Lionel Stander

Lionel Jay Stander was born on January 11, 1908, in the Bronx, New York City, to Louis and Bella Stander, whose family was of Russian Jewish descent. He died on November 30, 1994, after a career in theatre, film, radio, and television that extended nearly seven decades. A founding member of the Screen Actors Guild, Stander was recognized throughout his professional life for a distinctive raspy voice and vocal left-wing political convictions that brought him into direct conflict with the Hollywood establishment.

Stander spent one year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he appeared in two student productions: The Muse of the Unpublished Writer and The Muse and the Movies: A Comedy of Greenwich Village. His professional acting career began in 1928 when he was cast as Cop and First Fairy in Him, a play by E. E. Cummings, at the Provincetown Playhouse. He later recalled that he secured the roles partly because one of them required shooting craps, a skill a friend in the company vouched for on his behalf. A series of short-lived stage productions followed in the early 1930s, among them The House Beautiful, a play Dorothy Parker famously dismissed with a single cutting phrase.

His Broadway career ran from 1928 to 1963 and encompassed a range of productions. His credits included the musical Pal Joey, the musical Banjo Eyes, the musical The Conquering Hero, Summer Night, and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, among other productions. Even during periods when his film work was curtailed by political pressures, Stander continued to find work in the theatre.

Parallel to his stage work, Stander built a substantial film career beginning in the early 1930s. He signed with Vitaphone and appeared, without screen credit, in the 1933 two-reel comedy In the Dough alongside Roscoe Arbuckle and Shemp Howard, followed by additional Vitaphone shorts in which he typically played comic tough guys, villains, or authority figures. His final Vitaphone short, The Old Grey Mayor, appeared in 1935 with Bob Hope. That same year he was cast in Ben Hecht's The Scoundrel, featuring Noël Coward, and subsequently moved to Hollywood and signed with Columbia Pictures. Over the following three years he appeared in a notable string of features, including Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) with Gary Cooper, Meet Nero Wolfe (1936) in which he played Archie Goodwin, The League of Frightened Men (1937), and A Star Is Born (1937) with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. He played Spider Schultz in Harold Lloyd's The Milky Way (1936) and reprised the character a decade later in the Danny Kaye remake The Kid from Brooklyn (1946).

Stander's voice also made him a sought-after radio performer throughout the 1930s and 1940s. He appeared on The Eddie Cantor Show, Bing Crosby's KMH show, The Fred Allen Show, the Lux Radio Theater production of A Star Is Born, the Mayor of the Town series with Lionel Barrymore and Agnes Moorehead, Kraft Music Hall on NBC, Stage Door Canteen on CBS, the Lincoln Highway Radio Show on NBC, and The Jack Paar Show, among others. In 1941 he starred in a short-lived CBS radio program called The Life of Riley, unrelated to the later series associated with William Bendix. He was also a regular on Danny Kaye's CBS comedy-variety radio show from 1946 to 1947, appearing alongside Eve Arden and bandleader Harry James. During the same period he provided character voices for Walter Lantz Productions, including the recurring role of Buzz Buzzard in the Woody Woodpecker animated shorts, until he was blacklisted from the Lantz studio in 1951 and replaced by Dal McKennon.

Stander's political activism shaped the trajectory of his career in significant ways. As a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild, he spoke at a 1937 SAG meeting during a studio technicians' strike, urging the assembled membership of 2,000 not to cross picket lines. He also supported the Conference of Studio Unions in its conflict with the Mob-influenced International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. During the Spanish Civil War he fundraised for the Republican cause, and he campaigned for the release of the Scottsboro Boys. He described himself as a member of the Popular Front from 1936 until 1939 and subsequently belonged to the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. He later stated that he had worked closely with the Communist Party during the 1930s but had never formally joined, and that he had opposed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In 1938, Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn allegedly threatened a $100,000 fine against any studio that renewed Stander's contract, and his film output dropped sharply from 15 pictures in 1935 and 1936 to six in 1937 and 1938, followed by only six more between 1939 and 1943.

In 1940, Stander was among the first Hollywood actors subpoenaed before the House Un-American Activities Committee. At a Los Angeles grand jury hearing that August, former Communist Party functionary John L. Leech named Stander as a party member alongside more than fifteen other Hollywood figures, including Franchot Tone, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Luise Rainer, Clifford Odets, and Budd Schulberg. Stander inserted himself into the proceedings, and the district attorney subsequently cleared him of the allegations. HUAC's renewed focus on Hollywood in 1947 led to a second blacklisting, though Stander continued working in television, radio, and theatre during this period. In March 1951, actor Larry Parks named Stander in closed-door HUAC testimony that was later reported in the press. When Stander himself was called before the committee in 1953, he delivered a combative statement in which he described himself as a victim of a conspiracy and challenged the committee's authority, an appearance that effectively ended his Hollywood career for more than a decade.

Following his blacklisting, Stander relocated to Europe, where he appeared in numerous genre films including several Spaghetti Westerns. He eventually returned to the United States and secured the role that introduced him to a new generation of audiences: the majordomo Max on the 1980s mystery television series Hart to Hart. That performance earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film. Stander died on November 30, 1994, having worked as an actor from 1928 until the final years of his life.