Lionel Stander, the movie character actor with the great gravelly voice, was born on January 11th, 1908 in The Bronx borough of New York City. Stander's acting career was derailed when he was blacklisted during the 1950s after being exposed as a Communist Party member during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. In his own HUAC ...
Once Upon a Time in the West, Cul-de-sac, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, The Cassandra Crossing, New York, New York, A Star Is Born, The Transformers: The Movie, Wicked Stepmother, Boot Hill, Unfaithfully Yours, 1941, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, The Senator Likes Women, The Loved One, Beyond the...
TV Shows
Hart to Hart
Star Sign
Capricorn
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Trademark
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Highly recognizable gruff voice.
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Quote
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[After being Blacklisted] I was an angry old man and now I'm a furious old one.
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[Asking the House Un-American Activities Committee to turn off the television cameras and the lighting needed for them to function] "I am a professional performer and I only appear on TV for entertainment or for philanthropic organizations, and I consider this a very serious matter that doesn't fit into either category."
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[on his appearing as a regular in the television series Hart to Hart (1979)] "I'm in a television program that is always among the top 20, that's shown in 67 countries in the world, helping lobotomize the entire world".
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[In testimony before HUAC] "I am not a dupe, a dope, or a moe, or a schmoe."
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Fact
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Played "Spider" in both "The Milky Way" (1936) and its remake, "The Kid From Brooklyn" (1946).
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Stander's name is mentioned along with Sterling Hayden's in the movie Guilty by Suspicion (1991), from a script by the blacklisted Communist Abraham Polonsky, when the protagonist is grilled by an inquisitorial committee bearing a resemblance to HUAC.
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Tried to recruit Melvyn Douglas, a prominent liberal, to the Communist Party.
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Was blacklisted during the 1950s when he was exposed as a Communist Party member during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. Marc Lawrence had testified that Stander told him that joining the Party would make him more attractive to women. In his own HUAC testimony, Stander denounced Lawrence as a psychopath and presented a letter that gave Lawrence's mental history and revealed that he had been hospitalized after a mental breakdown just prior to his HUAC testimony.
$400,000
