Old Dead Guys of the Silver Screen, Part 1

Charles Lane
Jan. 26, 1905 - July 9, 2007
There is no way I'm going to see 102. No way in hell. Nor do I really want to, to tell you the truth. The sheer number of funerals I'd have to attend would have me wishing that mine would be next. I'd also be in doubt of my own goodness, since Billy Joel has clearly established that dying young is the exclusive province of the good.

Charles Lane, a character actor who died on this day in 2007, did make it that far...making a fool of Billy since nobody has anything bad to say about him. His IMDB profile lists three hundred and fifty acting credits. He first began acting in 1929 and in 1933 was a founding member of the Screen Actor's Guild.

He had a recurring role on Petticoat Junction as Mr. Bedloe, who was always scheming to get the railroad to stop running through Hooterville. My speculation, of course, is the Bedloe didn't even work for the railroad company...he just liked coming around because of those hot Bradley daughters, who tended to bathe in public. Naked.

He even appeared in two of my favorite films, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken and It's a Wonderful Life. In fact, his character in the latter film (a rent-collector for Mr. Potter) inspired the humorless blue-haired lawyer seen in several episodes of The Simpsons.

The brilliance of actors like Charles Lane is the fact that they don't stand out. You don't recognize them as movie stars so they don't take you out of the movie. They do their jobs and they move the plot along. The acting world needs background players and character actors just as much as they need Christian Bale. In fact, no one needs Christian Bale. Bad example. Strike that from the record.

Lane was born in San Francisco in 1905 and was, prior to his death, one of the last remaining survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He was quite young, though, so he probably didn't have much to say about it. But now he has nothing at all to say about it, so there you go.

He was married to the same woman for 70 years until she died in 2002. This flies in the face of logic, as it's typically wives who outlive their husbands (KISS bassist Gene Simmons has stated that men die first because they want to).

But then again, maybe she was sick. It happens.