Jay C. Flippen

Jay C. Flippen, born John Constantine Flippen Jr. on March 6, 1899, in Little Rock, Arkansas, was an American actor, comedian, and vaudeville performer whose career spanned stage, screen, and television across five decades. He died on February 3, 1971, at age 71, during surgery for an arterial aneurysm.

Flippen lost his father, a bookkeeper, when he was nine years old, and his older sister Era died the following year. His mother, Emma Pack Flippen, supported the family as a dance and theatre instructor, and her professional background shaped her son's early interests. At sixteen, Flippen joined the Al G. Field Minstrels, beginning a career in burlesque, vaudeville, and minstrel performance. In 1920, he was discovered by comedian Bert Williams, becoming Williams's Broadway understudy and tour replacement in the musical revue Broadway Brevities. Flippen performed under the billing "The Ham What Am," a name that also served as the title of his 1928 Vitaphone short subject, which preserved his vaudeville act on film. In 1928, he publicly declared he would no longer perform in blackface. Between 1924 and 1929, he recorded more than thirty songs for Columbia, Perfect, and Brunswick.

His Broadway career ran from 1925 to 1944 and included appearances in Padlocks of 1927, the revue Second Little Show, and Take a Bow, among other productions. He also starred in Hellzapoppin, the revue that became a major Broadway success. When the show's stars, Olsen and Johnson, continued performing the production in New York, they hired Flippen to emcee the touring version, with comedian Happy Felton serving alongside him. Alongside his stage work, Flippen headlined at the Palace Theatre in New York six times between March 1926 and February 1931, achieving what was considered the most prestigious booking in vaudeville. He also worked as a radio announcer for New York Yankees games and was among the first announcers on game shows.

Flippen's film career began in earnest in 1947, and he became a recognizable character actor frequently cast as sergeants, police officers, and criminals, particularly in film noir. He appeared in five films directed by Anthony Mann alongside James Stewart during the 1950s, including Winchester '73 in 1950, in which he played a cavalry man. He contributed supporting performances to three John Wayne films: Flying Leathernecks in 1951, Jet Pilot in 1957, and Hellfighters in 1968. He also appeared in How the West Was Won in 1962, though his scenes were with Debbie Reynolds and Gregory Peck rather than Wayne. One of his most noted film roles came in Stanley Kubrick's 1956 thriller The Killing, in which he played one of the gang members.

Flippen was equally active in television. He guest-starred on The Untouchables, Johnny Ringo, Bus Stop, Follow the Sun, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and The Dick Van Dyke Show, where he played Rob Petrie's former mentor Happy Spangler. During the 1962–63 season, he was a series regular on the NBC sitcom Ensign O'Toole, playing Chief Petty Officer Homer Nelson opposite Dean Jones. He appeared four times on The Virginian throughout the 1960s and guest-starred on The Rounders in 1966 and Ironside in 1967.

While filming Cat Ballou in 1965, Flippen developed a serious infection from a minor scrape with a car door, likely complicated by diabetes, which resulted in the amputation of one of his legs. He continued acting after the surgery, frequently working from a wheelchair. He was married three times; his final marriage, to screenwriter Ruth Brooks Flippen, began on January 4, 1947, in Los Angeles and lasted until his death twenty-five years later.