Simon Oakland

Tough-talking actor Simon Oakland started out as a concert violinist before moving into acting on stage in the late 1940s. In the late 1950s, Oakland made some appearances on television before getting the pivotal role of Edward Montgomery, a newspaper reporter trying to get the full story in Susan Hayward's campy yet harrowing Oscar-winner "I Want to Live!." After that, in 1960, Oakland earned immortality as a glib doctor trying to offer a pat explanation for the behavior of the killer Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller "Psycho." He appeared in the Oscar-winning musical "West Side Story" in 1961, and then mainly appeared on television shows such as the mind-bending anthology series "Twilight Zone" and the Prohibition-era crime drama "The Untouchables" in the mid-'60s. Oakland played a doctor again on the big screen in Vincente Minnelli's musical "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" in 1970, and then finished out his career on television.