J. Scott Smart

J. Scott Smart, born John Kenley Tener Smart on November 27, 1902, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was an American actor whose career spanned radio, film, and stage during the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s. His family relocated to Buffalo, New York, where he graduated from Lafayette High School in 1922. He also attended the Miami Military Institute. Before entering show business, Smart held thirty different jobs over three years, among them selling shoe polish, shoveling coal on a boat, working as a fire chief in a factory, drawing cartoons for a newspaper, and creating advertisements for an advertising agency.

Smart began his acting career in stock theater in Buffalo at the age of twenty-one, working there for five years. A friend subsequently arranged an audition at NBC, which led to his first radio role — a singing waiter on Whispering Tables. He went on to become a fixture in early radio drama, appearing regularly on The March of Time and The Fred Allen Show and taking on so many character parts that he earned the nickname the "Lon Chaney of Radio." His most prominent radio role was that of Brad Runyon, the lead in the ABC detective series The Fat Man, which ran from 1946 to 1951. He was also heard frequently on Grand Central Station and Inner Sanctum Mystery and was a member of the casts of The Family Hour and The Teen-Timers Club.

Smart's Broadway career ran from 1940 to 1944 and included appearances in Separate Rooms and A Bell for Adano. He also performed in a stage production of Waiting for Godot. His film work included Kiss of Death and the theatrical adaptation of The Fat Man.

Smart married Alice Coy Wright on July 23, 1931. He later married Mary-Leigh Smart in 1951, a union that lasted until his death. The couple had no children but were an established presence in the arts community of Ogunquit, Maine, where Smart directed a summer theater and pursued careers as a painter and sculptor. Smart died of pancreatic cancer in Springfield, Illinois, on January 15, 1960.