Gale Gordon
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| Gale Gordon |
|---|
| Born |
| February 20, 1906 New York, New York |
Gale Gordon (February 20, 1906 – June 30, 1995) was an American character actor. Remembered best as Lucille Ball's longtime television foil---and particularly as cantankerously combustible, tightfisted bank executive Theodore J. Mooney, on Ball's second television situation comedy, The Lucy Show---Gordon was just as respected for his earlier career in classic American radio, where he was once the highest-paid actor in the medium, even though he was never a top-billed radio star.
Born Charles T. Aldrich, Jr. in New York City, the son of British actress Gloria Gordon and her vaudevillian husband Charles Aldrich, Gordon's first big radio break came was the recurring role of Mayor La Trivia on Fibber McGee and Molly , before playing Rumson Bullard on the show's successful spinoff, The Great Gildersleeve. Gordon went on to create the role of pompous principal "Osgood Conklin" on Our Miss Brooks, carrying the role to television when the show moved there in 1952. In the interim, Gordon turned up as Rudolph Atterbury on My Favorite Husband, which starred Lucille Ball in a kind-of prequel to I Love Lucy, and it meant the beginning of a longterm friendship as well as recurring professional partnership. In addition, Gordon landed a recurring role as fictitious Rexall Drugs sponsor representative Mr. Scott on yet another radio hit, The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, staying with the role as long as Rexall sponsored the show.
The master of the "slow-burn" temper explosion in character, Gordon was actually the first pick to play Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy, but he was committed to Our Miss Brooks and had to decline the offer in favour of William Frawley. But he did make several guest shots on the show, mostly as Ricky Ricardo's boss, Alvin Littlefield, owner of the Tropicana Club where Ricky's band played. (Gordon also had a co-starring role in the televison comedy Pete and Gladys.)
When I Love Lucy ended, however, Ball created The Lucy Show and hired Gordon as Mr. Mooney, the banker who was first Lucy Carmichael's executor and subsequently her employer, when she went to work in his bank. Gordon first took the role in recurring form in the show's first season (1962-63), the better to fulfill his contract to play the second Mr. Wilson (the first, fellow radio veteran Joseph Kearns, had recently deceased) for the final season of Dennis the Menace. When that show ended in spring 1963, Gordon could and did become Mr. Mooney full-time, and he stayed with Ball and The Lucy Show until its finale in 1967.
When Ball shut down The Lucy Show and created her third sitcom, Here's Lucy, she reached out and touched Gordon yet again---this time, as her irascible boss (and brother-in-law) Harry Carter at an employment agency that specialized in unusual jobs. Gordon all but retired when Here's Lucy ended, but in the 1980s he came out of retirement to join Ball one last time, for the short-lived (and better forgotten) Life With Lucy. When Lucille Ball finally called it a career, Gale Gordon turned out to be the only actor to have co-starred or guest-starred in every weekly series, radio or television, she had done since the 1940s.
Gale Gordon died of lung cancer at age 89 in Escondido, California not much longer after the death of his wife, Virginia. They had no children. In 1999, he was inducted posthumously into the Radio Hall of Fame, and for his contribution to radio he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at Radio 6340 Hollywood Blvd.