Bennett Kilpack

William Bennett Kilpack was born on February 6, 1883, in Long Melford, England, the third of seven children born to William Gilbert Kilpack, a clergyman, and Maria Theresia Hennequin. He attended school at Sutton, England, and subsequently studied at St. John's College, Finsbury Technical College, and the London Oratory School. Kilpack claims lineal descent from the poet Alfred Tennyson. After immigrating to Canada, he worked as an apprentice in a locomotive factory before becoming an electrical engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railway in Montreal, Quebec. Unable to find comparable engineering work upon moving to the United States, he turned to acting, with his first role being Michael Cassio in Othello.

Kilpack went on to tour with Sir Philip Ben Greet's Shakespearean players before establishing himself on the Broadway stage, where he appeared in productions from 1908 to 1928. His Broadway credits include The Garden of Paradise, Thursday Evening, Hot Pan, The Wrists on the Door, and The Man Who Never Died, among other productions. World War I interrupted this phase of his career; he served in the Royal Flying Corps and was stationed in Canada as head of the salvage department at a large flying field, a position in which he dismantled the plane in which dancer Vernon Castle had crashed.

Kilpack's transition into radio began in 1927, when he was given the lead role in The Wayside Inn, an early radio serial. He subsequently played the character Cephus in Way Back Home, a production presented both on radio and as a film alongside Phillips Lord as Seth Parker, also broadcast under the title Sunday Night at Seth Parker's. His CBS debut came in 1935 with Vanished Voices, after which he appeared in a range of CBS Radio programs including Hilltop House, Gang Busters, The Goldbergs, The Shadow, and Grand Central Station.

Beginning in October 1937, Kilpack took on the title role of Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, a detective drama that aired first on NBC Radio's Blue Network and later on CBS Radio. The Blue Network became the ABC network in 1945, and the program moved to CBS in 1947, where it continued until April 19, 1955. The series ran for a total of 1,690 nationwide broadcasts, making it one of radio's longest-running programs and placing it well ahead of comparable detective serials such as Nick Carter, Master Detective at 726 broadcasts, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes at 657, and The Adventures of the Falcon at 473. Over the course of thirteen years, Kilpack appeared in nearly 1,300 of those 1,690 broadcasts, with his final appearance as Mr. Keen occurring on October 26, 1950, the show's 1,314th broadcast, when he was 67 years old.

In his personal life, Kilpack first married Mabel Alice Cromer, born in 1890, in Boston, Massachusetts. He sent her to Paris but, according to The New York Times, did not follow her there as he had promised, and she divorced him in Paris in March 1925 on grounds of desertion. In September 1940, Kilpack married Dorothy Young Schisler, born January 11, 1910, in Dedham, Massachusetts. Dorothy had previously been married to Meryle Raymond Schisler and had a son, John Charles Stressling, born August 15, 1927, whose natural father, an emigrant from Germany, had died in an automobile accident. Kilpack adopted the boy, who took the surname Kilpack, though he later changed it back to Stressling. John Charles Stressling died in 2006 in Sun City, California. Dorothy Kilpack died on December 1, 1955, in Southampton, Bermuda, of an overdose of barbiturates. At the time of her death, the couple maintained vacation homes in Dover, Vermont, and Bermuda.

Despite his service in the Royal Flying Corps in Canada, Kilpack held two United States draft cards, one for World War I and one for World War II. He died of cancer in Santa Monica, California, on August 17, 1962, and was buried at Pacific Crest Cemetery in Redondo Beach, California.