.S.

| resting_place = Hollywood Forever Cemetery

| occupation = Actor

| years_active = 1920–1949

| spouse = {{Marriage|Leora Spellman|1908|1945|reason=d}}

| children = 1

}}

Charles Brown Middleton (October 3, 1874 – April 22, 1949) was an American stage and film actor. During a film career that began at age 46 and lasted almost 30 years, he appeared in nearly 200 films as well as numerous plays.{{cite book|last1=Kinnard|first1=Roy|last2=Crnkovich|first2=Tony|last3=Vitone|first3=R. J.|title=The Flash Gordon Serials, 1936 - 1940: A Heavily Illustrated Guide|date=2008 |publisher=McFarland |location=Jefferson, N.C.|isbn=978-0-7864-3470-1|page=14|edition=Reprint of the illustrated casebound|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DGFqBFs_4xcC&q=Charles+Middleton&pg=PA14|access-date=16 October 2014}} Sometimes credited as Charles B. Middleton, he is perhaps best remembered for his role as the villainous emperor Ming the Merciless in the three Flash Gordon serials made between 1936 and 1940.

Career

Born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Middleton worked in a traveling circus and in vaudeville, and acted on stage before he turned to motion pictures in 1920.{{cite book|last1=Ellenberger|first1=Allan R.|title=Celebrities in Los Angeles Cemeteries: A Directory|date=2001|publisher=McFarland|isbn=9780786409839|page=140|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8bOJCgAAQBAJ&dq=Charles+Middleton+intitle%3ACelebrities+intitle%3Ain+intitle%3ALos+intitle%3AAngeles+intitle%3ACemeteries&pg=PA140|access-date=15 April 2017|language=en}} Middleton's success as a character actor, however, did not become firmly established until the sound era in films, when he became known for his resounding, stentorian speaking voice. When Harold Lloyd decided to remake his silent film Welcome Danger in the new sound-film process, he replaced the silent-film villain with Charles Middleton, whose spoken dialogue projected a more pronounced threat to Lloyd's screen character. Middleton's ominous baritone made him an excellent foil for Lloyd, Eddie Cantor, Wheeler & Woolsey, and especially Laurel and Hardy.

{{stack|File:Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940) 1.jpg with Middleton as Emperor Ming in the 1940 serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe]]}}

At Warner Bros. he was cast in Safe in Hell (1931) starring Dorothy Mackaill, and The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932) starring Ann Dvorak and Richard Cromwell. In Pack Up Your Troubles, he portrays a villainous welfare association officer opposite Laurel & Hardy. He is also the district attorney in Cecil B. DeMille's 1933 film This Day and Age; and he appears opposite The Marx Brothers in Duck Soup (also 1933), performing as the stern prosecutor of Freedonia. In Universal Pictures' classic 1936 screen version of the musical Show Boat, he is Sheriff Ike Vallon, the official who tries to arrest Julie La Verne (Helen Morgan) and her husband for being illegally married.

Since Middleton's facial features generally resembled those of Abraham Lincoln, he was often called upon to portray the famous statesman. In 1932 he impersonated Lincoln in George M. Cohan's The Phantom President. He repeated the characterization in the 1933 public-service short The Road Is Open Again.[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eMH1JnRn2c4 The Road is Open Again], PublicResourceOrg, digital copy of 1933 public-service short, YouTube, subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Mountain View, California; retrieved October 25, 2017. Four years later, in an uncredited role in the comedy Stand-In, he appears as an actor dressed as Lincoln who complains of being typecast as the former president.[https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/91260/stand-in#credits Stand-In (1937)], (TCM), Time Warner, New York, N.Y. Retrieved October 25, 2017. Middleton's association with Lincoln did not end there, although in the 1940 feature film Abe Lincoln in Illinois, he performs not as Abe but as Thomas, Lincoln's father.

Middleton's brand of old-school theatrical villainy made him an ideal menace in many serials from 1935 to 1947. He is especially well known for his characterization of Ming the Merciless, the evil adversary of the heroic outer-space adventurer Flash Gordon. He appears as Ming in three related serials: Flash Gordon (1936), Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938), and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940). Some of the other serials in which Middleton can be seen include The Miracle Rider, Dick Tracy Returns, Daredevils of the Red Circle, Batman, and Jack Armstrong.{{cite book|last1=Cline|first1=William C.|title=Serials-ly Speaking : Essays on Cliffhangers| date=2000 |publisher=McFarland|location=Jefferson, N.C.|isbn=0-7864-0918-5|pages=127–128|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RzVOGOO3h9wC&q=%22Charles+Middleton%22+actor&pg=PA127|access-date=16 October 2014}} He also portrays the ranch foreman Buck Peters in the 1935 movie Hopalong Cassidy Enters, which is the first entry in that long-running Western series.

Death

Middleton's gravesite is located in Hollywood Forever Cemetery and is situated next to the grave of his wife of many years, stage and film actress Leora Spellman.

Selected filmography

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See also

  • {{Portal-inline|Biography}}

References

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External links

{{commons category|Charles Middleton}}

  • {{IMDb name|0585481}}
  • {{IBDB name}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Middleton, Charles B.}}

Category:1874 births

Category:1949 deaths

Category:American male film actors

Category:American male stage actors

Category:Male film serial actors

Category:American vaudeville performers

Category:Male actors from Kentucky

Category:People from Elizabethtown, Kentucky

Category:Burials at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Category:20th-century American male actors

Category:Male Western (genre) film actors