Drawing a Bead on Gentleman Dan Tobin

I don’t know if character actor Dan Tobin (1910-1982) always went by “Gentleman Dan”, but no less austere a platform than FindaGrave.com styles him that way. It’s an apparent reference to Tobin’s memorable appearance on The Andy Griffith Showas a smooth talking con man who comes to Mayberry. He often played characters who were either slick or uptight or both. I picture often in roles like upscale showroom salesman, the kind of parts James Millhollin used to play, though not quite as swish. He often rocked a pencil thin mustache and had a vaguely English manner like that of Clifton Webb.

A Cincinnati native, Tobin got his early experience on stage with the Federal Theatre Project and in some productions in the UK before coming to notice in his role as Sandy Lord in the original Broadway production of The Philadelphia Story (1939-1940). The part was cut from the screen version but Tobin was cast in a good many Hollywood comedies thereafter: Woman of the Year (1942), The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (1947), Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), Miss Tatlock’s Millions (1948), Queen for a Day(1951), Dream Wife (1953), The Catered Affair (1956), Who’s Got the Action? (1962), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), and the “Love Bug” vehicle Herbie Rides Again (1974). Thus did he go from appearing alongside stars like Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant to a sentient Volkswagen! But not to worry: he was also a favorite of Orson Welles who starred him in his 1958 teleplay The Fountain of Youth, and featured him in The Other Side of the Wind, which was shot in the ’70s but completed in 2018.

While working as a regular on the TV soap opera The First Hundred Years in 1951 Tobin met and married one of the show’s writers Jean Holloway. As a strict matter of numerical probability, most people are apt to have seen Tobin on television, on such programs as The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show,Our Miss Brooks, I Married Joan,The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,The Bob Cummings Show,Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone, Perry Mason, Bewitchedetc.

Fans of The Odd Couple will recognize Tobin as the cemetery salesman in the episode where Felix becomes obsessed with death. Tobin made his own way to the cemetery about a decade later, in 1972.