Jeff Corey (born Arthur Zwerling;[2] August 10, 1914 – August 16, 2002)[1] was an American stage and screen actor. He was blacklisted in the 1950s and became an acting coach for a period, before returning to film and television work in the 1960s.[1] He was in the feature films Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) and Superman and the Mole Men (1951), and made his many guest appearances in television series.
Corey attended New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn and was active in the school's Dramatic Society.[3] In the mid-1930s, he acted with the Clare Tree Major Children's Theater of New York.[4]
He worked with Jules Dassin, Elia Kazan, John Randolph, and other politically liberal theatrical personalities. Although he attended some meetings of the Communist Party, Corey never joined. His memoir, Improvising Out Loud: My Life Teaching Hollywood How To Act, which he wrote with his daughter, Emily Corey, is published by the University Press of Kentucky. His longtime friend and former student Leonard Nimoy wrote the book's foreword.
Hollywood
When Corey began making films in 1937, his agent suggested that he change his name from Arthur Zwerling, and he did so.[5] His first roles were for Columbia Pictures, which usually offered a promising actor steady work as a contract player in the studio's stock company. If Corey was offered a contract, he declined it and worked in only two Columbia features. He then began freelancing for various studios, playing nondescript "everyman" parts. In RKO's Kay Kyser musical comedy You'll Find Out, he appears near the beginning as a quiz-show contestant (giving his name as Jeff Corey). His steadiest work during this period was at 20th Century-Fox, where he played a variety of minor roles from 1941 to 1943. This became a hallmark of his screen work: he could fill any role a script called for, with a quiet manner and an undistinguished, almost anonymous face. As Corey himself reflected, "I'm glad there has been such a diversity of roles in my career. I think I'm one actor who has not been pigeonholed or typecast." Corey might have gone farther at Fox but his career was interrupted by military service in the U. S. Navy during World War II.[1]
He resumed movie work in 1946, back at Fox, but he also accepted freelance jobs at other studios. He also worked in network radio. Corey portrayed Detective Lieutenant Ybarra on the crime drama The Adventures of Philip Marlowe on NBC (1947) and CBS (1948–1951).[6]
One of his more prominent screen credits was the feature film Superman and the Mole Men (1951), which was later edited as "The Unknown People", a two-part episode of the television series The Adventures of Superman. His portrayal of a xenophobic vigilante coincidentally reflected what was about to happen to him.
Blacklisted
Corey's career was again interrupted in the early 1950s, when he was summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He refused to give names of alleged Communists and subversives in the entertainment industry[2] and went so far as to ridicule the panel by offering critiques of the testimony of the previous witnesses. That led to his being blacklisted for 12 years. "Most of us were retired Reds. We had left it, at least I had, years before," Corey told Patrick McGilligan, the co-author of Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist, who teaches film at Marquette University. "The only issue was, did you want to just give them their token names so you could continue your career, or not? I had no impulse to defend a political point of view that no longer interested me particularly... They just wanted two new names so they could hand out more subpoenas."
In 1962, Corey began working in films again, and remained active into the 1990s. He played Hoban in The Cincinnati Kid (1965); Tom Chaney, the principal villain in True Grit (1969); and Sheriff Bledsoe in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (also 1969), who says to the title characters, "I never met a soul more affable than you, Butch, or faster than the Kid, but you're still nothing but two-bit outlaws on the dodge. It's over, don't you get that? Your times is over and you're gonna die bloody, and all you can do is choose where."[9] In Seconds (1966), a science-fiction drama film directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Rock Hudson, Corey with Will Geer and John Randolph played wealthy executives who opt to restart their lives with new identities.
Corey played Dr. Miles Talmadge on Rod Serling's Night Gallery season-one episode one, "The Dead Man", on December 16, 1970. He discussed his television work on Night Gallery in an interview in February 1973 aboard the SS Universe Campus of Chapman College.[citation needed] He was proudest of this work, for which he received an Emmy nomination.[citation needed]
During the 1970s, Corey also played Dr. Scott Rivers, an older man with whom Carol Kester (the character played by Marcia Wallace) becomes romantically involved, in 1973 in "Old Man Rivers," episode 31 of the Bob Newhart Show.[11] In 1974, he appeared in "Murder on the 13th Floor," episode 6 of the James Stewart legal drama Hawkins.[12] He also appeared in the short-lived 1974 series Paper Moon, a comedy about a father and his presumed daughter roaming through the American Midwest during the Great Depression based on the 1973 film of the same name.
Inside Magoo – animated short – voice of Doctor (1960)
Alias Smith and Jones – director – episodes – "The Men That Corrupted Hadleyburg" and "The Day the Amnesty Came Through" (1972)
References
^ abcdefghMartin, Douglas (August 20, 2002). "Jeff Corey, Character Actor And Acting Instructor, 88". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 9, 2014. Retrieved May 8, 2015. Jeff Corey, a character actor who was barred from his field in the 1950s because of past association with the Communist Party and then became a prominent Hollywood acting instructor, died on Friday in Los Angeles.
Fariello, Griffin (1995). Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition. New York, NY, US: Norton. ISBN978-0-393-03732-6. OCLC30625312. Retrieved May 8, 2015. Subjects: Anti-communist movements -- United States -- History. Internal security -- United States -- History -- 20th century. United States -- Congress -- House -- Committee on Un-American Activities.
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