Though typically overshadowed by Hollywood's A-list, there were respectable performances by numerous actors and actresses who never became major film stars. A common career shift was to the new medium of television. These periodic posts offer insight into their transition.
Harry Townes was an American character actor with lengthy credits on stage and television. Yet there was little transition to television for Townes, being involved in the earliest days of the medium. Townes seamlessly became a familiar face to viewers with a wide range of emotions that side-stepped being typecast. His characters could be so real he seemed to disappear within the scenery with his sensitive and genuine performances—whether unlikable or whimsical. Intelligent audiences were more than satisfied with his skill. Unknown to most viewers in the 1970s, the average-looking leading man put himself through seminary to become an Episcopal minister.
Townes performed in several New York and Broadway stage productions, including summer stock. His Broadway credits include Gramercy Ghost (1950), Twelfth Night (1949), Mr. Sycamore (1942), Tobacco Road (1942), and In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer (1968). His two-year run in the part of a leprechaun in Finian's Rainbow sent him to London. He left the stage to enlist in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. There was the occasional film supporting roles. Most notable is Spencer Tracy's, The Mountain (1956). He joined a popular cast in the Dick Van Dyke comedy, Fitzwilly (1967) and played a General in the WW2 yarn, In Enemy Country (1968), followed by a re-edited two-part 1965 Kraft Suspense Theatre political thriller episode released in 1969, Strategy of Terror. All three slipping most moviegoers' minds within ninety days.
Townes found his greatest presence with an endless variety of television characters from the 1950s through the 1970s. Somewhat following a similar path as David Janssen, Townes was most captivating on the small screen. There are simply too many excellent roles to mention but I have listed a few notable performances. An actor's actor was the draw for these popular anthology series, Studio One in Hollywood, Kraft Theatre, Playhouse 90 with nine roles on Climax!. In one of his two appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he played a sadistic murderer with a warped sense of advancing his brother's political career by eliminating the competition in, “My Brother, Richard.” His two appearances on The Twilight Zone are of note. One, in particular, is “The Four of Us Are Dying” in which Townes' character has the ability to change his appearance at a whim, a trick he uses for personal advantage. He co-starred with his good friend, Wright King, in the “Shadow Play” episode. Producers sought him out for multiple roles on popular series: seven times for Gunsmoke, five times for Perry Mason, and The Fugitive. He returned four times on Quincy M.E. to play doctors. He gained popularity with a younger audience for guesting on a two-part episode of The Incredible Hulk, "The First." Townes' defined the episode because of his performance. The mid-eighties cast him in four spots on Simon & Simon and a recurring role on Knots Landing as Russell Winston. Harry Townes retired in 1989.
Townes' Personal Quote: I guess we're never entirely happy with what we do; we would like to do better. I feel I was lucky to get the work that I did. You always feel thankful because there are so many actors for so few jobs that it seems God is being good to you when you get a job. Of course, I would have loved to have done better, we all would. But we always think we can do it better in one more take. On the whole, I'm satisfied, though. As long as the audience was satisfied, then I'm satisfied.
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