Mike Kellin

Myron "Mike" Kellin, born April 26, 1922, in Hartford, Connecticut, was an American stage and screen actor whose Broadway career spanned from 1949 to 1982. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants Sophia and Samuel Kellin, he was educated at Boston University and Trinity College in Hartford. His younger sister, Shirley Ann Kellin, born August 14, 1927, died in the 1944 Hartford circus fire. Following his service in the United States Navy as a lieutenant commander during World War II, Kellin pursued formal training in acting and playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.

Kellin stepped onto Broadway for the first time in 1949 with At War with the Army, a role he reprised in the 1950 film adaptation starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Over the course of his career he appeared in approximately 50 stage productions, including The World of Sholom Aleichem, Mother Courage and Her Children, Rhinoceros, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been, and God and Kate Murphy. His performance in the musical Pipe Dream earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1956. Off Broadway, he received an Obie Award for his work in the original production of American Buffalo.

Beyond the stage, Kellin was a recognizable presence on American television. He appeared in both the film version of The Wackiest Ship in the Army and the subsequent television series, in which he played Chief Petty Officer Willie Miller. He also guest-starred in episodes of Lost in Space, The Twilight Zone, Gunsmoke, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and Combat!

In 1956, Kellin wrote the song "Preserven El Parque Elysian" for a rally in support of Elysian Park. Pete Seeger later recorded the song in 1965 for his album God Bless the Grass. Kellin's recorded work also includes the albums Tevya and His Daughters on Columbia Masterworks and And the Testimony's Still Coming on Verve-Forecast.

Kellin married Nina Caiserman in 1952, and the couple adopted a daughter before Nina's death in 1963. In 1966 he married actress Sally Moffat, daughter of actress Sylvia Field. He was active in the Fortune Society throughout his later years. Kellin died on August 26, 1983, from lung cancer in Nyack, New York, at the age of 61, and was interred at Emanuel Synagogue Cemetery in Wethersfield, Connecticut.