Glenn Strange

Strange was born in Weed, New Mexico Territory,[1] 13 years prior to New Mexico gaining statehood.

In 1932, Strange had a minor role as part of the Wrecker's gang in a 12-part serial, The Hurricane Express, starring John Wayne. He gained his first motion picture role in 1932, and appeared in hundreds of films during his lifetime. He played numerous small parts in Paramount's popular Hopalong Cassidy film series, usually cast as a member of an outlaw's gang and occasionally as a local sheriff. In 1943, he played a badman in the Hopalong Cassidy movie False Colors. Beginning in 1949, he portrayed Butch Cavendish, the villain responsible for killing all of the Texas Rangers except one in the long-running television series The Lone Ranger.

Strange appeared twice as Jim Wade on Bill Williams's syndicated Western series geared to juvenile audiences The Adventures of Kit Carson. He also appeared twice as Blake in the syndicated Western The Cisco Kid. In 1952, he was cast in the role of Chief Black Cloud in the episode "Indian War Party" of the syndicated The Range Rider. In 1954, Strange played Sheriff Billy Rowland in Jim Davis's syndicated Western series Stories of the Century. Strange appeared six times in 1956 in multiple roles on Edgar Buchanan's syndicated Judge Roy Bean. That same year, Strange appeared in an uncredited role as the sheriff in Silver Rapids in the Western movie The Fastest Gun Alive starring Glenn Ford. In 1958, he had a minor part in an episode of John Payne's The Restless Gun, and had an important role in the 1958 episode "Chain Gang" of the Western series 26 Men, true stories about the Arizona Rangers. That same year, he played rancher Pat Cafferty, who faces the threat of anthrax, in the episode "Queen of the Cimarron" of the syndicated Western series, Frontier Doctor. Strange appeared in six episodes of The Rifleman playing the same role in different variations: Cole, the stagecoach driver, in "Duel of Honor"; a stagecoach shotgun guard in "The Dead-eye Kid"; Joey, a stagecoach driver in "The Woman"; and an unnamed stagecoach driver in "The Blowout", "The Spiked Rifle", and "Miss Bertie".[2]

Strange was cast in five episodes of the ABC Western The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp and three segments of the syndicated Annie Oakley. In 1959, he appeared in another Western syndicated series, Mackenzie's Raiders, in the episode entitled "Apache Boy". Strange was cast twice on Kirby Grant's Western aviation adventure series, Sky King, as Rip Owen in Stage Coach Robbers (1952), and as Link in Dead Giveaway (1958).

He first appeared on Gunsmoke in 1959 and assumed several roles before he was permanently cast as stolid bartender Sam Noonan, a role he played from 1961 until 1973.[3]

Strange (left) and Boris Karloff in the 1944 horror film, House of Frankenstein

Strange as Frankenstein's monster, with Boris Karloff, in House of Frankenstein

Strange (center) as monster in House of Dracula

In 1942, he appeared in The Mad Monster for PRC, a poverty row studio. In 1944, while Strange was being made up for an action film at Universal, make-up artist Jack Pierce noticed that Strange's facial features and 6'5" height would be appropriate for the role of Frankenstein's monster. Strange was cast in 1944 film House of Frankenstein in the role created by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931), coached by Karloff personally after hours.

Strange recounted a personal anecdote in Ted Newsom's documentary, 100 Years of Horror (1996). On the set of House of Dracula (1945), Lon Chaney, Jr., got him extremely inebriated. In the scene in which the monster is discovered in a cave, Strange lay immersed for hours in "faked quicksand" (actually cold mud) waiting for the cameras to roll. As Glenn began to get a serious chill, Chaney recommended that alcohol would keep Strange warm. Strange could barely walk straight after the day's shooting.

Strange played the monster a third time in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), with Chaney, Jr. as the Wolf Man and Bela Lugosi in his second screen appearance as Count Dracula. Strange also appeared in character with Lou Costello in a haunted house skit on The Colgate Comedy Hour and made a gag publicity appearance as a masked flagpole-sitter for a local Los Angeles TV show in the 1950s. After weeks of the station teasing the public about the sitter's identity, Strange removed his mask and revealed himself as Frankenstein's monster (actually, yet another mask.) Strange also played a monster in the Bowery Boys horror-comedy Master Minds in 1949, mimicking the brain-transplanted Huntz Hall's frantic comedy movements, with Hall providing his own dubbed voice.

During the wave of monster-related merchandising in the late 1950s and 1960s, Glenn Strange's iconic image often was used for the monster on toys, games, and paraphernalia, most often from his appearance in the Abbott and Costello film. In 1969, The New York Times mistakenly published Boris Karloff's obituary with Glenn Strange's picture as the Frankenstein monster.[4]

On September 20, 1973, at age 74, Strange died of lung cancer in Los Angeles, California.[5] Singer Eddie Dean, with whom Strange had collaborated on various songs and opening themes for films, sang at Strange's funeral service as a final tribute. Strange is interred at Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Glenn Strange.

• Glenn Strange at IMDb
• Glenn Strange, the B western villain
• TV.com biography Archived July 12, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
• "United States Social Security Death Index," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JT41-TQ9 : 19 May 2014), Glenn Strange, Sep 1973; citing U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing).
• Glenn Strange appears on Abbott and Costello's television program
• Glenn Strange's Make-Up Recreated on YouTube