Morris Ankrum

Morris Winslow Ankrum was born on August 28, 1897, in Danville, Vermilion County, Illinois, to Horace Lee Ankrum and Carrie B. Ankrum, née Gregory. He initially pursued a career in law and, following his graduation from the University of Southern California, accepted an associate professorship in economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His involvement with Berkeley's drama department redirected his professional path, and he subsequently moved into teaching drama and directing at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Ankrum's Broadway career spanned from 1923 to 1934 and encompassed a range of productions, among them The Mystery Man, The Blue Peter, The Assumption of Hannele, The Fountain, Within the Gates, Gods of the Lightning, and The Big Blow. He contributed to Broadway not only as a performer but also as a book writer.

After signing with Paramount Pictures in the 1930s, Ankrum worked under the name Stephen Morris before reverting to his given name in 1939. Over a film career lasting approximately three decades, he accumulated credits in more than 270 films and television episodes, most frequently cast as authority figures such as military officers, judges, scientists, bankers, and psychiatrists. He also took on villainous parts, including roles in Paramount's Hopalong Cassidy series. In Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Tennessee Johnson (1942), a biographical film about President Andrew Johnson, Ankrum portrayed Senator Jefferson Davis delivering his resignation address to the United States Senate before assuming the presidency of the Confederacy.

His film work was concentrated heavily in westerns and science fiction. Western credits included Ride 'Em Cowboy (1942), Apache (1954), Vera Cruz opposite Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster, and Cattle Queen of Montana alongside Barbara Stanwyck and Ronald Reagan. In the science fiction genre, he played the rocket project leader in Rocketship X-M (1950), a Martian leader in Flight to Mars (1951), the United States Secretary of Defense in Red Planet Mars (1952), a United States Army colonel in Invaders from Mars (1953), Army generals in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and Beginning of the End (1957), a psychiatrist in Kronos (1957), an Air Force general in The Giant Claw (1957), President Ulysses S. Grant in From the Earth to the Moon (1958), and an archeologist in Giant from the Unknown (1958).

Television occupied much of Ankrum's later career. He made 22 appearances on CBS's Perry Mason, portraying judges who presided over the murder trials central to the series, from its first season in 1957 until his death. In the syndicated series Stories of the Century, he played outlaw Chris Evans, who turned to crime in opposition to the Southern Pacific Railroad. During the 1958–1959 season he appeared 12 times in the syndicated western Mackenzie's Raiders, starring Richard Carlson as Colonel Ranald Mackenzie. Ankrum also appeared in episodes of The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Bronco, Maverick, Tales of the Texas Rangers, Cimarron City, Rawhide, The Rifleman, Cheyenne, Sugarfoot, and Dennis the Menace, among other series. Throughout his years in film and television, he continued directing productions at the Pasadena Playhouse.

In his personal life, Ankrum and his second wife, Joan Wheeler, had a son, David Ankrum, who became a Hollywood agent and is best known as Adam from the television series Tabitha. Joan Ankrum became a prominent Los Angeles art dealer, operating Joan Ankrum Galleries on La Cienega Boulevard.

Ankrum died on September 2, 1964, as a result of trichinosis. At the time of his death he remained active on Perry Mason. His final Perry Mason appearance, in the episode "The Case of the Sleepy Slayer," and his last feature film, Guns of Diablo, in which he played Ray Macklin, were both released posthumously in 1964 and 1965, respectively.