Granville Van Dusen

It's sometimes a very short distance from stage to screen, and Granville Van Dusen trod that path quite often. He was a long-time fixture on the Los Angeles scene, thanks to his association with that city's Matrix Theatre. As a Hollywood presence for many years, Van Dusen inevitably did plenty of onscreen work, particularly in television. His rather authoritarian bearing served him well in his first role in the TV movie "Dr. Max" (1974), playing a fellow doctor in the medical drama set in a tough inner city. In the ensuing three-plus decades, the actor racked up an impressive collection of TV credits, dropping in for guest appearances on crime shows like "Barretta" (1975) and "Hill Street Blues" (1986), as well as more melodramatic fare ("Melrose Place"). With his strong voice, Van Dusen was a natural for animation, and he scored a plum part as hardened security agent Race Bannon on the children's science-fiction cartoon series "Jonny Quest" (1986), reprising the role in a subsequent TV movie and an updated series, 1996's "The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest." He also spent some time in the world of soap opera, playing a recurring part as overprotective father Keith Dennison in "The Young and the Restless" (1998). His film work wasn't quite as extensive; he appeared in only a handful of movies. Most notable among these is the fantasy "Hearts of the West" (1975), in which he portrayed a World War I pilot.