Tom Ewell

Beleaguered character actor Tom Ewell, the unlikely film and TV star with the trademark lumpy figure and droopy, lugubrious mug, was born Samuel Yewell Tompkins on April 29, 1909, in Kentucky. His family tried to steer him towards a law career but he chose the path of acting instead after becoming involved in college productions at the University of Wisconsin. Ewell began his career at the age of 19 in summer stock roles, marking his professional stage debut in the play "The Spider" in 1928, before making an emphatic move to New York three years later. A former salesman at Macy's, he found an "in" with the famed Actors Studio (later appearing in a number of their "Actor's Studio" TV episodes in the late 1940s) before taking his first Broadway curtain call in the drama "They Shall Not Die" in 1934. For the rest of the decade he demonstrated his versatility in both comedies and dramas with roles in such New York plays as "The First Legion," "Geraniums in My Window," "Let Freedom Ring,"