Maurice Gosfield

Maurice Lionel Gosfield (January 28, 1913 – October 19, 1964) was an American actor who worked across stage, film, radio, and television. Born in New York City, he was partly raised in Philadelphia and later in Evanston, Illinois. He is best known for playing Private Duane Doberman on the television sitcom The Phil Silvers Show from 1955 to 1959, and for voicing the animated character Benny the Ball on Top Cat from 1961 to 1962.

Gosfield made his Broadway debut in 1937, playing Manero in Siege. Additional stage credits from the late 1930s include The Petrified Forest, Three Men on a Horse, and Room Service, alongside multiple radio appearances during the same period. In September 1941, he joined the cast of the Broadway production Keep Covered. During World War II, Gosfield served in the U.S. Army as a Technician Fourth Grade in the 8th Armored Division.

His postwar Broadway career included Darkness at Noon in early 1951, which ran for 156 performances between January and June of that year, and Out West of Eighth in September 1951, which closed after four performances. From October to November 1952, he appeared in In Any Language, playing a Turkish Gentleman in a comedic role that reviewers singled out as the funniest performance in the production. From late 1954 to early 1955, he acted in A Stone for Danny Fisher, which ran off-Broadway at the Downtown National Theater.

Gosfield was cast as Private Duane Doberman on The Phil Silvers Show after appearing at an open casting call. The role had originally been assigned to actor Maurice Brenner, who was subsequently recast as Private Irving Fleischman. According to the biography of the show's creator Nat Hiken, both Hiken and Phil Silvers immediately recognized Gosfield as the right fit for the part upon seeing him. The character of Doberman was written as the most woebegone soldier in Bilko's platoon. Gosfield held the role from 1955 to 1959, during which time DC Comics published eleven issues of a Private Doberman comic book between 1957 and 1960. In 1959, Gosfield received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for the role. That same year, he reprised the character in the television special Keep in Step, and appeared as Doberman once more in a 1960 guest appearance on The Jack Benny Program. In his 1973 autobiography, Phil Silvers described Gosfield as having held an inflated sense of his own importance off-screen, quoting Gosfield as having said, "Without me, the Bilko show would be nothing."

Beyond his signature television role, Gosfield appeared in the 1950 films Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town and Guilty Bystander, as well as the 1961 film The Teenage Millionaire. His final film role was that of a truck driver in The Thrill of It All in 1963. In 1961, he provided the voice of Benny the Ball on the animated series Top Cat, which was partly inspired by the Sergeant Bilko format. In 1964, he tested unsuccessfully for the role of Uncle Fester in the television series The Addams Family.

On October 14, 1964, while performing in a play at a New York theatre, Gosfield repeatedly lost his balance and fell asleep during the performance. He was subsequently diagnosed with critical hypertension and prescribed seven medications. Five days later, on October 19, 1964, he died at age 51 at Will Rogers Memorial Hospital in Saranac Lake, New York, following complications from diabetes, heart trouble, and related ailments. He was buried at Long Island National Cemetery in Suffolk County, New York.