Howland Chamberlain

Howland Chamberlain (August 2, 1911 – September 1, 1984) was an American actor born in the Bronx, New York, whose Broadway career spanned from 1935 to 1978. He was occasionally billed as Howard Chamberlain, and his surname appeared in some credits with the alternate spelling Chamberlin.

Chamberlain relocated from New York to Los Angeles in the 1930s to pursue acting, securing supporting roles at the Pasadena Community Playhouse beginning in 1933. His appearances there included Foolscap, or The Last Judgment, Richard III, and King John, with some of those credits listing him as Howard Chamberlain. He returned to New York in 1935 for his Broadway debut in Achilles Had a Heel, a production that closed after only eight performances. By the late 1930s he had gone back to Los Angeles, where he became active in the Federal Theatre Project's regional center. It was during this period that he met Leona Adele Hines, whom he married in June 1939.

His film career began in 1946 with the Oscar-winning drama The Best Years of Our Lives, in which he portrayed Mr. Thorpe, a drug store manager who conducts an informal job interview of the character Fred Derry, played by Dana Andrews. Between 1947 and 1952, Chamberlain worked steadily as a character actor, appearing in more than fifteen films. He was frequently cast in film noirs, often playing nervous or anxious figures, including the frightened bookkeeper Freddie Bauer in Force of Evil (1948). He also appeared uncredited in High Noon (1952) as a cynical hotel desk clerk who speaks disparagingly of Marshal Will Kane to the character played by Grace Kelly. During this same period he secured guest roles in early television series including Dick Tracy, Racket Squad, Fireside Theatre, and The Adventures of Superman.

High Noon marked the end of Chamberlain's screen work for more than two decades, a consequence of the Hollywood blacklist. He had first been brought to the attention of Congressional investigators in 1940, when Rena Vale named him before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, chaired by Congressman Martin Dies. Vale alleged that the Federal Theater Project's Los Angeles chapter had functioned as a front for the Communist Party USA and that Chamberlain had been an active member. He was also reportedly named to the FBI as a Communist by Ronald Reagan. On September 18, 1951, Chamberlain was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He declined to answer questions, invoking the Fifth Amendment, and in an exchange with HUAC Chairman John S. Wood and Chief Counsel Frank Tavenner stated that he found it "deeply repugnant and profoundly un-American to be smeared, blacklisted, and strangled economically" by his appearance before the committee. His screen career halted following that testimony.

During the blacklist years, Chamberlain continued working in theater. He toured in A Raisin in the Sun and took small roles in Off-Broadway productions including Children of Darkness and The Courageous One, as well as in Shakespeare plays at New York City's Shakespeare in the Park festival. He appeared in episode fifteen of the 1966 television series Hawk and played Patch Riley in the 1974 television film A Touch of the Poet, based on the Eugene O'Neill play.

With the blacklist no longer restricting his opportunities, Chamberlain returned to Broadway in 1976 in a minor role with understudy assignments in Larry Gelbart's comedy Sly Fox, which ran through 1978. His final Broadway credit was Stages in 1978. During the same period he appeared in a 1976 episode of Kojak and in multiple episodes of the soap opera Ryan's Hope. One of his more prominent later roles was as the divorce court judge in Robert Benton's 1979 film Kramer vs. Kramer. His final two film appearances were in Barbarosa (1982) and Electric Dreams (1984).

Chamberlain died of heart disease on September 1, 1984, in Oakland, California, at the age of 73.