James C. Morton

James C. Morton, born James Carmody Lankton on August 25, 1884, in Helena, Montana, was an American character actor whose career spanned stage, vaudeville, and film. He died on October 24, 1942, in Reseda, California, at age 58, from chronic myocarditis, a condition he had lived with for approximately eleven years.

Morton's stage career began in the early 1910s, when he performed in a vaudeville and burlesque duo called Morton & Moore alongside actor Frank Moore. The pair appeared at the Alhambra Theatre in Harlem and in The Merry Whirl on Broadway. His Broadway work continued through 1931 and included the play Hobo, the musicals Countess Maritza, The Circus Princess, Lace Petticoat, and Holka Polka, among other productions. On the Los Angeles stage, he took on the title role of Tik-Tok in The Tik-Tok Man of Oz in 1913, a production written by L. Frank Baum with music by Louis F. Gottschalk and Victor Schertzinger and produced by Oliver Morosco.

His film career ran from 1922 to 1942, encompassing more than 180 appearances. Morton frequently played short-tempered judges, police officers, and officials, and was often cast as a straight man opposite prominent comedy acts. He appeared in numerous Hal Roach productions, taking supporting roles in both the Our Gang and Laurel and Hardy series. In the Three Stooges short Disorder in the Court, Morton played a courtroom figure whose toupee was caught by Larry Fine's violin bow and subsequently mistaken by the Stooges for a tarantula, prompting Moe Howard to retrieve a bailiff's pistol and shoot it. In the 1935 Our Gang short Beginner's Luck, he played a piano accompanist at a children's talent show; when the Rascals caused a gust of air to knock off his hairpiece, Morton turned to them and said, "You kids are beginning to get into my hair." He also appeared in the Laurel and Hardy film Way Out West as the bartender who hands Oliver Hardy a wooden mallet to silence Stan Laurel's rendition of "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine." Additionally, Morton had a small role in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times. For the 1932 Pitts and Todd short The Soilers, directed by George Marshall, Morton performed a backward fall and lifted himself into a headstand using only his neck muscles.