Kent Smith

Smith was the son of Mr. and Mrs. James E. Smith.{{cite news |last1=Ayoob |first1=Kalil |title=Movie Actor Kent Smith Is Summer Resident Of Maine |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/113811192/kent-smth/ |access-date=November 29, 2022 |work=Portland Press Herald |date=May 9, 1943 |page=38|via = Newspapers.com}} He was born in New York City and was educated at Lincoln School, Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire,{{cite news |last1=Hunter |first1=Frank |title=After 'Dodsworth' things got better |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/113810586/kent-smith/ |access-date=November 29, 2022 |work=St. Louis Globe-Democrat |date=November 22, 1961 |page=7|via = Newspapers.com}} and at Harvard University.

Smith's early acting experience started in 1925 when he was one of the founders of the Harvard University Players, which later included Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Joshua Logan and Margaret Sullavan in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Smith's stock experience included productions with the Maryland Theatre in Baltimore. His professional acting debut was in 1929 in Blind Window in Baltimore. He made his Broadway acting debut in 1932 in Men Must Fight.{{cite book|last1=Monush|first1=Barry|title=Screen World Presents the Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors: From the silent era to 1965|date=2003|publisher=Hal Leonard Corporation|isbn=9781557835512|pages=690–691|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=toTIb1Ek2WwC&q=%22Kent+Smith%22+actor&pg=PA690|access-date=3 March 2017|language=en}} He appeared on Broadway in Measure for Measure; Sweet Love Remembered; The Best Man; Ah, Wilderness!;{{cite news|title=Kent Smith, the Actor, Dies; Career Lasted Four Decades|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/26/arts/kent-smith-the-actor-dies-career-lasted-four-decades.html|access-date=3 March 2017|work=The New York Times|agency=Associated Press|date=April 26, 1985|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170303024846/http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/26/arts/kent-smith-the-actor-dies-career-lasted-four-decades.html|archive-date=March 3, 2017|location=New York, New York City}} Dodsworth (1934); Saint Joan (1936); Old Acquaintance (1941); Antony and Cleopatra (1948) and Bus Stop (1956).

Smith moved to Hollywood, California, where he made his film debut in The Garden Murder Case.

His biggest successes occurred during the 1940s in films such as Cat People (1942), Hitler's Children (1943), This Land Is Mine (1943), Three Russian Girls (1943), Youth Runs Wild (1944), The Curse of the Cat People (1944), The Spiral Staircase (1946), Nora Prentiss (1947), Magic Town (1947), My Foolish Heart (1949), The Fountainhead (1949), and The Damned Don't Cry (1950). He continued acting in films such as Comanche (1956); Sayonara (1957); Party Girl (1958); The Mugger (1958); Imitation General (1958); The Badlanders (1958); This Earth Is Mine (1959); Strangers When We Meet (1960); Susan Slade (1961); The Balcony (1963); A Distant Trumpet (1964); Youngblood Hawke (1964); The Young Lovers (1964); The Trouble with Angels (1966); A Covenant with Death (1967); Games (1967); The Money Jungle (1968); Kona Coast (1968); Assignment to Kill (1968); Death of a Gunfighter (1969); The Games (1970); Pete 'n' Tillie (1972); Die Sister, Die! (1972); the (1973) made-for-tv horror film, The Cat Creature; Lost Horizon (1973) and Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977).

During World War II, Smith served as a private in the U.S. Army, making training films covering among others, medical, dental, artillery, and electronics.The Bulletin of the U.S. Army Medical Department, June 1945, page 28

Kent Smith played the imperious Dr. Morton on the popular series Peyton Place with his real-life wife (Edith Atwater) cast as Mrs. Morton. Smith played Edgar Scoville in the second season of the science-fiction series The Invaders (1967-1968){{cite book|last1=Terrace|first1=Vincent|title=Encyclopedia of Television Shows, 1925 through 2010|date=2011|publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers|location=Jefferson, N.C.|isbn=978-0-7864-6477-7|pages=508509|edition=2nd}} and was a host for the anthology series Philip Morris Playhouse (1953-1954).{{r|etvs|page1=831}}

Smith had roles in TV movies such as How Awful About Allan (1970), The Night Stalker (1972), The Judge and Jake Wyler (1972), The Cat Creature (1973), The Affair (1973) and The Disappearance of Flight 412 (1974). His numerous television credits included a continuing role in Peyton Place as Dr. Robert Morton. He began guest-starring in television series in 1949 in The Philco Television Playhouse and appeared in Robert Montgomery Presents; General Electric Theater; Alfred Hitchcock Presents; Naked City; Have Gun – Will Travel; Perry Mason; Gunsmoke “Beaton” (1963), a man trying to steal two Irish immigrants’ land in “Two of a Kind” (S8E27, 1963), "Dakota" (1963), and as an aging gunslinger in “The Glory & The Mud” (S9E14); The Beverly Hillbillies; Rawhide S2 E8 as Capt. Loomis in "Incident of the Haunted Hills" (1959); The Americans; Barnaby Jones; Wagon Train in 1957 as "Professor Paul Owens", husband to Shelley Winters, in "The Ruth Owens Story" (S1E3); The Outer Limits; The Alfred Hitchcock Hour S1 E4 as Jerry O'Hara in "I Saw the Whole Thing" (1962); Mission: Impossible ("The Confession" 1/22 (1967); Night Gallery and the 1976 miniseries Once an Eagle.

File:The Curse Of The Cat People trailer.jpg He played Governor Winston Brubaker in The Wild Wild West S3 E12 "The Night of the Legion of Death" which aired 11/22/1967. He appeared in the musical remake of Lost Horizon (1972), and the television movie Probe (1972), that would become the pilot for the TV series Search.

Smith was married to actress Betty Gillette from 1937 until their divorce in 1954 and to actress Edith Atwater from 1962 until his death from congestive heart failure in Woodland Hills, California at the age of 78.

He was survived by his wife and daughter.

Smith was a Republican and campaigned for Dwight Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential election.Motion Picture and Television Magazine, November 1952, page 34, Ideal Publishers In 1961, he said: "I'm capricious when there's a national election. My background's Republican, but whenever I'm planted in a city long enough to vote on the local level, I find I'm against whoever is in office."

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Category:1907 births

Category:1985 deaths

Category:American male film actors

Category:American male stage actors

Category:American male television actors

Category:Male actors from New York City

Category:20th-century American male actors

Category:New York (state) Republicans

Category:California Republicans

Category:Military personnel from New York City

Category:Harvard University alumni

Category:RKO Pictures contract players

Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract players

Category:Warner Bros. contract players