Dick Hogan

Dixon Howard "Dick" Hogan (November 27, 1917 – August 18, 1995) was an American actor born in Little Rock, Arkansas, whose career spanned the 1930s and 1940s and encompassed more than three dozen films alongside appearances on Broadway. Before entering the film industry, Hogan sang with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and in nightclubs, and while attending the University of Arkansas he performed in local venues and modeled for department stores.

Hogan entered films at age 19, making his debut in the 1937 drama Blazing Barriers in a small part before earning a featured role as Bob D. Wilson in Annapolis Salute, directed by Christy Cabanne. He continued building his résumé through smaller parts in Saturday's Heroes (1937) and The Storm (1938), then secured a principal role in John Ford's 1938 comedy-drama Submarine Patrol. A role in Charlie Chan in Reno followed in 1939.

The early 1940s brought Hogan a succession of lead and featured parts. He appeared alongside Richard Dix and Lucille Ball in The Marines Fly High (1940), played a spoiled heir in Rancho Grande, and starred in the western Prairie Law (1940) with George O'Brien and Virginia Vale. In 1941 he took a small role as a bellhop in the Kay Francis romantic comedy Play Girl before appearing in a featured part in Pot o' Gold, a musical comedy starring James Stewart and Paulette Goddard that was the only film produced by James Roosevelt, eldest son of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1942, after several smaller roles, he played Gibby Dapper in the Lew Landers biopic Smith of Minnesota, about Heisman Trophy winner Bruce Smith, and then starred alongside the Dead End Kids in Mug Town. That run concluded with a leading role in Cinderella Swings It (1943), the final entry in the Scattergood Baines film series.

Hogan's 1943 film work included a featured role in the World War II drama Action in the North Atlantic, starring Humphrey Bogart, and a role in So Proudly We Hail!, starring Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, and Veronica Lake, with Goddard receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. He also appeared that year in the spy film They Came to Blow Up America, starring George Sanders.

In October 1942, Hogan joined the United States Army Air Corps. As part of a company of actors serving in the Corps, he and his wife appeared in Winged Victory, a production written and directed by Moss Hart that became a major hit on Broadway at the 44th Street Theatre before touring the United States for two years. On Broadway, Hogan played Frankie Davis, one of the leads. He subsequently appeared in George Cukor's film adaptation of Winged Victory, though in the film he was cast in the different role of Jimmy Gardner, credited as Cpl. Richard Hogan.

After leaving the service, Hogan returned briefly to film work. He had a featured role in Blaze of Noon (1947), starring Anne Baxter and William Holden, and in 1948 appeared in Beyond Glory, with Alan Ladd and Donna Reed, and in Shed No Tears, with Wallace Ford and June Vincent. His final film performance, though the first he worked on that year, was in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948), in which he played David Kentley, a character strangled at the film's opening whose body is concealed in a chest throughout the dinner party that follows. Though Hogan is on screen for only seconds in the film itself, he appears in a longer scene with dialogue in the film's trailer.

Hogan's last acting appearance of any kind came on Broadway in the comedy Time for Elizabeth, which ran for only eight performances at the Fulton Theatre in September and October of 1948. Following the play's close, he retired from acting and returned to Little Rock, where he worked as an insurance agent. He was known as an avid Bing Crosby fan and, as of 1943, held a complete collection of Crosby's recordings. Hogan died in Little Rock on August 18, 1995, at the age of 77.