Ted de Corsia

Being bad did Ted De Corsia a lot of good during a prolific quarter-century-long career. His New York City street looks and voice made him a perfect fit for tough guy roles, and he played scores of them in 60 films and over twice as many TV appearances. The typecasting started early and strong when De Corsia played a killer in Orson Welles's offbeat mystery "The Lady From Shanghai" (1947). From then, the actor never slowed down, usually appearing in several films and TV productions every year. He put on his bad-guy suit often--for example, when he played a memorable crook turned government snitch in "The Enforcer" (1951), starring Humphrey Bogart. But it wasn't only evil men he played; in Stanley Kubrick's gritty crime classic "The Killing" (1956), he switched to the other side of the law to portray a cop, Patrolman Kennan. He also had the role of determined ship captain Farragut in the immodestly budgeted 1954 Jules Verne adaptation, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." De Corsia was even busier on TV, doing guest appearances or brief recurring roles on most of the well-known shows during his working lifetime. Among the many were "The Twilight Zone" (1959) and "Get Smart" (1966).