Arnold Moss; Versatile Stage, Film, TV Actor

Arnold Moss, a classical actor of diverse ability who was best known for his Shakespeare repertoire yet was a favored villain in films and in the early days of television, died Friday of lung cancer in his home in New York City. He was 80.

Moss headed a Shakespearean company, starred in daytime TV soap operas and recorded and performed as a narrator with many symphony orchestras.

Moss was praised by critics for his performances as Prospero in “The Tempest” in 1945 and as Malvolio in “Twelfth Night” in 1949. He formed his own repertory company, the Shakespeare Festival Players, and toured 50 American colleges.

In movies, he often played the heavy and appeared in “Viva Zapata,” “Salome,” “Kim,” “Gambit,” “Casanova’s Big Night” and “My Favorite Spy.”

Moss narrated with the Boston, Detroit and Milwaukee orchestras and provided the voice of God for the 1978 Chicago Lyric Opera production of “Paradise Lost,” doubling as poet John Milton.

He began his stage career as an actor-director at Eva LeGallienne’s Civic Repertory Theatre in New York, where his first stage appearance was as an Indian in a 1929 production of “Peter Pan.”

The ruthless Spanish colonel in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Fifth Column” was his first major Broadway role, and Moss went on to win approval for his parts in “The Front Page,” “Flight to the West,” and “Journey to Jerusalem.”

Moss also performed on radio as a spokesman for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and as a staff announcer for CBS Radio in New York.

The State Department sent him to Latin America, Africa and the Far East as a specialist in theater.