Walter Woolf King
Walter Woolf King
American actor/singer Walter Woolf King was the son of a wholesale whisky salesman. Upon moving with his family to Salt Lake City, young King began singing in Mormon churches; leaving school after the death of his father, the boy decided to make singing his full-time avocation and headed for vaudeville with his friend, pianist Charles LeMaire (later an Oscar-winning costume designer). Making his Broadway bow in The Passing Show of 1919, King became a popular light baritone in several musical comedies and operettas of the '20s. He was then billed as Walter Woolf, but later switched to Walter King, until settling on his full three-barrelled name in the late '30s. King's first film was Warner Bros.' Golden Dawn (1930), but this starring moment was blighted by negative publicity about King's voice, over which the actor sued Warners. After a return to the stage in Music in the Air, King came back to films, though seldom as a star. Modern audiences know King best from his second-lead appearance in Laurel and Hardy's Swiss Miss (1938) and from his two Marx Brothers films, A Night at the Opera(1935) (in which he played villainous opera star Lassparri) and Go West (1940) (in which he was a villain again, albeit non-singing). Working with success in radio in the '40s, King was less lucky in films; he was reduced to B-pictures at such studios as Monogram and PRC, permitted to play leads only because the younger male stars had gone to war. Tired of his lackluster film career, King became an actor's agent in the late '40s, accepting only small, sometimes unbilled movie character roles for himself; he did however host a moderately popular 1950 TV talent show, Lights, Camera, Action. In the '60s, King, now greyer and stockier, found himself in demand for good supporting parts as stuffy corporate types, as in the 1968 Rosalind Russell picture Rosie. In the months just prior to his death, Walter Woolf King was seen around Hollywood in the company of Della Lind, who four decades earlier had played his wife in Swiss Miss (1938). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Filmography of Walter Woolf King:
- A Night at the Opera with Groucho Marx , Harpo Marx , Chico Marx , Kitty Carlisle , Edward Keane , Sig Rumann , Allan Jones , Margaret Dumont , Robert Emmett O'Connor , Al Bridge , Gino Corrado , Billy Gilbert , William Gould , Jonathan Hale , George S. Irving , Selmer Jackson , Wilbur Mack , Marx Brothers , Purnell B. Pratt , Rolfe Sedan , Phillips Smalley , Harry Tyler , Leo White , Frank Yaconelli , Samuel Marx , George Guhl
- Call Me Madam with Ethel Merman , Donald O'Connor , Vera-Ellen , George Sanders , Billy DeWolfe , Helmut Dantine , Walter Slezak , Steven Geray , Ludwig Stossel , Lilia Skala , Charles Dingle , Emory Parnell , Percy Helton , Leon Belasco , Nestor Paiva , Torben Meyer , Richard Garrick , John Wengraf , Fritz Feld , Johnny Downs , Frank Gerstle , Gene Roth
- The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston , Yul Brynner , Anne Baxter , Edward G. Robinson , Yvonne DeCarlo , Debra Paget , John Derek , Nina Foch , Cedric Hardwicke , Martha Scott , Judith Anderson , Vincent Price , John Carradine , Douglas Dumbrille , Frank DeKova , Henry Wilcoxon , Eduard Franz , Lawrence Dobkin , H.B. Warner , Julia Faye , John Miljan , Francis J. McDonald , Ian Keith , Joan Woodbury , Woody Strode , Charlton Heston , Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer , Dorothy Adams , Luis Alberni , Michael Ansara , Henry Brandon , Olive Carey , Steven Darrell , Frankie Darro , Edward Earle , Franklin Farnum , Fred Jr. Kohler , Frank Lackteen , Emmett Lynn , Kenneth MacDonald , Peter Mamakos , Joanna Merlin , John Merton , Addison W. Richards , Onslow Stevens , Robert Vaughn , Clint Walker , Frank Wilcox , Robert Clarke , Michael Connors , Cecil B. DeMille , John Hart , George H. Melford , Stanley Price , James Coburn
Walter Woolf King Trivia
