Byron Foulger

Byron Kay Foulger (August 27, 1898 – April 4, 1970) was an American character actor whose career in stage, film, and television spanned five decades and encompassed hundreds of productions. He was born in Ogden, Utah, the second of four children of Annie Elizabeth Foulger, a Norwegian immigrant, and Arthur Kay Foulger, a Utah native who worked as a carpenter for a regional railroad company. Foulger attended public schools in Ogden before enrolling at the University of Utah, where he began acting through community theatre. He was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Foulger's Broadway career ran from 1920 to 1922 and consisted of five productions, all alongside actor Moroni Olsen. His debut came in March 1920 in a production of Medea, and the run of consecutive shows concluded in April 1922. His Broadway credits also include Iphigenia in Aulis, Candida, Faust, and The Trial of Joan of Arc. Following his time on Broadway, Foulger toured with Olsen's stock company.

In the early 1930s, Foulger served as a director for the Portland Civic Theater in Portland, Oregon, before joining the Pasadena Playhouse, where he worked as an actor, assistant director, and director. He made his film debut in 1932, initially in small parts. His first three screen appearances were in Night World (1932), The Little Minister (1934), and The President's Mystery (1936), the last of which was based on a story by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He also appeared in the exploitation film It's All in Your Mind (1937, released 1938), playing a timid bookkeeper who samples nightclub life.

A turning point in Foulger's film career came in December 1937, when he performed on NBC Radio opposite Mae West in an "Adam and Eve" sketch on The Chase and Sanborn Hour, providing the voice of the serpent in the biblical parody. West's performance on that broadcast ultimately led to her being banned from NBC programming until 1950, while Foulger's supporting role brought him considerable media attention and broader audience recognition. From that point forward, he worked steadily in motion pictures.

Throughout his film career, Foulger portrayed a recurring gallery of types — storekeepers, hotel desk clerks, morticians, professors, bank tellers, ministers, and confidence men — characters typically rendered as timid, whining, shifty, or sycophantic. He was known for embellishing scripted material with distinctive physical business; in The Falcon Strikes Back, his hotel clerk character announces a murder by shouting across the lobby. In his earliest films he appeared clean-shaven, but in the 1940s he adopted a wispy mustache that reinforced his characters' anxious quality. When the mustache turned gray in the 1950s, he returned to a clean-shaven appearance.

During the 1940s, Foulger became part of director and writer Preston Sturges's informal company of character actors, appearing in five Sturges productions: The Great McGinty, Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek — in which he reprised the role of McGinty's secretary from The Great McGinty — and The Great Moment. In major productions such as these, Foulger frequently received no screen credit, while in B pictures such as The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) he received more prominent billing.

By the late 1950s, Foulger's screen persona was sufficiently established that his mere appearance on screen prompted audience recognition, as demonstrated by his cameo in Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles. In a departure from his usual characterizations, he was cast as the Devil opposite the Bowery Boys in Up in Smoke, receiving top billing alongside two co-stars in the film's advertising and promotional materials.

Beginning in 1950, Foulger made more than 90 television appearances across a wide range of programs, including I Love Lucy, The Lone Ranger, Maverick, Rawhide, Bonanza, Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Addams Family, and The Twilight Zone, in which he appeared in the 1959 episode "Walking Distance" as a drugstore counterman. He played recurring characters on several series: Mr. Timberlake on Dennis the Menace, Dan Porter on Lassie, and Fred the hotel clerk on The Andy Griffith Show. On Petticoat Junction he held two recurring roles, Mr. Guerney and engineer Wendell Gibbs. Among his later television credits were the comedies My Mother the Car and Captain Nice, as well as two episodes of The Mod Squad in 1968 and 1969.

In his personal life, Foulger was married to actress Dorothy Adams from 1921 until his death. Foulger died of heart problems in Hollywood on April 4, 1970, at the age of 71, a few hours before the final first-run episode of Petticoat Junction aired on CBS. His last performances were released that same year, including the television film The Love War and the theatrical features There Was a Crooked Man... and The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County.