What a Career !!!
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Morris Ankrum
cshep — 20 years ago(August 04, 2005 03:17 PM)
For people watchers, Morris Ankrum is one of those secondary Actors, whose carrer goes on and on . Almost never the Main Character who carries the film , Morris Ankrum has a body of work to be envied. As a character in over 33 films and numerous TV appeareances over decades , Ankrum rates as one of the most prominent Non-main actors ever, which is not a slam, but an observation of a great actor who doesn't get the recognization he should !
So here's to you Morris , where ever you are , one of the best, sometimes it is O.K to be second -
wtl471629 — 19 years ago(February 01, 2007 12:51 PM)
You are right cs. He was in so many movies and television series and he always did a good job in them. He was never the main character. Late in his career he would have been perfect as the Judge in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None if they had made it like the book was written but maybe set it in the USA.
He was great as the general in Vera Cruz but then he was always great and deserves to be remembered more. -
Woodyanders — 18 years ago(October 10, 2007 04:49 AM)
I too am a big Morris Ankrum fan. He brought a great deal of class and rock solid professionalism to a bunch of cheap, but fun quickie Grade B horror and science fiction features he did throughout the 50's. He's especially excellent as a folksy anthropologist in "Giant from the Unknown."
Nobody does W.C. Fields singing "Mama Told Me Not to Come" better than Paul Frees. -
longlivethestones — 16 years ago(May 29, 2009 10:08 PM)
Now that Perry Mason is readily available on dvd, it is a pleasure watching him play the judge, dealing with Perry and Hamilton Berger! If you get a chance, be sure to see " The Case of the Screaming Woman "! By far, he is my fav judge on Perry. A gentleman and a scholar! He lives on forever! Thank goodness for all these wonderful television shows, with all the parts network tv cuts out for commercials in tact, on dvd!!!
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johnshea21 — 13 years ago(December 04, 2012 11:37 AM)
I think Morris Ankrum is my favorite among all the judges on Perry Mason over the years, and now that I read that he had a law career I can see how 2000he was able to portray the judge so well.
I am going to be watching Assignment in Brittany (1943) later today and will try to pick him out in that.
And it's definitely true that the good character actors generally have longer careers than many major stars; they certainly rack up more films to their names. -
dmcmillan01 — 15 years ago(October 06, 2010 01:09 AM)
I've been scanning through the internet finding actors I knew and worked with and loved. Morie was one them. He was a good friend of my acting coach when I was doing plays at the Pasadena Playhouse. My coach was Tom Browne Henry who was in a lot of the same films as Morie. In that day, Pasadena was the home to a great many character actors. Sometimes on Saturday mornings I can still see a movie with one or more of these people who were such a great part of my young life. This way, they are never really gone.
Dorothy (Schmidt) McMillan
Riverside, CA -
Bilwick1 — 15 years ago(October 11, 2010 03:46 PM)
Nice post, Ms. McMillan. "What a career" indeed. In the past year I've been re-visiting the Hopalong Cassidy movies, in addition to watching those DVD collections of 1950s Western TV shows put out by Mill Creek. I noticed that Mr. Ankrum was in a lot of them, and I remembered his face in a lot of Western movies I saw on television growing up in the Fifties. I'm also an Alamo buff and remembered him as Juan Bradburn, the much-hated governor of Texas, in the Alamo movie LAST COMMAND. I'm pretty sure he made an uncredited appearance as a consuptive Mexican in the first scene of one of my all-time favorite Western movies, the 1930s version of LAW AND ORDER that starred Walter Huston. Today I was watching the 1955 Gary Cooper movie VERA CRUZ on television, and in one scene Cooper and some other Americanos are parleying with some Mexican rebels, and who plays the rebel general? The ubiquitous Morris Ankrum! I thought: "Him again? This guy must have been the hardest-working man in show business!"
So I came here to check how many credits he did have, and it is even more impressive than I thought. It's interesting that although he was apparently Jewish (real last name "Nussbaum") he convincingly play a variety of ethnic types, from WASP or Scots-Irish ranchers in the Wild West, to Mexicans and Indians. I wonder if he actually played a Jewish guy at some time. If he had lived long enough he'd probably have gotten a role in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. -
gdjudkins — 15 years ago(April 03, 2011 05:03 PM)
I always had some difficulty remembering his nameit always sounded vaguely 'Egyptian,' as in all those old mummy picturesbut I couldn't forget his face. If I had to think of one word to apply to him, it would be 'substantial.' Do we have any secondary actors that could hold a candle to Morris Ankrum these days? I wanted to see Rocketship X-M again, if only to see Morris Ankrum, but I couldn't get through all those commercials and inane comments on 'Offbeat Theater.'