Fredd Wayne

Fredd Wayne, born Frederick Searle Wiener on October 17, 1924, in Akron, Ohio, was an American actor whose career extended across seven decades and encompassed Broadway, radio, television, film, and recorded works. He died on August 27, 2018. His parents were Celia (Mirman) Wiener and Charles Theodore Wiener, a salesman.

Two days after graduating from John R. Buchtel High School in Akron, Wayne boarded a bus to Hollywood hoping to find work through his cousin Lester Cowan, a film producer whose credits included My Little Chickadee and several Marx Brothers pictures. After spending three days in the lobby of Columbia Studios, Cowan turned him away. Following the theft of his money and graduation watch, a neighbor employed at Warner Brothers helped him secure a position there as a mail boy at eighteen dollars a week. He was subsequently drafted into the U.S. Army.

During World War II, Wayne served as a Special Services non-commissioned officer — specifically an Entertainment Specialist — with the 253rd Infantry Regiment of the 63rd Infantry Division. Over the course of his two-year service he operated movie projectors, wrote and performed in soldier shows in Mississippi, attended courses at Fort McPherson in Georgia, and studied at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, where his classmates included future director Arthur Penn. He also acted as booking agent for a GI orchestra led by Ralph Cerasuolo, a jazz violinist previously known in New York City as "Leonardo of the Stork Club," with whom Wayne formed a close friendship despite a fourteen-year age difference. On December 8, 1944, elements of the 63rd Infantry Division, including Wayne and the band, landed in Marseilles, France, and were sent north to support American forces during the Battle of the Bulge. Wayne was assigned to the Graves Registration Office to retrieve the bodies of fallen soldiers, and on April 2, 1945, he discovered Cerasuolo, who had been killed by a sniper's bullet to the forehead.

Shortly after VE Day, Wayne organized an entertainment for the troops of his regiment. Forty-five combat veterans of the 253rd Infantry Regiment exchanged their rifles for greasepaint to create G.I. Carmen. Originally scheduled for three performances in Tauberbishofsheim, Germany, the production ran for 142 performances before audiences totaling more than 250,000 GI and Allied troops as well as civilian audiences, making it, with the exception of This Is the Army, the most successful GI show of World War II. Wayne wrote, produced, co-directed, and performed the title role after no other soldier would take it. The cast included Hal Edwards, who had danced in 20th Century Fox musicals, and Ray Richardson, a tenor with the Chicago Lyric Opera. Most of Cerasuolo's former band, by then led by Marty Faloon, also appeared onstage, among them guitarist Charlie Byrd. After acquiring costumes, wigs, and scenery from Stadttheater Heidelberg, the Army sent the company on an eight-month tour through Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, and Austria, with stops at major theatres in Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rome, and Vienna. Audience members at various performances included Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris and Marlene Dietrich in Berlin. The tour closed in Nuremberg on January 24, 1946.

Returning to the United States, Wayne settled in New York, working days at J.C. Penney offices and studying evenings at the American Theatre Wing, where his classmates included Lee Marvin, James Whitmore, and Martin Balsam, and where Eileen Heckart and Jean Stapleton were among the volunteer actresses. He played Polonius in a production of Hamlet at age twenty-three. Working as an usher at Broadway's Alvin Theatre, he watched Ingrid Bergman perform in Joan of Lorraine and brought tea to José Ferrer during Ferrer's run in Cyrano de Bergerac. Ferrer subsequently cast Wayne in his production of the Czech play The Insect Comedy, a company that also included Ray Walston, Werner Klemperer, and Don Murray.

Wayne's Broadway career began in 1949. His first credit came when he went to audition for a production of Shakespeare's As You Like It starring Katharine Hepburn but was redirected into a reading for the Johnny Mercer and Bobby Dolan musical Texas, Li'l Darlin', in which his experience with G.I. Carmen helped him secure a leading role. He subsequently appeared in Not for Children, written by Elmer Rice. His Broadway work continued through 1951. He also followed Ray Walston in the role of Luther Billis opposite Mary Martin in the original London production of South Pacific, and during that London engagement he held a concurrent extended run at The Berkeley Cabaret. He later played Billis in American productions of South Pacific opposite Gisele MacKenzie in Dallas, Vikki Carr in Kansas City, and Jane Powell in St. Paul, Minnesota. Back in New York, he co-starred opposite Ralph Bellamy in Oh Men!, Oh Women!

Wayne's film work included a role opposite Gene Kelly in MGM's Crest of the Wave, shot in England and the Channel Islands. His television credits were extensive and included appearances on Playhouse 90, Studio One, Pulitzer Prize Playhouse, The Defenders, Kraft Theatre, Danger, We the People, Robert Montgomery Presents, The Victor Borge Show, and The Nurses. He made six guest appearances on Perry Mason, among them the role of murder victim Jack Hardisty in the 1958 episode "The Case of the Buried Clock." He appeared in the Season 1 episode "The Annie MacGregor Story" on Wagon Train in 1958, and played Barney, the agent for Barbara Nichols' character Liz Powell, in the Season 2 Twilight Zone episode "Twenty Two" in 1961.

The role for which Wayne became perhaps most widely recognized grew from an idea that came to him on a flight from Los Angeles to New York in 1964. He went directly from JFK Airport to the New York Public Library to begin research and was subsequently directed to the editor of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin at Yale University, where he spent six weeks in study. After early appearances as Franklin on the Tonight Show and the Today Show, he developed his one-man show Benjamin Franklin, Citizen, breaking it in across upstate New York and Ohio before bringing it to Los Angeles. The production led to his being cast as Franklin in a two-part episode of Bewitched on ABC-TV. Benjamin Franklin, Citizen had an extended run at Hollywood's Ivar Theatre, which in turn led to a U.S. State Department tour of Europe and subsequent college tours throughout America during the Bicentennial era and beyond. Wayne's portrayal of Franklin on Bob Hope's America is 200 Years Old...And There's Still Hope!, recorded on May 4, 1976, led to appearances in multiple roles on four subsequent Bob Hope television specials, including a scene opposite Brandon Tartikoff in which Wayne played Tartikoff's character. He also performed as Franklin at IBM, GE, and other corporate conventions. His recording of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, released by Audio Partners, was named one of the top audiotapes of 1997.

As a writer, Wayne contributed articles to publications including The New York Times, Playboy, the Los Angeles Times, Performing Arts, Westways, and The Arizona Republic.