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- Actor
- Soundtrack
Wavy-haired American character actor and musician Frank Jenks was the son of advertising man Frank Jenks and pianist Lillian Sadler. After his family settled in Los Angeles, he attended the University of Southern California. He learned to play trumpet, trombone and clarinet, but eventually dropped out of college and embarked on leading a band on the West Coast vaudeville circuit. He then took the next step and became a song-and-dance man. From being a hoofer, he made his way to the legitimate stage and from there to movies, at first playing orchestra leaders. While this required little acting ability, he soon came into his own as a comic actor, his cinematic stock-in-trade being fast talking reporters (his caustic delivery was used to best effect in His Girl Friday (1940)), droll Runyonesque henchmen, cabbies, grifters, cops, bartenders and drunks. His improvisational acumen in adding his own routines to varied comedy scripts led to his receiving Hollywood's sobriquet as "off-the-cuff Jenks".
Amid numerous supporting parts, often for Universal's B-team, Jenks finagled the odd star billing, notably in a series of forgotten potboilers made by Poverty Row outfit PRC during the 1940s. From the early 1950s, he was a regular guest performer on television, appearing in just about anything, from Adventures of Superman (1952) to Perry Mason (1957).- Actor
- Director
Walter Scherau was born on 10 January 1903 in Hamburg, Germany. He was an actor and director, known for Das Herrschaftskind (1955), Das Herrschaftskind (1959) and Meister Anecker (1958). He died on 13 May 1962 in Hamburg, West Germany.- Burton E. Stevenson was born on 9 November 1872 in Chillicothe, Ohio, USA. Burton E. was a writer, known for The Case of the Black Parrot (1941), On Dangerous Ground (1917) and The Pursuing Vengeance (1916). Burton E. was married to Elizabeth Shepard Butler. Burton E. died on 13 May 1962 in Chillicothe, Ohio, USA.