Maurice Gosfield

Maurice Gosfield
Gosfield as Duane Doberman (right) with Phil Silvers as Ernie Bilko on the cover of Life Magazine (1956).
Born	Maurice Lionel Gosfield (1913-01-28)January 28, 1913 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	October 19, 1964(1964-10-19) (aged 51) New York City, New York, U.S.
Resting place	Long Island National Cemetery
Occupation	Comedic actor
Years active	1934-1964
Known for	The Phil Silvers Show Top Cat

Maurice Gosfield (January 28, 1913 – October 19, 1964) was an American comic actor, most famous for his portrayal of Private Duane Doberman on the 1950s sitcom The Phil Silvers Show and voicing Benny the Ball in Top Cat.

Maurice Lionel Gosfield was born in New York in 1913, but was raised in Philadelphia and later in Evanston, Illinois. During World War II he served in the U.S. Army as a Tec 4 in the 8th Armored Division.

He began acting with the Ralph Bellamy and Melvyn Douglas Players in Evanston, and joined the summer stock theatre circuit in 1930. In 1937, he made his Broadway debut as Manero in the play Siege. Other theatre credits from the 1930s include The Petrified Forest, Three Men on a Horse and Room Service. He also made several appearances on radio programs.

From 1955 to 1959, Gosfield played Private Duane Doberman in The Phil Silvers Show (titled You'll Never Get Rich in its first season). Doberman was written as the most woebegone soldier. The actor originally hired for the part was Maurice Brenner, but Brenner was recast as Private Irving Fleischman. The show's creator Nat Hiken's biography details the casting for the role and the effect that Gosfield had on him, the producer and Phil Silvers when he appeared in front of them:

The dumpy, spectacularly ugly Maurice Gosfield ambled into an open casting call one day, brandishing an enormous list of credits. A handful of his bit parts on stage are easy enough to confirm; more difficult to pin down are his claims of two-thousand radio credits and one hundred TV appearances. Nonetheless, they were impressed with him. "None of the man's background, though, really mattered to Hiken and Silvers once they got a good look at him. Nat had already picked someone to play the most woebegone member of Bilko's platoon, but immediately he knew that here [Maurice Gosfield] was the man born for the part".

In 1959, Gosfield was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for the show. That same year, he again played Private Doberman in the television show Keep in Step and made his final appearance as the character, the following year, when he guest starred on The Jack Benny Program. He next appeared in the made-for-television movie The Teenage Millionaire (1961).