Sheldon Leonard

Sheldon Leonard Bershad (February 22, 1907 – January 11, 1997) was an American film and television actor, producer, director, and screenwriter. Early life Sheldon Leonard Bershad was born in Manhattan, New York City, the son of middle-class Jewish parents Frank Bershad and Anna Levit. He graduated from Syracuse University in 1929. Career As an actor, Leonard specialized in playing supporting characters, especially gangsters or "heavies". His trademark was his especially thick New York accent, usually delivered from the side of his mouth. (He would often pronounce th as t and would say er as oi, thus he would pronounce earth as oit.) His breakthrough role was in Another Thin Man (1939), in which he played a soft-spoken but dangerous murder suspect. From then on he was typecast as smooth gangsters or streetwise guys in such movies as It's a Wonderful Life (1946; as bartender Nick), To Have and Have Not (1944), Guys and Dolls (1955), and Open Secret (1948). He was a favorite of director Frank Capra, who asked him to play an executive mobster in his 1961 movie Pocketful of Miracles. Leonard became so associated with tough-guy parts that he was occasionally cast against type, as a law-enforcement officer, in movies like Street of Chance (1942) and Decoy (1946). He even played a pirate in Captain Kidd (1945).