Peter Whitney
| Peter Whitney | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 24, 1916 Long Branch, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | March 30, 1972 (aged 55) Santa Barbara, California, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Years active | 1941 - 1972 |
| Spouse(s) | Adrienne Whitney (3 children) Barbara Engle (2 children) |
Peter Whitney (May 24, 1916 – March 30, 1972) was an American actor in film and television. He was born Peter King Engle in Long Branch, New Jersey. Tall and corpulent, he played brutish villains in many Hollywood films in the 1940s and 1950s.
Whitney was often a supporting character actor credited at least in the top ten actors appearing in several Hollywood classic feature films: Destination Tokyo (1943), Action in the North Atlantic (1943), Mr. Skeffington (1944), Murder, He Says (1945) [where he played a dual role], The Big Heat (1953), In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) and others before becoming well known for his work in television.
From the late 1950s, Whitney played character roles in many television series, including nine appearances on ABC's The Rifleman. One of his The Rifleman roles was in "Mail Order Groom" (1960), in which he portrays John Jupiter, a man of great physical strength who must exert patience while he is harassed by two townsmen, played by John Anderson and Sandy Kenyon, who had quarreled with Whitney's intended spinster bride, Isabel Dent, played by Alice Backes (1923–2007).
In the 1958-1959 season, Whitney had a co-starring role as Buck Sinclair, a former sergeant of the Union Army, in all thirty-nine episodes of the ABC western series, The Rough Riders.
Whitney was also a guest star on the ABC/Warner Brothers western series Colt .45. He played the part of Ralph in the 1958 episode "Mantrap", with Don "Red" Barry cast as Percival. He played United States Secret Service agent Gunnerson in the episode "Savage Hills" on the ABC/WB series, Maverick. In 1960, in the episode "Surface of Truth" of another ABC/WB western series, Lawman, Whitney played Lucas Beyer, a crude white man who has lived for ten years with the Cheyenne Indians. Beyer accidentally kills his wife in a fit of rage and runs into Laramie, Wyoming, to escape the wrath of her pursuing brother. Marshal Dan Troop (John Russell) uses an old Indian "truth" method to try to determine what happened.
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