24 Facts About Eugene Pallette

Eugene William Pallette was an American actor who worked in both the silent and sound eras, performing in more than 240 productions between 1913 and 1946.

Eugene Pallette had a deep voice, which some critics have likened to the sound of a croaking frog, and is probably best-remembered for comic character roles such as Alexander Bullock in My Man Godfrey, Friar Tuck in The Adventures of Robin Hood, and his similar role as Fray Felipe in The Mark of Zorro.

Eugene Pallette co-starred in Mr Smith Goes to Washington and Heaven Can Wait.

Eugene Pallette was born in Winfield, Kansas, the son of William Baird Pallette and Elnora "Ella" Jackson.

Eugene Pallette's parents had both been stage actors in their younger years, but by 1889 his father was working as an insurance salesman.

Eugene Pallette worked as a jockey, and did a stage act which included three horses.

Eugene Pallette began his acting career on the stage in stock company roles, appearing for a period of six years.

Eugene Pallette began his silent film career as an extra and stunt man in 1910 or 1911.

Quickly advancing to featured status, Eugene Pallette was cast in many westerns.

Eugene Pallette played a Chinese role in Tod Browning's The Highbinders.

Eugene Pallette starred as the slender sword-fighting swashbuckler Aramis in Douglas Fairbanks' 1921 version of The Three Musketeers, one of the great smash hits of the silent era.

Discouraged, Eugene Pallette left Hollywood for the oil fields of Texas, where he both made and lost a sizable fortune of $140,000 in the same year.

Eugene Pallette's inimitable rasping gravel voice made him one of Hollywood's most sought-after character actors in the 1930s and 1940s.

The typical Eugene Pallette role was gruff, aggravated and down to earth.

Eugene Pallette thus appeared in more Philo Vance films than any of the ten actors who played the aristocratic lead role of Vance.

Eugene Pallette was cast as the father of lead actress Jeanne Crain for the film In the Meantime, Darling.

Director Otto Preminger clashed with Eugene Pallette and claimed he was "an admirer of Hitler and convinced that Germany would win the war".

Eugene Pallette refused to sit at the same table with black actor Clarence Muse in a scene set in a kitchen.

However, a 1953 issue of the African-American magazine Jet listed Eugene Pallette as being among the attendees of a Hollywood banquet honoring the then "oldest Negro actress in the world", Madame Sul-Te-Wan.

In increasingly ill health by his late fifties, Eugene Pallette made fewer and fewer movies, and for lesser studios.

In 1946, convinced that there was going to be a "world blow-up" by atomic bombs, the hawkish Eugene Pallette received considerable publicity when he set up a "mountain fortress" on a 3,500-acre ranch near Imnaha, Oregon, as a hideaway from universal catastrophe.

Eugene Pallette died at age 65 in 1954 from throat cancer at his apartment, 10835 Wilshire Boulevard, in Los Angeles.

Eugene Pallette's cremated remains are interred in an unmarked grave behind the monument of his parents at Green Lawn Cemetery in Grenola, Kansas.

Eugene Pallette has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6702 Hollywood Boulevard for his contribution to motion pictures.