Richard Basehart

Richard Basehart (August 31, 1914 – September 17, 1984) was an American actor born in Zanesville, Ohio, one of five children of Mae (née Wetherald) and Harry T. Basehart, a former actor who became editor of The Zanesville Times-Signal. Before pursuing a stage career, Basehart worked as a reporter at his father's newspaper and as a radio announcer in both Zanesville and Columbus, Ohio. He went on to train at the Hedgerow Theatre in Pennsylvania, where he also met his first wife, costume designer Stephanie Klein. His career spanned film, theatre, and television from the 1940s through the early 1980s.

Basehart made his Broadway debut in 1938 and remained active on the New York stage through 1958. His Broadway credits include the comedy Take It as It Comes, Hickory Stick, The Survivor, the drama Counterattack, and The Hasty Heart, among other productions. His starring role in John Patrick's The Hasty Heart earned him the 1945 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Young Actor. The play was later adapted into a 1949 film of the same name.

His screen career began with Repeat Performance in 1947 for Eagle-Lion Films, which screened the picture first in his hometown of Zanesville. He followed that debut with a role as the killer in the film noir He Walked by Night (1948), then appeared as a member of the Hatfield clan in Roseanna McCoy (1949), as Maximilien Robespierre in Reign of Terror (1949), and as a timid husband in Tension (1950). He portrayed George S. Healey in Titanic (1953) and played Ishmael in John Huston's Moby Dick (1956), a role that also required him to narrate extended passages of Herman Melville's prose for the film. He appeared as Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov (1958) and took the title role in Hitler (1962). Later film work included a supporting role as a doctor in Rage (1972), co-starring parts in Chato's Land (1972) and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), and an appearance alongside Peter Sellers in Being There (1979).

Among his most recognized film performances was the role of the acrobat and clown known as "the Fool" in Federico Fellini's La Strada (1954). He also appeared in Fellini's Il Bidone, as well as in a number of other British and Italian productions during the mid-1950s. Basehart won two National Board of Review Awards, for his performances in Fourteen Hours (1951) and Moby Dick (1956), and received a BAFTA Award nomination for Time Limit (1957). In 1960, he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion-picture industry.

On television, Basehart is perhaps best remembered for playing Admiral Harriman Nelson in Irwin Allen's science-fiction series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, a role he held from 1964 to 1968. He also appeared as billionaire Wilton Knight in the pilot episode of Knight Rider (1982) and provided the narration heard throughout the opening credits of the entire series. His other television appearances include an episode of The Twilight Zone, Hawaii Five-O, a 1976 episode of Little House on the Prairie in which he played an abusive schoolteacher named Hannibal Applewood, and the 1972 Columbo episode "Dagger of the Mind," in which he and Honor Blackman portrayed a husband-and-wife theatrical team who accidentally kill a producer during a production of Macbeth. He also starred in two television films based on true stories from World War II: Sole Survivor (1970) and The Birdmen (1971).

Basehart narrated a broad range of projects throughout his career. In 1964, he narrated Four Days in November, a David Wolper documentary about the assassination of President Kennedy. In 1980, he narrated the miniseries Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War, written by Peter Arnett, which chronicled events from the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945, through the final American embassy evacuation on April 30, 1975. One month before his death, he narrated a poem during the extinguishing of the flame at the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics.

Basehart was married three times. His first wife, Stephanie Klein, died following a brain operation in July 1950. He married Italian actress Valentina Cortese in 1951; the couple had one son, actor Jackie Basehart, and divorced in 1960. In 1962, he married Diana Lotery, with whom he had two children, and the two remained married until his death. Basehart died in Los Angeles on September 17, 1984, following a series of strokes, at the age of 70. His ashes were interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.