Kelton Garwood

Kelton Bradford Garwood (May 21, 1928 – July 28, 1991) was an American actor who worked across stage, film, and television, and is perhaps best remembered for his recurring role as undertaker Percy Crump on the western television series Gunsmoke, a part he played nine times across twelve total appearances on the show. He also performed under the names Jonathan Harper and John Harper.

Garwood was born in Columbus, Ohio, the middle of three sons of William E. Garwood, a bank teller, and Marquise V. Trott. At eighteen, still in high school, he registered for the draft in 1946; records from that registration describe him as standing 6 feet 3 inches tall, weighing 160 pounds, with blue eyes and blonde hair. Following graduation he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, and by July 1947 held the rank of private in photographic reconnaissance squadron VMP-354 at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina. After his discharge he enrolled at Ohio State University, majoring in drama and graduating in the spring of 1952, by which point he had already begun accumulating professional stage experience.

In the summer of 1952 Garwood joined the Pine Tree Players in Laurel, Maryland for a stock season that included productions of My Sister Eileen, Light Up the Sky, All My Sons, and Guest in the House. That same summer he received a room and board scholarship to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. From the fall of 1952 through the spring of 1953 he was in New York City taking advanced seminars at the American Theatre Wing, where he specialized in theatrical fencing under the instruction of Eddie Lucia, an Olympic coach. During the summer of 1953 he applied that specialty at the Antioch Area Theater in Yellow Springs, Ohio, serving simultaneously as performer and fencing master for their Shakespeare productions. That October he appeared alongside Robert Preston and Jack Klugman in a production of Detective Story in York, Pennsylvania, before moving to Baltimore for a winter season at the Hilltop Theatre-Parkway, where productions included Stalag 17, Mister Roberts, Kiss and Tell with Margaret O'Brien, and Ramshackle Inn with ZaSu Pitts. He returned to the Antioch Area Theater for the 1954 summer season again in the dual role of actor and fencing master, and also performed with the company in a winter production of The Tempest at Cincinnati Music Hall, accompanied by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in the American debut of incidental music for the play composed by Jean Sibelius in 1925.

His first starring stage role came in January 1955, when he was cast as Osceola in Florida Aflame, an outdoor drama by John Caldwell performed in a new amphitheater at Philippe Park in Safety Harbor, Florida. The production ran through April 1955, making it his longest-running stage performance to that point. After another summer with the Antioch Area Theatre's Shakespeare festival in 1955, guest director Jack Landau cast Garwood in his fall production of The Carefree Tree, a two-act play by Aldyth Morris based on an ancient Chinese legend. The production opened at the Phoenix Theatre in New York City on October 11, 1955, starring Farley Granger and Janice Rule, with a supporting cast that included Edith Meiser, Blanche Yurka, Alvin Ailey, and Jerry Stiller. Garwood had a small feature part in the play, marking his Broadway debut. Critics panned the writing, and the show closed on November 6, 1955.

From February through April 1956 Garwood performed in another outdoor drama, Voice in the Wind by Kermit Hunter, at the Suncoast Amphitheatre in Ruskin, Florida, playing a supporting role as the villain in a story concerning the first two Seminole Wars. He continued returning to the Antioch Area Theatre for its Shakespeare festivals in the summers of 1956 and 1957. His second Broadway appearance came in January 1958, when The Chairs by Eugène Ionesco received its American debut at the Phoenix Theatre, staged by Tony Richardson. The production was a double bill paired with another Ionesco one-act, The Lesson, and ran for a limited engagement of two weeks. Garwood played The Orator opposite Joan Plowright as The Old Woman and Eli Wallach as The Old Man. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times described the works as "amusing and provocative," while columnist Joan Hanauer characterized them as suited to "people who like to be bothered and bewildered."

Following his work in the Ionesco double bill, Garwood relocated to Los Angeles. Director Blake Edwards arranged for him to begin a screen career, starting with a supporting role as a magician in the 1959 Peter Gunn television episode "Murder on the Midway." He went on to appear in more than 45 film and television productions, frequently portraying husbands, fathers, eccentrics, cowboys, sheriffs, policemen, reporters, and detectives. His film credits include The Miracle of the Hills (1959), The Story of Ruth (1960), The Wizard of Baghdad (1961), Move Over, Darling (1963), The Sandpiper (1965), A Covenant with Death (1967), Big Daddy (1969), and Return to Snowy River (1988). On television he appeared as a guest in a wide range of series, among them The Untouchables, Rawhide, Wagon Train, Have Gun – Will Travel, The Rifleman, I Dream of Jeannie, Get Smart, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Waltons, and The Red Skelton Hour. He played the recurring character Beauregard O'Hanlon in Bourbon Street Beat and guest-starred in The Twilight Zone episode "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" as the hobo. His stage work continued beyond Broadway and included a 1963 appearance in A Touch of the Poet.

In 1958 Garwood married interior designer Janet Garwood, and the couple remained together until his death in 1991. They had two sons, one of whom became professional golfer Doug Garwood.