Gene Roth

Tall (6'2"), burly, and reliable character actor Gene Roth was born Eugene Oliver Edgar Stutenroth on January 8, 1903 in Redfield, South Dakota. He was the youngest of three sons born to German father Eugene Stutenroth and Swedish mother Anna Christina Olsen. Roth and his two brothers were raised by their mother after their father abandoned them when Gene was only two years old. Gene graduated from West High School in Minneapolis in 1920. He began his acting career doing uncredited bit roles in silent pictures in the early 1920's. Moreover, Roth worked as a movie theater manager and built and installed pipe organs before his acting career took off in the 1940's following his arrival in Hollywood, California in 1943. Often cast as threatening heavies (he's perhaps best known for his portrayals of bad guys in many 1940's comedy shorts he did with The Three Stooges), scruffy working class types, and rough-around-the-edges law officers (he played initially skeptical small town sheriffs in