Charles Drake

Charles Drake, born Charles Ruppert on October 2, 1917, in New York City, was an American actor whose career spanned stage, film, and television across more than three decades. He died on September 10, 1994, in East Lyme, Connecticut, at the age of 76.

Drake attended Nichols College and worked as a salesman before turning to acting in 1939, when he signed a contract with Warner Bros. His early years at the studio yielded limited success, and his momentum was interrupted by service in the U.S. Army during World War II. After returning to Hollywood in 1945, he appeared in Conflict alongside Humphrey Bogart, and following the conclusion of his Warner Bros. contract he pursued freelance work, including a role in the 1946 Marx Brothers comedy A Night in Casablanca.

His career gained considerable traction after he joined Universal Studios in 1949. There he appeared opposite James Stewart and Shelley Winters in Winchester '73 (1950) and reunited with Stewart the same year in Harvey, a film adaptation of the celebrated Broadway play. In 1950, Drake also made his Broadway appearance in Guys and Dolls. His association with actor Audie Murphy proved particularly fruitful: he co-starred in To Hell and Back (1955), portraying Murphy's close friend Brandon, and appeared alongside Murphy and Anne Bancroft in Walk the Proud Land (1956), playing Tom Sweeny. The two collaborated again on No Name on the Bullet (1959), in which Drake played a small-town doctor opposing Murphy's hired assassin character.

Over the course of his career Drake appeared in eighty-three films between 1939 and 1975, spanning drama, comedy, science fiction, horror, and film noir, with more than fifty falling into the dramatic category. His television work was equally extensive. In 1955 he joined the ensemble of Montgomery's Summer Stock, a summer replacement for Robert Montgomery Presents, and from 1957 he hosted the syndicated espionage series Schilling Playhouse, also known as Rendezvous. He made guest appearances on numerous prominent series, including NBC's Laramie in 1961, Wagon Train in both 1958 and 1963, The Fugitive in 1967, and the original Star Trek series that same year, in which he portrayed Commodore Stocker in the episode "The Deadly Years." He also appeared in NBC's Daniel Boone during its fourth season and made two separate appearances on The Virginian and its successor series The Men From Shiloh in 1969 and 1970, respectively.