John Dehner

John Dehner (DAY-ner) (born John Dehner Forkum, also credited Dehner Forkum; November 23, 1915February 4, 1992) was an American stage, radio, film, and television actor. From the late 1930s to the late 1980s, he amassed a long list of performance credits, often in roles as sophisticated con men, shady authority figures, and other smooth-talking villains. His credits just in feature films, televised series, and in made-for-TV movies number almost 300 productions. Dehner worked extensively as a radio actor during the latter half of that medium's "golden age,” accumulating hundreds of additional credits on nationally broadcast series. His most notable starring role was as Paladin on the radio version of the television Western Have Gun – Will Travel, which aired for 106 episodes on CBS from 1958 to 1960. He continued to work as a voice actor in film, such as narrating the film The Hallelujah Trail. Earlier in his career, Dehner also worked briefly for Walt Disney Studios, serving as an assistant animator from 1940 to March 1941 at the company's facilities in Burbank, California. He appeared in the Johnny Cash episode of Columbo. He appeared in a two part episode of Mission: Impossible. Early life Born in 1915 in New York City on Staten Island, John Dehner was the middle child of three children of Ella Susana (née Dehner) and Ralph LeRoy Forkum. John's father was an accomplished artist who was widely recognized in the United States as a landscape painter, illustrator, and a specialist in painting "highly realistic" backgrounds for stage productions and later for animated features and shorts. John's mother was a gifted musician with artistic talents as well. Prior to the 1920s, Ella Forkum even collaborated with her husband on art projects and in some instances was co-credited for helping him to compose content for his drawings and paintings widely used in newspaper and magazine advertising. One example is a full-page advertisement in the March 18, 1917, issue of the Washington, D.C. newspaper Evening Star. That ad is for Djer-Kiss, a very exclusive line of French perfumes and soaps. It depicts a highly stylized, fairytale-like scene of young women bathing beneath a waterfall. The artwork itself bears the attribution to both of John's parents, to "R.L. + E.D. Forkum". By the early 1920s, R. L.