Roy Roberts

Roy Roberts, born Roy Barnes Jones on March 19, 1906, in Tampa, Florida, was an American character actor whose career spanned more than four decades and encompassed over nine hundred stage and screen productions. He died on May 28, 1975, at St. Vincent's Hospital in Los Angeles, California, of a heart attack, and was interred at Greenwood Memorial Park in Fort Worth, Texas.

Roberts launched his professional life in the theater, joining a stock company in Tampa before departing after a year to spend five years performing in touring stock productions. His Broadway debut came in May 1931, and over the following two decades he appeared in a range of productions including Everybody's Welcome, The Inside Story, Pre-Honeymoon, The Old Foolishness, Twentieth Century, My Sister Eileen, and Carnival in Flanders, with his stage work continuing through 1953.

His transition to film began with Gold Bricks, a 1936 two-reel comedy short released by 20th Century-Fox. Throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, Roberts became a reliable presence in films noir, with credits including Nightmare Alley (1947), The Brasher Doubloon (1947), Force of Evil (1948), He Walked by Night (1948), Borderline (1950), and The Enforcer (1951). In 1953 he appeared in House of Wax as the crooked business partner and first victim of Vincent Price's character, and in 1956 he played Colonel Sam Sherman in The First Texan. He also appeared in the Stanley Kramer comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) as a police officer, and later in the neo-noirs The Outfit (1973) and Chinatown (1974).

Television became the dominant arena of Roberts's later career. A guest appearance on Gale Storm's My Little Margie in 1956 led to a four-year recurring role on Storm's subsequent CBS and ABC series Oh! Susanna, in which he played the ship's captain. He went on to accumulate guest appearances across a wide range of series, including Sheriff of Cochise, My Friend Flicka, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp as Texas cattle baron Shanghai Pierce, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, and Brian Keith's Cold War drama Crusader. He appeared in four episodes of the CBS legal drama Perry Mason, among them the 1961 episode "The Case of the Malicious Mariner," in which he played murderer Arthur Janeel.

During the mid-1960s Roberts carried concurrent recurring roles across multiple prominent programs. On CBS's The Lucy Show he played bank president Mr. Cheever, while on The Beverly Hillbillies he appeared as John Cushing, president of the rival Merchants Bank, and as the judge in the episode "The Clampetts in Court." He portrayed railroad president Norman Curtis on CBS's Petticoat Junction and played Darrin's father Frank Stephens on ABC's Bewitched, alternating in the role with actor Robert F. Simon. On CBS's Gunsmoke he took on the parts of banker Harry Bodkin and Dodge House proprietor Mr. Dobie, and on NBC's Bonanza he played banker George Bristol. Additional recurring roles included Admiral Rogers on McHale's Navy, whose first name varied between episodes, Preston "Press" Wasco and Kelly on the NBC western Laredo, neighbor Bruce MacDermott on ABC's Our Man Higgins, and Capt. Walter A. Bascom in three episodes of the religious anthology series Crossroads. He also appeared as "Doc" in the 1957 Restless Gun episode "Trail to Sunset," as the Governor in a second-season episode of Green Acres, and in 1962 as John Kemper in the Lawman episode "Heritage of Hate" and as Senator Matson in The Cheyenne Show episode "The Vanishing Breed."

Roberts's final television appearances came in 1973 and 1974, with a role in the situation comedy A Touch of Grace followed by a guest spot on the January 21, 1974, CBS broadcast of Here's Lucy, in which he played a veterinarian in the installment titled "Lucy Is N.G. As An R.N."