Myron Healey

A mainstay of postwar B-films, actor Myron Healey played a host of villainous supporting characters in movie Westerns and hard-boiled TV crime dramas. With his deep voice and wily sneer, Healey usually balanced his bad guy roles with a cunning sense of humor, revealing a tremendous gift for off-the-cuff adlibs not usually seen in stock character parts. A former World War II Air Corps bombardier, Healey, in the postwar years, began making regular film appearances for Monogram Pictures, playing a slew of brutish henchmen in low-budget Westerns. He also worked as an occasional dialogue writer for the studio, writing the screenplay for two Westerns in which he also starred: 1951's "Colorado Ambush" and "Texas Lawmen." As the golden age of movie Westerns faded by decade's end, Healey took his acting talents to a broader range of roles on dramas, crime thrillers, and sci-fi films, most notably a rare good-guy role in the 1955 jungle adventure "Panther Girl of the Kongo." The actor reached the peak of his film career with a lead role in the 1962 Japanese monster movie "Varan the Unbelievable," thereafter appearing primarily on series television, on such primetime staples as "Gunsmoke," "Wagon Train," and "Bonanza."