TV's Combustible Foil

When you think of Gale Gordon, you think of someone who explodes over the latest antic of Lucille Ball. Because they appeared regularly together on television in three series (and, occasionally, on I Love Lucy), it’s impossible to think of Gordon being without her.

Yet Gordon had a lengthy career throughout the Golden Age of Radio. It’s true he was on Lucy’s radio show My Favorite Husband (he was not the husband), but he got the most notice for his role on both the radio and TV versions of Our Miss Brooks opposite Eve Arden. He played the same type with her as he did with Lucy, erupting in anger over something-or-other she did.

To be honest, I preferred him on Fibber McGee and Molly, though the routine was the same every time. Gordon would sputter, tongue tied, as the main characters mangled the meaning of something he said. There would be a brief pause of calmness, and then the blow-up.

TV Guide profiled him in a cover story of March 26, 1955.

Danger! Principal At Work!
But Gale Gordon, Of ‘Our Miss Brooks,’ Is A Pipe Smoker At Heart
It is a matter of both fact and sentiment that Gloria Gordon, who for so long played Mrs. O’Reilly on radio’s “My Friend Irma,” is the mother of Gale Gordon, who still plays Osgood Conklin on both the radio and TV versions of Our Miss Brooks. The broadcasting industry can be very clubby.
The point, however, is not so much the clubbiness of broadcasting as the family tree of Gale Gordon. His mother is an actress. His father was a vaudeville performer. His wife is an actress. The actors in the family stop here, however — only because Gale has no children.
Gordon himself, in addition to being an actor, is a pipe-smoker. He is also a plumber, a carpenter, a fruit grower, an oil painter, a playwright, a gun collector—and one of the few actors in history to appear in a radio dramatic role without saying a word. He once played the footsteps of the “Unknown Soldier.” Gordon, who has been doing the Osgood Conklin role since its radio inception back in 1948, figures it is just about a character actor’s dream. “There is nothing subtle about Osgood,” he says contentedly. “No nuances. Just a lot of very satisfying acid, bluster and bellowing, with an occasional weak moment of cordiality thrown in for leavening. It is practically impossible to overplay him. Even when he’s being cordial, he’s like an elephant trying to waltz.”
Just how well Gordon has established the Conklin character came out during a recent trip through New Jersey. At a small country store, presided over by a little old woman, he was introduced as the man who played Osgood Conklin in Our Miss Brooks. The little old woman, who had never before been so close to a celebrity, peered at him intently. “Why,” she said in surprise, “he’s just like a human being!”
Aside from the fact that he is quite possibly the most accomplished bellower in Hollywood, Gordon is the personification of normality, with no more than a surface resemblance to Eve Arden’s nemesis. An actor for 30 years, he is the most solid of solid citizens.
Gordon, whose deep, cultured tones are the envy of his profession, was at one time the highest paid radio actor in Hollywood. That was in 1933 when he was demanding—and getting —$15 a week for playing in “English Coronets.” Two years later every radio actor in town was auditioned for the lead opposite Mary Pickford in her own show. One of the finalists, Hanley Stafford, went on to become the most hapless father in radio history, opposite (if that’s the word) Baby Snooks. The other, who won the role, was Gordon. It paid him $100 a week and made him practically royalty. Thereafter, he hit just about every big-time show on radio. He was Barbara Whiting’s father on “Junior Miss,” Lucille Ball’s boss on “My Favorite Husband,” the mayor for 12 years on “Fibber McGee and Molly” and, for seven years, Irene Rich’s leading man on “Dear John.”
Gordon was born 50 years ago in New York City but spent virtually all of his first eight years in England. The following nine years he spent in New York City schools, hating every minute of it because it apparently took him that long to get over the fact that in New York one did not wear short trousers in grade school. The little New Yorkers threw stones at him when he first appeared in his correct English garb, and the impression lasted a good deal longer than the black and blue marks.
“The character of Osgood Conklin,” he says darkly, “was not only born but pickled in vinegar during those nine years. I hated school, from the principal on down.”
Not until he returned to England at 18 did Gordon begin to like school. It was there, too, that he picked up his flawless diction, which John Barrymore once said was the best of anyone on the stage, radio or screen.
Like most accomplished if unsung radio actors, Gordon is an expert dialectician. It may come as a shock to the younger fans of Our Miss Brooks to learn that Mr. Conklin once played the fabulous Texas millionaire, drawl and all, on the Burns and Allen radio show, and Inspector Lestrade, complete with Cockney overtones, on “Sherlock Holmes” with Basil Rathbone. On one particularly low-budgeted “Gangbusters” episode in the old radio days, he played the weak-kneed killer, the cop who arrested him and “the siren that presaged the advent of the cop.”
A man like that just has to be a success.