Whit Bissell
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Whitner Nutting Bissell (25 October 1909 – 5 March 1996) was an American character actor.
Born in New York City, Bissell was trained in the Carolina Playmakers, a theatrical organization associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He had a number of roles in Broadway theatre, including the Air Force show Winged Victory, when he was a private.
In a career that began in 1943 with the film Holy Matrimony, Bissell appeared in literally hundreds of films and television series episodes.
Viewers of 1950s low-budget science fiction and horror films know him as one of "those actors" (perhaps the actor) that always shows up somewhere in such movies. Some of the most well-known of these roles were as a mad scientist in the 1957 film I Was a Teenage Werewolf, as the psychiatrist who treats Kevin McCarthy's character in the 1956 classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and in the original 1954 Creature from the Black Lagoon.
In 1960, he appeared in George Pál's production of The Time Machine, as Walter Kemp, one of the Time Traveller's dining friends. Thirty-three years later, he provided the on-camera opening narration to the documentary short, Time Machine: The Journey Back.
Bissell was a regular for the last two seasons of the television series Bachelor Father (1959-1961) and appeared as a guest star in practically every dramatic television series that aired between the early 1950s and the mid 1970s, with more sporadic appearances after that.
His most prominent television role came when he co-starred as General Heywood Kirk in the 1966-1967 science-fiction television series The Time Tunnel. He often played silver-haired figures of authority, here as in many other roles (as described by All Movie Guide) "instantly establishing his standard screen characterization of fussy officiousness," leavened in this case with a military bearing. Whit Bissell was an actor from the old school: even with the sound turned down, it was always possible to know what General Kirk was about to do, as Bissell used a varied set of facial expressions and postures to indicate thought, mood, and imminence of action.
Star Trek fans knew Bissell from his appearance in the classic episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", footage of which was re-used in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's "Trials and Tribble-ations".
Bissell's most-screened motion picture role is as the undertaker (who sees every man, no matter his race, as "just another future customer") in The Magnificent Seven (1960).
Bissell received a life career award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films in 1994. He also served for many years on the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild, as well as representing the actors to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences board of governors.
Bissell was married three times and had three daughters and a stepson.
Bissell died in 1996 in Woodland Hills, California from the effects of Parkinson's disease. He was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
