Hank Brandt

With a career spanning five decades, the character actor Hank Brandt got his start playing a police investigator on a 1961 episode of the anthology suspense series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." After various guest appearances on such war and Western series as "Combat!," "Wagon Train," and "Tales of Wells Fargo," Brandt landed a recurring role as the friend of a war veteran's widow on the socially conscious sitcom "Julia." Throughout the '60s and '70s, the actor intermittently drew from his roots and appeared in such anthology thrillers as "Night Gallery" and the revamped " Alfred Hitchcock Hour." Meanwhile, he became a regular face on law-oriented television, turning up in bit roles on everything from "Ironside" and "Perry Mason" to "Columbo" and "Hawaii Five-O." In the midst of appearances on the ex-con-turned-private-investigator series "The Rockford Files," Brandt made his feature-film debut in Clint Eastwood's 1979 prison drama "Escape from Alcatraz." He perfected the role of the gumshoe with a recurring performance on the definitive prime-time soap "Dynasty" (1981-1989). Toward the end of his career, Brandt became something of a regular in the comedies of the Farrelly Brothers, appearing in the bowling farce "Kingpin" and the exemplary dim-duo movie "Dumb & Dumber." The actor died in 2004.