Something Dark in the Doorway by Gregory Miller

Although his stage work later lessened, Mr. He was on television by 1950, working in the new medium from New York when shows were telecast live. Gregory made his motion picture debut in the cop crime drama 'Naked City' in 1948. Gregory also headed a short-lived related series called 'Detective School.' Starring as Nick Hannigan, he ran a night school for sleuths, trying to teach housewives, door- to-door salesmen and shoe store clerks how to become private eyes.Īfter establishing himself on Broadway in the 1930s and 1940s, Mr. He borrowed Barney's first name for 'Barney Miller.' 'ĭuring that series, which ran from 1975 to 1982, Mr. 'He thought,' the actor said in 1979, 'I had some of the characteristics of Barney Ruditsky, a famous New York rackets cop during Prohibition.

Gregory to relocate to Los Angeles.Ī decade and a half later, Danny Arnold, producer and co-creator of 'Barney Miller,' chose Mr. Gregory landed his long-running 'Barney Miller' role because of his work as real-life detective Barney Ruditsky in the 1959-62 television series 'The Lawless Years.' A precursor to 'The Untouchables,' that series depicted Ruditsky's dealings with New York gangsters in the decades of the 1920s and 1930s, with the actual Ruditsky as technical adviser. Kennedy's commanding officer in the 1962 movie 'PT-109,' was Dean Martin's superior officer in his Matt Helm detective movies and played an unrecognizable ape general on the 1970 movie 'Beneath the Planet of the Apes.' A real-life Navy sailor and Marine during World War II, He made his Broadway debut as a deputy sheriff in 'Key Largo' in 1939 and played an Air Force general in the pilot episode in television's groundbreaking 'The Twilight Zone' in 1959. It's whatever's in vogue.'īut it was a vogue that seemed to surround Mr. Gregory, in the heyday of the 'Barney Miller' series in 1979, shrugged off any suggestion that he specialized in portraying law enforcement and military officers, saying: 'Most every actor has played a lot of policemen. At his retirement in his early 70s, he was still playing 50-something characters. Gregory enjoyed a half-century career with some two dozen Broadway plays, 50 motion pictures and countless television programs. Slender with a craggy face, dark wavy hair and commanding sneer, Mr.

Something Dark in the Doorway by Gregory Miller