Ross Elliott

Ross Elliott, born Elliott Blum on June 18, 1917, in the Bronx, New York City, was an American actor whose career spanned Broadway, film, and television. He died of cancer on August 12, 1999, at the age of 82.

Elliott's path to acting began at City College of New York, where involvement in the college's dramatic society led him to abandon plans to pursue a career in law. Upon graduating, he joined Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre, taking on bit parts in both radio and stage productions. Among these early credits was Welles' stage production of Caesar during the 1937–1938 season and a role in the Mercury Theatre's 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. His Broadway career ran from 1938 to 1946 and included The Shoemaker's Holiday and Danton's Death, both in 1938, followed by The Morning Star in 1940, the musical This Is the Army in 1942, and Apple of His Eye in 1946. In 1972, he returned to the stage in a production of Shakespeare's King Lear with the Santa Monica Theater Guild.

Elliott enlisted in the United States Army on August 4, 1941, and spent much of his military service participating in soldier-cast touring shows. After the war, he relocated to Hollywood and built a long career in supporting film roles. His film credits include Woman on the Run, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Tarantula!, D-Day the Sixth of June, Wild Seed, Kelly's Heroes, Skyjacked, and The Towering Inferno. In 1971, he was invited to membership in the Actors Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, later serving on its Board and remaining a member until his death.

Television became the most sustained arena of Elliott's professional life, with appearances in more than 200 programs. He portrayed a television director named Ross Elliot — the script using his actual name — in the first-season I Love Lucy episode "Lucy Does a TV Commercial" in 1952, and he returned to the series in three fourth-season episodes as Ricky Ricardo's agent. Elliott appeared 11 times on The Jack Benny Program as a director named Freddie and twice on Leave It to Beaver in 1960 and 1961. He held a recurring role as crewman Cort Ryker on the syndicated series The Blue Angels from 1960 to 1961, played Marty Rhodes in four episodes of the NBC legal drama Sam Benedict from 1962 to 1963, and portrayed Lee Baldwin on the ABC daytime soap opera General Hospital from 1963 to 1965. His most extensive television credit was 59 appearances as Sheriff Abbott on NBC's western series The Virginian.

Among his many individual television appearances, Elliott played Sam Wilson in a 1956 episode of Cheyenne, the title character Lee Groat in a 1957 episode of Gunsmoke, Reverend Kilgore in a 1958 episode of The Texan, and murder victim George Hartley Beaumont in the Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Corresponding Corpse" in 1958. His other television credits included Burns and Allen, The Twilight Zone, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, Adventures of Superman, The Lone Ranger, The Rifleman, Rawhide, Lassie, Combat!, Hazel, The Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Dragnet, Adam-12, Emergency!, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, The Dukes of Hazzard, Little House on the Prairie, and a 1973 episode of Barnaby Jones.

As his acting work diminished, Elliott joined a local real estate firm in 1976, working first as a sales associate and later as a manager.