Whitford Kane

Whitford Kane
NYPL Digital Gallery
Born	Thomas Wheeler Kane (1881-01-30)January 30, 1881 Larne, Northern Ireland
Died	December 17, 1956(1956-12-17) (aged 75) New York City, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, Drama Teacher
Years active	1934-1954

Whitford Kane (January 30, 1881 – December 17, 1956) was a noted Irish-born American stage and screen character actor remembered for playing the First Gravedigger in numerous productions of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and by the students that attended his drama classes over a career that spanned nearly six decades. By the end of his long career, Whitford Kane's theatre credits had grown to fill three columns in John Parker's Who's Who in the Theatre.

Thomas Wheeler Kane was born on January 30, 1881 in Larne, a seaport on the east coast of County Antrim, Ireland (today a part of Northern Ireland), to Dr. John Kane and the former Isabella Whiteford. He first took to the stage in Belfast while in his early 20s, and by 1910 was performing on the London stage. Kane’s first known Broadway performance, the idle inventor, Daniel Murray, in Rutherford Mayne’s comedy, The Drone, came in 1912, the year he immigrated to America. He would go on to be involved in some fifty-six Broadway productions over a near fifty-three year acting career that only closed due to illness as he neared the end of his life.

Kane typically played character roles often described as likable and benign. Theatre critic Brooks Atkinson wrote of Kane’s performance as Dr. Wilson in John Steinbeck’s 1942 play, The Moon Is Down, “As the benign village doctor, Whitford Kane, one of the best pipe-smokers on the stage, presides in cheerful humor.” He played the First Gravedigger in 23 productions of Hamlet, supporting such actors as John Barrymore, Maurice Evans, Walter Hampden, William Mollison, Godfrey Tearle and Osmond Tearle. When asked why he played in so many Shakespearean productions, Kane replied, “It’s saved my bacon a good many times. The old gravedigger has fed me better than any other part. I earn my eats by Shakespeare; thank God it’s always coming up.”

Whitford Kane appeared in a handful of films over the 1930s and 40s, the most memorable probably being The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944) starring Fredric March, and the 1947 film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, in which he played the publisher Mr. Sproule. His career extended into the early years of television where the “round little man with a plum for a nose, a plump chin and ruddy full-blown cheeks” was one Christmas Eve called upon to play Santa Claus. Kane was a member of the cast that appeared in the very early NBC 1939 Teleplay, The Streets of New York and the 1954 Hallmark Hall of Fame production of King Richard II that was adapted for television by Maurice Evans.