Arnold Moss

Arnold Moss (January 28, 1910 – December 15, 1989) was an American character actor born in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, where his family had lived for three generations. He attended Boys High School in Brooklyn before pursuing higher education, and his first involvement with acting came during his college years. He subsequently joined the Eva Le Gallienne Apprentice Group, which led to work as both an actor and director at Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre. His stage career began with that company's 1929 production of Peter Pan. In the early 1930s, Moss taught speech at the Brooklyn branch of City College of New York.

Moss's Broadway career spanned more than four decades, from 1929 to 1971, and included productions such as The Living Corpse, Siegfried, Back to Methuselah, and the comedy Measure for Measure. Among his most notable stage achievements was playing Prospero in Margaret Webster's 1945 production of Shakespeare's The Tempest, which ran for a combined total of 124 performances — the longest run of that play in Broadway history. He also appeared in the original Broadway production of the Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim musical Follies, in the role of impresario Dimitri Weismann. Beyond Broadway, Moss served as narrator for orchestras in Boston, Detroit, and Milwaukee.

His radio career began in Baltimore, where he worked as an announcer at WTAM before moving to WCAO in 1931. By 1932, he had joined CBS as its youngest announcer. Over the following decades he took on numerous dramatic radio roles, including Dr. Fabian in Cabin B-13 on CBS from 1948 to 1949, Ahmed on Stella Dallas, Philip Cameron in Against the Storm, and the first voice of Ted White on The Guiding Light from April 1948 to May 1949. He also played in Cafe Istanbul on ABC radio in 1952 and narrated episodes of American Story in the summer of 1945.

In film, Moss appeared in two Bob Hope comedies: as Hope's Casablanca contact in the espionage spoof My Favorite Spy, and as a conniving Venetian doge in Casanova's Big Night. He played Lurgan, a shopkeeper and covert spy trainer, in Kim (1950), and appeared as The Alien in The 27th Day (1957).

Television audiences encountered Moss across a wide range of programs during the medium's early decades. On June 1, 1949, he starred as the rabbi and exorcist Aesrael in Studio One's adaptation of S. Ansky's The Dybbuk. On November 22, 1950, he played the title role in Somerset Maugham TV Theatre's presentation of Lord Montdrago. In 1966, he appeared in the Star Trek episode The Conscience of the King as Anton Karidian, an actor who is the alter ego of the tyrannical Governor Kodos of Tarsus IV. He also appeared as schoolteacher Mr. Griswald in The Rifleman and as Chief Lonespear in the 1968 Bonanza episode In Defense of Honor. Additional television credits include The Time Tunnel, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, General Electric Theater, Suspense, Tales of Tomorrow, and Kraft Television Theatre.

Moss married Stella Reynolds, an actress who had performed alongside him in the Le Gallienne troupe. He died of lung cancer at his home in New York City on December 15, 1989, at the age of 79.