Stanley Andrews

Stanley Martin Andrews, born Andrzejewski on August 28, 1891, in Chicago, Illinois, was an American actor whose career spanned stage, radio, film, and television. He died on June 23, 1969, in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 77.

Andrews began building his craft in stock theater early in his career. In a 1957 interview, he pointed to his experience acting in Minneapolis in 1916 as the turning point that gave him the confidence to pursue a sustained professional career, recalling that the company performed a different play each week across 52 consecutive weeks. His stage work eventually brought him to Broadway, where he appeared between 1926 and 1928 in two productions: The Good Fellow and Quicksand.

His first major breakthrough came in radio, where he originated the role of Daddy Warbucks on the Little Orphan Annie series, a part he held from 1931 to 1936. Andrews went on to appear in more than 250 films, among them Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Beau Geste, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Ox-Bow Incident, It's a Great Life, State of the Union, and The Lemon Drop Kid. He took an uncredited role in It's a Wonderful Life, portraying Mr. Welch, a character who engages in a fight with James Stewart's lead. He also appeared in Superman and the Mole Men, the first theatrical film based on the Superman character. His final film credit was Cry Terror! in 1958.

Television occupied a significant portion of Andrews's later career. He became widely recognized as the Old Ranger, the original host of the syndicated western anthology series Death Valley Days. Beyond that role, he appeared in seventeen episodes of The Range Rider alongside Jock Mahoney and Dick Jones, eleven segments of Annie Oakley, ten episodes of The Gene Autry Show, seven episodes of The Lone Ranger, and six appearances on Buffalo Bill, Jr., again with Dick Jones. He also appeared four times each on Tales of the Texas Rangers and the western aviation series Sky King. Within Sky King, which starred Kirby Grant and Gloria Winters, Andrews played Jim Herrick in the episode Danger Point, Josh Bradford in The Threatening Bomb, Old Dan Grable in Golden Burro, and Pop Benson in Rustlers on Wheels. He portrayed Dr. Henry Fulmer in the 1955 episode Joey Saves the Day on the NBC children's western series Fury, and appeared in the 1954 Stories of the Century episode Tom Horn.