Jack Mullaney

Dark-haired, congenial-looking actor Jack Mullaney was one of those gangly and goofy nice guy types who pervaded innocuous 1950s and '60s film and TV comedy. Born on September 18, 1929 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he usually played the best buddy of the star who seldom got the pretty coed. Jack's poor schmucks were the huggable, clean-cut kind that every mother would want as a son. In minor film parts from 1957, he provided amiable comic relief, hanging around and about the periphery of silly, youth-oriented fluff, including the roles of an Air Force captain in The Absent Minded Professor (1961), Vincent Price's slow-thinking assistant Igor in Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965), and Elvis Presley's klutzy sidekick in Tickle Me (1965). Jack was also featured in Presley's film Spinout (1966), but he and the film were met with little fanfare. TV sitcom work served the actor much better as the sure-to-please bellhop on The Ann Sothern Show (1958) and accident-prone supply officer