Bobby Jordan

Robert G. Jordan was born on April 1, 1923, in Harrison, New York, and grew up to become an American actor best known as a member of the Dead End Kids, the East Side Kids, the Little Tough Guys, and the Bowery Boys. His family relocated to the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the late 1920s. From an early age, Jordan pursued performance work, appearing at talent shows in and around Harrison, modeling for newspaper and magazine advertisements, and taking roles in short films and radio programs. At the age of four, he appeared in an early film adaptation of A Christmas Carol.

Jordan's Broadway career began in 1929 when he was cast as Charles Hildebrand in Street Scene, a role he originated on the New York stage. In 1935, he was cast as Angel in Sidney Kingsley's Dead End, a drama set in the slums of New York's east side. The production ran at the Belasco Theatre for more than 600 performances across three years. Jordan appeared during the first season and into the second before departing in mid-November 1936. He was the youngest member of the group of young actors who performed in the play, and he was also the first among them to work in films, having appeared at the Vitaphone studio in Brooklyn in 1931 alongside David Gorcey.

In 1937, Jordan traveled to Hollywood to appear in the film version of Dead End, which starred Humphrey Bogart, Joel McCrea, Sylvia Sidney, and Claire Trevor. The young cast members, now known professionally as the Dead End Kids, were subsequently released from their contract with producer Samuel Goldwyn and signed with Warner Bros. After one year, Warner Bros. retained Jordan and Leo Gorcey as solo performers while releasing most of the others. Jordan appeared in the Warner Bros. Damon Runyon comedy A Slight Case of Murder in 1938, playing the character Douglas Fairbanks Rosenbloom, and later appeared at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Young Tom Edison in 1940.

Also in 1940, Jordan accepted an offer from producer Sam Katzman to star in a new film series called the East Side Kids. Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall joined him, and the three led the series until 1943. Simultaneously, Jordan joined Universal Pictures' competing series, the Little Tough Guys, in 1940. When Billy Halop left that series to enter military service, Jordan replaced him in Keep 'Em Slugging in 1943. During World War II, Jordan served as a foot soldier in the 97th Infantry Division of the United States Army. While on furlough, he appeared as himself, in uniform, in the East Side Kids comedy Bowery Champs in 1944. He subsequently suffered an elevator accident that required surgery to remove his right kneecap.

Following Leo Gorcey's departure from the East Side Kids in 1945, Jordan arranged a meeting with agent Jan Grippo, which led to the formation of a new production company and the launch of the Bowery Boys series, featuring Gorcey, Hall, and Jordan. Jordan left the series after eight entries, dissatisfied with receiving a substantially smaller share of both screen time and salary compared to Gorcey. He made only a small number of films afterward, returning in 1949 under the name Robert Jordan to play a character role in the low-budget drama Treasure of Monte Cristo.

In his later years, Jordan took on occasional television work, including a July 1, 1957, appearance in Tales of Wells Fargo, in which he played Bob Ford, the assailant of Jesse James. He also appeared in an episode of Bonanza titled "The Many Faces of Gideon Flinch," playing one of Bullet Head Burke's men. Outside of acting, Jordan worked as a bartender, a door-to-door photograph salesman, and a roughneck for an oil driller. He and his wife divorced in 1957; they had one son, Robert Jr. Jordan entered the Veterans Hospital in Sawtelle, California, on August 25, 1965, for treatment of cirrhosis of the liver and died on September 10, 1965, at the age of 42. He was buried at Los Angeles National Cemetery.