Ian Wolfe

Ian Wolfe
Wolfe circa 1960
Born	(1896-11-04)November 4, 1896 Canton, Illinois, US
Died	January 23, 1992(1992-01-23) (aged 95) Los Angeles, California, US
Other names	Ien Wulf, Ian Macwolfe, Ian Wolf
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1934–1990
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Schroder (m. 1924; his death 1992)
Children	Moya and Deirdre

Ian Wolfe as Mr. Atoz in Star Trek episode "All Our Yesterdays"

Ian Wolfe (November 4, 1896 – January 23, 1992)^[1] was an American actor with about 400 film and television roles. Until 1934, he worked in the theatre. That year, he also turned to film and later television, as a character actor. His career lasted many decades and included many classics; his last credit was in 1990.

Life and career

Ian Wolfe appeared in many notable films, including the Clark Gable/Charles Laughton Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), the highly regarded Julius Caesar (1953), James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and George Lucas's THX 1138^[2] (1971). Wolfe's best-known role may have been in the 1946 movie Bedlam, in which he played a lawyer confined to an asylum. Although he was American by birthright, his experience in theatre gave him a precise diction, and he was often cast as Englishmen on screen, including a fictional Commissioner of Scotland Yard in the final film in the 1939-1946 Sherlock Holmes film series, Dressed to Kill (1946) (incidentally, he also appeared as an American antiques dealer in another film in the series, Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943)), and Carter, Sir Wilfrid's clerk and office manager, in Witness for the Prosecution (1957).

Wolfe played a crooked small town doctor in "Six Gun's Legacy", an episode from the first (1949) season of The Lone Ranger. In it he plots to cheat a man out of his inheritance by using a look-alike to collect the payment. The episode is unusual in that it featured white collar crime, though at the end, true to formula, Wolfe draws on The Lone Ranger and has his gun shot from his hand. Wolfe appeared in the 1966 Perry Mason episode, "The Case of the Midnight Howler," as Abel Jackson. In 1966, he portrayed the new Rev. Leighton on The Andy Griffith Show ('Aunt Bee’s Crowning Glory', season 7, episode 5, broadcast October 10, 1966), where in an attempt to impress, Aunt Bee wears a wig. He also appeared in two episodes of the original Star Trek television series: "Bread and Circuses" (1968) as Septimus, and "All Our Yesterdays" (1969) as Mr. Atoz, guest-starred in a 1977 episode of the ABC crime drama The Feather and Father Gang,^[3] and portrayed the wizard Traquil in the cult series Wizards and Warriors (1983). In 1982, Wolfe had a small recurring role on the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati as Hirsch, the sarcastic, irreverent butler to WKRP owner Lillian Carlson, played by Carol Bruce.

Central to Wolfe's appeal as a character actor was that, until he reached actual old age, he always looked considerably older than he actually was. In the 1935 film Mad Love, he played Colin Clive's stepfather, yet he was only four years older than Clive. In the 1953 film Houdini, he warned the magician to avoid occult matters, telling him to "take the advice of an old man". He would appear in movies for another 37 years; his last film credit was for Dick Tracy (1990).

He was a veteran of World War I, serving as a volunteer medical specialist.^[1]

Wolfe wrote and self-published two books of poetry, Forty-Four Scribbles and a Prayer: Lyrics and Ballads and Sixty Ballads and Lyrics In Search of Music.

Ian Wolfe worked until the last couple of years of his life and died of natural causes at the age of 95 on January 23, 1992.^[1]

Partial filmography

References

External links

• Ian Wolfe at the Internet Movie Database

• Ian Wolfe at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• Ian Wolfe at Find a Grave