Lloyd Nolan, 1902-1985

Lloyd Nolan (center) with Don Murray and Eva Marie Saint in A Hatful of Rain (1957)

Today marks the birth anniversary of the underrated actor Lloyd Nolan. Nolan was never really a star, but for decades, he made so many movies that he was in better. He started in the mid-1930s, with an appearance in James Cagney's G-Men, but it wasn't until he went to Fox a few years later that he started to get the roles for which he's best remembered. In Johnny Apollo, Nolan plays the leader of the gang, which is a bit of a departure for Nolan, who generally played good guys. Among those are an FBI man in The House on 92nd Street, a police detective in Somewhere in the Night, and another detective in another docudrama, The Street With No Name.



With the coming of television, Nolan started doing work on the small screen as well as the big screen, and remained in steady demand until his death at the age of 83. Still there were several movies worth mentioning from this later period, such as playing the town doctor in Peyton Place; the aforementioned A Hatful of Rain, or an admiral who gives Rock Hudson his orders at the beginning of Ice Station Zebra. IMDb also lists him in Airport, although with so many stars in that movie it's easy to forget him.