Milwaukee Journal (15/Nov/1990) - Actor Dave Willock, 81, dies

Details

• article: Actor Dave Willock, 81, dies
• newspaper: Milwaukee Journal (15/Nov/1990)
• keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Chicago, Illinois, Dave Willock, Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, Spellbound (1945)

Article

Actor Dave Willock, 81, dies

Veteran character actor Dave Willock, whose career in entertainment began in Milwaukee as one of the "Three Flying Filberts" on WTMJ radio in 1931, died Monday at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 81.

Willock, a Chicago native, hit vaudeville after his six-month radio gig, which was billed as "Radio's Only Acrobatic Act." On the vaudeville circuit, he joined Milwaukee insurance salesman Jack Carson and hit the road for four years, until the death of vaudeville killed his act.

His first movie role came in 1937, in "Good Girls to Paris," where he played a college pal of actor Melvyn Douglas. A string of movie roles and network radio appearances followed.

Willock, who attended the University of Wisconsin, wasn't the leading man type. In a 1947 interview, he said that he had played 54 bellhops in his first 68 films.

Among his bellhop roles was one in Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound," with Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman.

"He was a ratty little guy who found Miss Bergman and Peck in a hotel room while the police were looking for them, then tried to sell his information to the house detective," Willock said in the 1947 interview.

But in a sneak preview of the film, teenage girls in the audience noticed a striking resemblance between Willock and then-teen idol Frank Sinatra.

"Some of the kids in the audience let out a shout, `It's Frankie!' At that moment in the film, the mood was pretty heavy," he said in the interview. "So snip went the cutter's shears again and so much of my part was cut that I ceased to have any significance."

Among the 200 films he appeared in were "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" and "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"

His television credits included "Pantomime Quiz," a game show, from 1953 to 1954; "Do It Yourself," a comedy information show in the summer of 1955; "Margie," a situation comedy, from October 1961 to August 1962; "The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show, a variety show, in the fall of 1968; and "The Queen and I," a situation comedy, from January to May 1969.