Jottings on Joseph Pevney

A respectful nod today to the work of actor/director Joseph Pevney (1911-2008).

Pevney’s is not one of your more widely circulated Hollywood names, so I’ll help you out at the top. His films as director include The Strange Door (1951) with Charles Laughton, 3 Ring Circus (1954) with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the Lon Chaney bio-pic Man of a Thousand Faces (1957) with James Cagney, and the all-star horror western Night of the Grizzly (1966). He made dozens of theatrical films, but his TV work is probably more well known. He directed 14 classic episodes of Star Trek, two dozen of Wagon Train, a dozen of The Munsters, a dozen of Adam-12, a half dozen or more of Bonanza,The Virginian, Emergency!,Marcus Welby MD, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries,and lots of other shows.

The other reason we shine a spotlight on Pevney today is that he started out as a boy singer in vaudeville in 1924. After a dozen years touring the circuits, he made it to Broadway in the 1936 show Battle Hymn, sponsored by the Federal Theatre Project. Nine additional Broadway roles followed over the next decade, including the Mercury Theatre’s 1941 adaptation of Richard Wright’sNative Son, and the original 1945 production of Arthur Laurents’Home of the Brave. During this period (1942) he married actress/performer Mitzi Green, to whom he was hitched until her death in 1969.

Pevney was still an actor when he began his Hollywood career in 1946 with a role in Nocturne with George Raft. This was followed by the John Garfield boxing picture Body and Soul (1946). He was elevated to director status with the 1950 crime drama Shakedown starring Howard Duff, in which he also played a walk-on role. Pevney remained a director for the nest 35 years, winding up his career with several episodes of Trapper John, MD. He retired in 1985, surely with no inkling that he had another 23 years yet to live!

For more on vaudeville and veterans thereof like Joseph Pevney, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous,