George Mitchell (actor)


George Mitchell was an American actor who performed from 1935 through 1971 in film, television, and on Broadway.

Early life

Mitchell was born February 21, 1905, in Larchmont in Westchester County in New York. He decided to become an actor after marrying actress Katherine Squire.

Roles of note

Mitchell became a bit typecast in Hollywood, usually playing loathsome characters who operated outside of the law. On television, Mitchell's credits include acting in two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents called "Wally the Beard" with co-stars Larry Blyden and Kathie Brown, in which he played a knowledgeable and cranky seller of boats, and "Forty Detectives Later", in which he portrayed the client of a private detective whom he hires to track the supposed murderer of his wife. On Broadway, 1969–70, he portrayed Chief Joseph in the play Indians, the source of Robert Altman's film Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson.
George Mitchell acted in several films and television episodes with his wife, Katherine Squire, the two of them often playing a husband-and-wife couple intrinsic to the story. One example was the two of them as an elderly couple in the Jack Nicholson film "Ride in the Whirlwind" — they first appear as a refuge for the two men on the run, but who then become instrumental to the fugitives' destruction. Other examples occurred in their roles in episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
George Mitchell's major acting credits include the film The Andromeda Strain, directed by Robert Wise, co-starring Arthur Hill, and based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. He played the comic relief as cranky old town drunk who, along with an infant, were among the only survivors of exposure to the deadly Andromeda Strain.

Broadway career

Mitchell had roles on television in shows ranging from the 1950s dramas of the Golden Age of Television to the westerns of the 1960s.
He was in the 1956 NBC adventure/musical The Adventures of Marco Polo, and several episodes of both The Twilight Zone and . Another speciality was police/crime shows: Perry Mason, Peter Gunn, The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor, The Untouchables, Stoney Burke, Sam Benedict, and Naked City.
He even tried comedy, medical, and science-fiction-adventure shows. He was also on Daktari, Lassie, Run for Your Life, and the 1961 NBC series, The Americans, a dramatization of family divisions in the American Civil War.
On the 1960s gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, he originated the role of Matthew Morgan.

Personal life

In 1940, he married Katherine Squire, with whom he often worked on stage, in film, and on television. He died on January 18, 1972, in Washington, D.C.. Mrs. Mitchell died in 1995.