Charles Lane died peacefully Monday night at home in Santa Monica at age 102, according to his son Tom Lane. And you really do care, only you just don't know it. Never mind that he was born in San Francisco and was one of the last survivors of the 1906 earthquake.
You just never knew his name. He was That Guy in all those movies. You know, that skinny guy with the glasses, the beaky nose and the white hair -- or the dark hair, depending on how far back you go.
Sometimes he was a hotel clerk. He was on the 1960s sitcom "Petticoat Junction" for five years as a cranky railroad official. As an actor on film and television, he appeared in well over 250 roles, which means that, to avoid ever seeing him over the past 70 years, you would probably have had to avoid film and television completely.
Someone should do a Charles Lane festival. He made some exceptional movies: "Blonde Crazy" (1931), with James Cagney; "Blessed Event" (1932), with Lee Tracy; "Employees' Entrance" (1933), with Warren William; the Busby Berkeley musicals "42nd Street" and "The Gold Diggers of 1933"; the renowned screwball comedy "Twentieth Century" (1934); the Capra classics "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" (1936), "Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington" (1939), "Arsenic and Old Lace" (1944) and "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946); "Teacher's Pet" (1958); "The Music Man" (1962); and "Good Neighbor Sam" (1964). True, he had little to do with what made these films exceptional, and, in fact, for the vast majority of them, Lane received no credit at all. In the studio days, the guy who played the radio operator ("Central Airport") or the campaign reporter ("The Farmer's Daughter") wasn't identified for audiences.
He was considered part of that studio's furniture. But credit or no credit, Lane was never furniture, and he was never wallpaper. He was vivid -- as well as competent and precise.
Give him a job, and he got it done. Take, for example, his appearance in "The Gold Diggers of 1933." He is in one scene, as a society reporter, but the scene is significant.
For the whole beginning of the film, a mystery is made as to the true background of Dick Powell, who plays a songwriter. Now at a Broadway opening, Lane spots him, thinks he recognizes him and tells his friends during intermission. That's Lane's whole role, a small one -- but he nails it.
We know, from just a few lines from Lane, that this reporter is smart and tenacious, and that he's not going to quit until he finds out the truth. So the next day when we see the screaming newspaper headline, we're not surprised. There are two ways for a bit player to screw up.
One way, the forgivable way, is to be inconspicuous. The other way is to act as though you're the star of the picture. Lane did neither.
He simply brought truth to his brief moments on screen. With Lane, the audience understood that the reporters, clerks, salesmen and managers he played were people in the midst of their own day -- a day that just happened to intersect with the world of the movie. As such, he had no need to be especially patient or ingratiating.
He was rarely nasty, but he usually seemed busy and impatient. He had something he was doing, that he wanted to do, and then Gary Cooper or Barbara Stanwyck or somebody had to come over and interrupt him. Lane was born Charles Levison in San Francisco on Jan.
In the beginning of his career, he kept the name of Levison, but it wasn't much of an issue because the name rarely turned up in the credits. He made his first screen appearance in the 1931 film "Smart Money," with James Cagney and Edward G. Charles Lane died peacefully Monday night at home in Santa Monica at age 102, according to his son Tom Lane.
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