David Wayne

David Wayne, born Wayne James McMeekan on January 30, 1914, in Traverse City, Michigan, was an American actor and singer whose career in stage, film, and television extended across more than five decades. He died on February 9, 1995, at his home in Santa Monica, California, from complications of lung cancer at the age of 81. The son of Helen Matilda (née Mason) and John David McMeekan, he lost his mother when he was four years old. After attending Western Michigan University for two years, he worked as a statistician in Cleveland before joining that city's Shakespearean repertory theatre in 1936, where he began his acting career. When World War II broke out, he volunteered as an ambulance driver with the British Army in North Africa, later enlisting in the United States Army after his country entered the conflict.

Wayne's Broadway career ran from 1938 to 1968 and earned him two Tony Awards along with a Theatre World Award. His first major stage role was Og the leprechaun in Finian's Rainbow, which brought him both the Theatre World Award and the inaugural Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1947. He went on to originate the role of Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts and appeared in a range of productions including Say, Darling, After the Fall, Incident at Vichy, But for Whom Charlie, Marco Millions, and The Yearling. His performance in The Teahouse of the August Moon earned him the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1954, and he received a third Tony nomination as Best Actor in a Musical for The Happy Time. In 1948, Wayne was among fifty actors — selected from roughly seven hundred applicants — admitted to the newly formed Actors Studio in New York.

His film work, while frequently in supporting roles, included several notable performances. During the run of Finian's Rainbow, producer David O. Selznick recruited Wayne alongside co-stars Albert Sharpe and Maude Simmons for the 1948 film Portrait of Jennie. He appeared opposite Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Adam's Rib (1949) as their piano-playing neighbor, and took on the rare villainous lead in the 1951 remake of M, portraying the child killer originally played by Peter Lorre. Wayne appeared in four films with Marilyn Monroe — As Young as You Feel (1951), We're Not Married (1952), O. Henry's Full House (1952), and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) — a total surpassed by no other actor. He also starred alongside Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, and Celeste Holm in The Tender Trap (1955).

Television occupied a significant portion of Wayne's later career. He starred in the NBC comedy Norby in 1955 and appeared on ABC's The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom in the late 1950s, as well as in the Twilight Zone episode "Escape Clause." In 1959, he played Major General Henning von Tresckow in the Alcoa-Goodyear Theatre production "Operation Spark," depicting the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He portrayed the recurring villain the Mad Hatter in the 1960s television series Batman and served as a radio host on NBC's magazine program Monitor. Wayne played Dr. Charles Dutton in Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain (1971) and later reprised the name in the NBC series The Good Life. He appeared as Uncle Timothy Jamison in The Brian Keith Show and co-starred with Jim Hutton in the 1976 series Ellery Queen as Inspector Richard Queen. In 1978, he played James Lawrence in the ABC drama Family and appeared as Digger Barnes in four episodes of the CBS soap opera Dallas, a role subsequently taken over by his friend Keenan Wynn. From 1979 to 1982, Wayne starred as Dr. Amos Weatherby in the television series House Calls.

Wayne married Jane Gordon in 1941, and the couple had two daughters and a son. His wife, the daughter of opera vocalist Jeanne Gordon, died in 1993. In August 1970, their son disappeared during a camping and fishing trip and was presumed drowned.